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I am always reminded of this tweet from ProZD when printers come up:
i've got a billion dollar idea, imagine a computer printer but like, it actually fucking works, it prints every time like it's fucking supposed to without issue, it just does that no fucking problem, companies, feel free to take this idea, this one's on me
This type of printer exists. It's called a Brother laser printer.
I have a brother laser printer for years, can confirm.
My friend has one that's like ten years old, works fine too.
The software is a bit janky and all that but it works.
My monochrome Brother Laser is around 15 years old. Works great on Linux, as it should on any cups system. It's still the same printer or was 15 years ago, drivers shouldn't change.
I think I'm on the 3rd drum for that thing. Lord knows how many pages. Just keeps trucking.
I have a Brother laser printer. It regularly goes into such a deep sleep that no force on this Earth can wake it up when it's time to print, because it's too deeply unconscious to respond to "wake up" signals from computers. It cannot print without first being brought out of its coma by a troubleshooting software.
So I'm not going to put that in the category of printers that just prints every time like it's supposed to without issue.
Huh, that's strange. Does pressing the power button not work? Are you using wifi or Ethernet?
I think there's a way to disable the deep sleep mode.
Nope, pressing the power button doesn't work, and I've tried it on both wi-fi and ethernet, with the same problem either way. I am pretty much resigned to the fact that I do not get along with printers.
Strange. You could try go to its web UI (just go to the printer's IP in your web browser) and disable both sleep and auto power off, and see if that helps? You can also change those option through the menu on the printer itself.
I recommended Brother laser printers to some older relatives and this happened. The printers required a power reset every few days.
It's good relative to what we have now, but it can't hold a candle to some of the warhorses we had in the past.
Brother still can't do inkjet right? I read somewhere there's a big patent that lets only a select few companies be able to sell inkjet printers.
I used to have a laser printer, and they're great for documents, but now what I print most are photos, and for that pigment-based inks rock.
I have an Epson printer but even if they're nowhere near as bad as HP, Epson also has some weird shit from time to time.
I own a brother inkjet and it works fine, although it complained when I put the wrong brand of ink in it.
Printer companies are probably the reason most people no longer own a pinter.
I had one of those printers in the 90s.
I laugh at this every time I see it, but I also like to point out that Rage was, in fact, extremely explicit about what machine they were raging against.
I don't know. It's commonly accepted that their lyrics have a bit of an anti-estabishment sentiment, but statements such as "believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya / buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya", or even "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" (stated by the machine) can just as easily applied to most situations where a printer is involved. Maybe there's somehing to it?
WTF, I thought HP had the MOST hated printers?
Epson is getting away with its ecotank models, and Brother lasers have been the go to for a lot of people.
I got my ecotank two years ago and haven't had a reason to buy ink since. I still have plenty of the ink that came with it. The most frustrating thing has been that I have to let it run through a cleaning cycle when I haven't printed in a while. Well, that and the fact it took me a second to realize it doesn't support WPA3.
The cleaning cycle thing is pretty common with any inkjet. My old HPs all do it when I havent used them in a while.
I want to love my ecotank Epson. The software is butt ugly, but works. The printer itself isn’t the nicest looking, but works.
But man, the print quality. No matter how many times I run a cleaning cycle, it’s still a smeary mess within two pages and the deep clean doesn’t work. Neither the instructions in the manual nor found online work.
They must be going for the mainstream audience that just knows printers suck. That, and anybody who knows enough to see how funny that sentence is, has already sworn off HP forever.
I hate HP's so called smart apps.
HP's website wouldn't let me download a driver, but insisted on using their app to detect the printer model (which I already know) and then try to open the corresponding download page for that model (which I already vsited).
Off course the app open the wrong URL and lead to a 404 error. I had to download drivers from another source.
We have HP workstations. Last week HP auto installed its smart printer app and then popped open. We don't have HP printers, just Canon. So I uninstalled it, and all the HP diagnostic / support account apps. They sent a feedback form, so I explained that on principle I'll never buy HP printers because of the ink subscription. Hopefully enough people send the same message.
Bold coming from the top innovator of printer behavior that deserves hatred…
After reading stories like this, I more and more convinced that if we want to have a free market, we need to limit the size of companies allowed to participate in it. Because if you have 2 companies controlling the whole market, they can and will produce "dynamic security"-type of garbage.
This is honestly the realization we really, really need to have as a species. It kind of feels like the lesson a lot of what we've seen this year has driven home, and it's something I've started hearing echoed, so maybe we're starting to get there.
This whole obsession with everything needing to constantly expand is absolutely destroying us, our environment, and everything good that we make.
We've got to start going in the other direction.
I'm not sure what's worse, that "less hated" would be a serious brag in the printer industry, or that it's not even true for the ones claiming it
I don't think they misread the room at all. HP is pretty much at the top of the heap due to its corporate hardware installs and support contracts (which aren't going away any time soon). Their lower end stuff is all over the home office and small office markets. Their older stuff is used by much of the open source community. The number of folks who're going to switch to another manufacturer in disgust because of the tone of this marketing campaign will barely put a dent in their revenue streams for the next fiscal year, perhaps a fraction of a percentage point.
Incidentally, "we suck less than our competitors" is not a new marketing technique. It's probably the second oldest marketing technique.
what's the oldest
Drawing people in with open questions.
I would have guessed it was titties
I despise printers. I have never owned one that wasn't evil.
I was you once. In 2018, I bought a dumb, black-and-white laser printer (Brother HL-L2300D). It has done nothing but print whenever asked. I've only had to change the toner once (to be fair, I print infrequently). It doesn't require special software. It was cheap. I highly recommend going this route.
I have a Brother black-and-white laser printer, and it is, in fact, evil. I commented about it in this thread in fact: it never prints when it's asked to because its deep sleep is so deep that computers can't communicate with it without the use of troubleshooting software. So it doesn't fit the requirement of "prints without any problems".
If it is network connected, consider giving it a static IP in the router. I can imagine the computer being confused by the printer having a new IP since last time (can happen with automatic IP), when you try to print something.
Of course lemmings always recommend brother
I’ve worked on a LOT of printers. Brother makes an extremely good product
I mean I've had my Brother long before I knew about Lemmy. I have never had it not print the thing I wanted it to print. Before that I had about half a dozen inkjet printers that worked maybe 40% of the time in the first few months and then dropped steeply when the print heads got gummed up, or the feed got jammed. But the Brother has been working a treat for five years and counting.
I’ve been a lemming for less than a year.
I’ve been on the same black & white brother laser printer for well over a decade! It’s on toner cartridge #3.
Lemmy attracts BrotherBro's (maybe we can make a better name)
I think the only printer I had that wasn't evil was my Commodore MPS-1200.
Those were the good old days. Printers were definitely less evil back then. But then, so was technology in general.
That’s hilarious. I thought I for sure the article would be The Onion.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Three short HP video ad campaigns detailed by Marketing Communication News include one with a customer supremely frustrated with his printer's low ink warning.
Despite this, HP has continued to roll out sudden disruptive firmware updates to add dynamic security to additional printer models.
That happened earlier this year, when users reported that their previously functioning third-party ink wouldn't work in their HP printer anymore.
HP didn't explain why dynamic security was suddenly necessary, nor did it warn users relying on their printers for work and other critical matters.
CFO Marie Myers highlighted the business value of constraining customer choice at the UBS Global Technology conference for investors this week.
The executive added that HP's "really proud" about raising "the range on our print margins" through "bold moves and shifting models."
Saved 80% of original text.
The HP LaserJet 4si was the peak of printers. It's been all downhill since then.
