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I’ve singlehandedly caused hp to lose thousands of dollars. People trust my advice and I’ve lost all trust in hp so I tell people not to waste their money on it.
When I got hired to take charge of the IT department, the first thing I did was phase out ALL HP products and then implemented an “Unacceptable and Barred Brands for purchasing” policy with HP right at top.
Thank you for your service
Unfathomably Based
Anyone have recommendations for MICR compatible printers that AREN’T HP? It’s the last HP product we have in my office.
Don’t buy a smart printer. Buy a dumb printer, then plug it into a raspberry pi.
Who sells dumb printers though? I would buy that in a heartbeat.
I’m pretty sure you can still get brother, Canon, and Epson ones
Canon bricks their printers, only replaces full cartridges and is super touchy about hooking up to the internet.
Canon is 100% as evil as HP
I love their cameras, but yeah, their printers are evil.
I’m going to be in the market for a camera soon, and I’ll never touch a Canon because of their printers. If they want good brand recognition they have to earn it and they have not for me
The only Canon printer I ever owned was a piece of garbage. For whatever reason, I couldn’t just select my home wifi from a list like literally any other network-enabled device. I instead had to select an option buried several layers deep in the menus to have it try to automatically connect to an open network. Only after waiting 5 minutes for this to fail would it show a list of available networks.
Of course, it also forgot the network and password settings every time it lost power, so I had to go through the whole process again after time I unplugged the thing to clean behind the shelf.
I’ve never had much luck with the consumer level canon printers, absolute pieces of shit. I used to sell printers and would steer people towards brother or Epson. However last I saw, canon did still have printers that could be used entirely offline.
Brother sells some
Brother is the only printer company I like. I’ve had a workhorse for ages and it is still going strong.
I’ve been using them for 20ish years and never had any more trouble than routine maintenance.
Estate sales, yard sales, and tech scrappers/recyclers tend to have em as well.
I have had one printer bricked and my dad had 2 bricked by hooking up to the internet. I didn’t realize that was what was happening until it was too late.
we need an easily flashed prerolled Printer OS that makes this easy to make work
What’s a smart printer?
A printer that supports network print, typically through an Internet service.
I’d say network printers are fine, but ones that require a ‘cloud’ connection can gag on my dong. I have a brother business aio printer hooked up via network and it’s been everything I wanted from it, after our Epson shit the bed a couple years ago.
Why did you need the internet for network printing? You’ve been able to print over network for decades without needing the internet. I stopped using printers 15 years ago both at home and at work so had no idea this had happened. In a rare situation where I do need to print I use the work MFP or go to the library and pay 20c a page. Happens once every 2 or 3 years.
Okay I made my previous comment before seeing this one. Please disregard it.
I’d like to second the opinion of the other replies here. I love the fact that my printer is networked. I could never go back to having a printer that needs to be connected to the computer I’m printing from.
But it’s also just a basic device attached to my local network. I could maybe get behind a printer with optional cloud connectivity, but absolutely do not buy a printer that requires a cloud connection to work.
The ones you plug to your intranet with an Ethernet cable, and which talk the common lpr protocol. Those are really good. E.g. the Brother laser printers.
I haven’t bought a printer recently. Wtf is a smart printer?
It’s a printer that, when you tell it to print, tries its best to find a reason to refuse to do so.
Most newer models that automatically make themselves available to all the devices connected to the network they are connected to, and manage the printer queue internally. Usually comes with a ton of shitty “features” e.g preventing you from printing black & white when you’re out of yellow ink.
2-in-one scanner+printer machines are especially heinous with this, most of the ones I’ve used block you from scanning a document if you’re out of any ink (yes, even when you’re only trying to scan and not use the “copy” mode)Somehow they found a way to make me miss having to boot the “printer PC” and wrangling windows’ god awful printer queue system.
Buy brother laser. It’s more expensive, but it’s worth it long term. They last a real long time and the cartridges last bananas and they don’t care about “official” ink
Straight up when I bought my black and white brother laser printer I got an extra cartridge with it because I didn’t expect it to last very long
By the time I finally had to swap it out I couldn’t find the extra cartridge I bought with it because it had been so long
Needless to say I’m 3 years and 500+ pages into the second cartridge and happy to have this clunky little printer
Unfortunately someone snuck someone from HP into Brother’s executive chain. They’re starting the fuckery now too.
I guess the only right thing to do is to buy used Brother laser printers until they all break… Such warhorses.
NGL everytime I move I pack my Brother Laser like fine artwork
Nooooooooooo!
Sadly this is true and even on updated software for old printers. I’m rolling back though. The old versions worked fine.
I thought the latest update to the new brother color laser added cartridge DRM?
So far, on my 5 year old brother it annoys me to but toner from them but had a “do not show this message again” choice to click. Happened with two messages and no more so far. They also added a thing in status monitor when it tells you your toner levels wether it’s official or not and that you should not official. So far it hasn’t stopped me from using it, but like every corporation I fully expect them to go full stupid soon.
Laser printers are especially handy if you rarely ever need to print anything, because they don’t dry up and get clogged.
Yeah I tend to either not print anything for years, or print huge amounts in a short span of time. Lasers are brilliant for this use case, because they also print really really quickly when they are printing, in addition to not drying up.
It’s not even more expensive. You can get a full duplex wifi printer for under $200. I want one, but my 20 year old Brother printer is still going strong.
Laser printers don’t use ink.
This is what i own. Amazing printer
My Dell mono laser is also going strong. Haven’t had a single issue in over 10 years. Ink printers have been and still are a scam
And this is why things like pirating are not only acceptable but necessary. When companies lock services behind paywalls for products we should legally own, we are left with no recourse but to obtain the services we are owed illegally.
Agreed. Piracy, aka the sharing of information freely (see also: libraries), is a fundamentally ethically correct course of action. Always.
Withholding knowledge for personal profit on the other hand is obviously not.
They’ll be the first company with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes
I’m pretty sure that’s Nestle
The revolution will not be printed in color.
“Your printer pal that’s fun to be with!”
This should straight up be illegal
No joke, like what the fuck is this? I bought the thing, and you can just disable it ???
That’s the issue, people won’t stop buying these things and then complain - selling a scam calling it a feature should be illegal and all these practices should be called out as much as possible.
HP is probably the worst big tech device company. Their products are shit, break quickly, are overpriced and econ students love them.
I bought an HP Envy, one of these convertible laptop thingies, when I didn’t know any better. The hinge broke about a month after the warranty expired. Repair costs (at a local repair shop, but still) were like 200€ because apparently I had to buy a whole new top cover for the damn repair to work
Anyways, I’m gonna buy a Framework laptop next because fuck going through that again
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Repair technician here. Yes we get a lot of hps with bad hinges, because they screw that super stiff hinge into the most floppy wet newspaper like piece of plastic possible. 200$ is reasonable because depending which side it’s one you have to completely gut the screen assembly or the keyboard assembly (you use to be able to replace keyboards by themselves now you need to completely gut the whole computer)
Fuck HP but also fuck a lot of other brands cause they all pull this bullshit (dell, apple, Lenovo, Acer, Asus)
That’s a lot of the market right here. What would you recommend being a good laptop brand then?
He doesn’t get to see good laptops. They don’t break.
Is that a good example of
?
Almost any brand has good products… Just look at the business lines of products. They are much higher quality and usually come with a decent warranty.
Lenovo ThinkPads are really well built. I’d steer clear of their ideapads though, they’re the usual consumer marketed rubbish.
This is exactly what I was going to say.
Lenovo ThinkPad… Not ideapad
Excluding ideapad is important, they are no better than other junk.
Framework seems promising.
Company I work at does HP warranty repairs on hehalf of HP and the number of fuckin shattered screens from the shitty plastic hinge screw housing being shorn off was absurd.
It seems to be the case with a lot of the bezel-less designs, since I know I’ve seen some other brands with the same problem.
I just hate that they seem to have decided it’s more profitable to just leave the shitty design as-is and deal with the repairs than to actually design that shit better.
$200 definitely seems reasonable though on part cost alone, since HUs are typically the 2nd most expensive order able part besides the system board itself.
I recently had a Lenovo that made me wanna tear my hair out. Bad hinge on the screen assy, I move the screen and everything to the new back cover. The way it’s designed is if you don’t route the cable on the correct side of the hinge it will rip the display cable out and short all of the pins.
I thought I was finished after I closed it and when I opened it the backlight was dead, great, now I need another screen. New screen comes in and dead backlight again, turns out it’s a bad MOTHERBOARD. I even tested for it before ordering the screen, the motherboard worked normally and runs on an external display. So now I would have bought a new back cover, screen and motherboard. My boss just decided to buy the guy a new laptop because of the nightmare this thing has become, sucks cause it’s a loaded expensive 10th Gen Intel i7 and we obviously have to comp him with an equivalent laptop.
Sometimes people don’t realize how hard this stuff is and why it’s so expensive. Not to mention apple will perforate their cables (just like in notebooks so the paper tears cleanly) to make the cables rip when repairing them.
Spending too much money on bad products is good for the GDP!
can’t buy a good product under capitalism
contradiction in terms
Well you can while they’re building the brand and the business majors aren’t running every department
econ students love them.
Why?
Consumables make economists happy because of all the repeat sales.
They love printing? I guess that’s what he’s saying
Why nobody has made an open source ink jet printer design like reprap, I will never understand. The printer industry seems primed for disruption with all their bullshit and their half century old technology.
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…and now they get chains.
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Until a big company realizes the most profitable thing to do is take that option off the table
My guess. They couldn’t get the printer to work. My 3D printer has a lower problem count than my ink jet regular printed at this point.
The accuracy required for the ink droplets just isn’t there for prosumers.
I can (and have!) built multiple extruders for a variety of 3D printers. Some of my own design.
Sadly, the tolerances for an inkjet are at least an order of magnitude greater.
I have zero doubt that a few clever hardware hackers could design an open source inkjet printer. But A: They’d get sued back to the mesolithic by every printer company with a patent. And B: the process would likely involve micro machining your own hardware.
I’ve just said, “fuck it” to the entire industry. I’m in my early 40s and I’m reasonably sure that my Brother laser will outlive me. And possibly the heat death of the universe.
Patents expire after, what, 20 years? I’d be happy with an open source printer based on 20 year old technology.
I’d take a tractor fed dot-matrix printer over my current one just so I could play with the paper thingies on the edges.
You’ll pay an arm and a leg for tractor feed paper though.
Hmmm we don’t need to build a new printer, just new firmware. More like ddwrt or tomato
Right? Why buy a paper printer for less than $100 when you can spend $2000 on a 3D printer + materials and time spent learning and fucking up! Wish I thought of that!
Time to invent dd-lpt
Probably because they wouldn’t be as profitable.
HP could sell like a tenth the printers and still make more money
Ya, the abacus industry is also ripe for disruption. Legacy industries would love your pro insight.
there’s not a single thing radical about wanting these fuckers out of our homes and out of our lives. Kill em all as far as I’m concerned.
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I made the mistake of buying an HP printer. Fortunately I only spent $70 on it.
Then the ink cartridge ran out as I used all the ink up. So instead of buying more ink I purchased a new printer. This time it was a color inkjet from Brother that will last me years on the first ink cartridge.
Funny how it works. Fuck you HP.
I’ve been radicalized against HP for a decade now. I bought an HP printer with the guarantee of a sizeable rebate. Of course, the rebate never showed up and every time I called about it, the customer service person would read their script, “Oh we sent that out just a few days ago should be arriving soon.” Uh huh. Here it is 15 years later, no rebate check and I’m sure they never intended to send one at all. I’m not a fan of HP at all.
I recently had to set up an HP printer that literally would not function without being activated via Internet connection first, but was received with a dead NIC and no way to activate through USB connection so just another piece of plastic for the landfill due to greed 🤷🏻♂️
That’s the same as the printer I recently bought, and the problem is, my Internet connection is very spotty at best, and my computer doesn’t support the needed software. SIGH. My printer’s a paper weight until I can afford a new computer system and better internet.
This is a real thing? I haven’t owned a printer in years. Why would they have his debit info in the first place?
yes it’s a real thing, it’s part of the HP ink program, they disable printers when your payment method rejects or you cancel the sub
So you’re basically just renting the printer then. Wow.
Nono, you buy the printer and AFTERWARDS they sell you a subscription on top.
That way they get paid twise, much better…
Buy-to-rent. Nice
Well selling the initial product at a loss is not uncommon when locking people into a subscription though
They get paid twice anyway, if you buy cartridges from HP. This is just a subscription for those cartridges.
True, but usually you buy them from retailers… This way they cut out the middleman. And the chance that you use 3rd party inks (although, that “security risk” got patched with firmware upgrades)
Also, they don’t just send you ink… It’s a monthly plan where you have x pages included. Unused pages are rolled over 3 times [1] and afterwards they probably are just lost.
Further, if you cancel the subscription, containers you received within the subscription wont work anymore.
Damn, I knew it was bad, but now that I read the details it’s even worse…
Sort of. You’re renting the ink, not the printer. If you went to Staples or Amazon and got regular ink for the printer, it would immediately start working again.
If you buy ink from the Instant Ink program, the cartridges are sent to you for far less money than a regular cartridge. They sell page based plans where they make the money back and then new ink just shows up in the mail as you go. HP DRM’s these cartridges to prevent people from skipping out on the subscription and printing normally for wayyyyyyy less up front cost.
HP printers suck. And ink sucks too. So there’s a lot of understandable suckiness. But most of the criticisms about HP’s ink DRM are just people mixing up Instant Ink and regular ink cartridges and getting mad they can’t read instructions.
And yet the printer was remotely disabled. If the ink is such an intrinsic part of the printer that the printer can’t be used independently, than it may as well be the same thing.
You’re not renting the car, just the keys!
All our hotel rooms are free for everyone! Access isn’t though, sorry.
$0 phones! Only works with Comcast though…
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I have literally filed a BBB complaint in the past for HP over their stupid ink subscription being fucky
From what I’ve heard the BBB is as much a BS organization as HP, companies can pay to have the complaints removed.
They are useless, as anyone who’s ever tried to get redress through them knows. Don’t trust their ratings.
It’s basically a business owner guild, right?
It’s Boomer Yelp.
I honestly don’t know enough to say, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard from others many times over the last decade or so.
I’ve had good results using them, but the company you’re complaining against has to care about the rating they’re. I’ve even gotten Scamazon to replace valid reviews they removed. If the business isn’t a member and doesn’t care there’s nothing they can do but send a letter to be ignored. Not endorsing them, but just sharing my experience so far.
I have an HP printer now, Epson before that. Both are dogshit. When the HP eventually kills itself, as they tend to do, should I buy a Brother? I heard a lot of good stuff about it but have 0 experience with it.
I’ve had a brother printer going on 10 years and it’s never let me down. I’ve changed toner three times over that time and each cart has never cost me more than 20 ish quid. No DRM carts, no jamming, no subscriptions just a printer that does its job. Even when it’s running low, it doesn’t prevent me printing, it’ll let me know it’s low then keep on printing until you can’t see the letters any more.
I swear, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve also had good experiences with Brother, I’d be thinking they have an insanely good astroturfing department. Every time there’s a thread about printers, there are dozens of comments saying how good they are.
Having a brother laser printer as well it’s honestly not even about how good brother printers are, just about how shitty the competition is.
I have a friend who works in the engineering department of HP designing ink jet printing heads.
He uses Brother at home. They’re actually that good.
10 years ? Mine is around 20 years old. I slapped a Raspberry Pi on it to have it network-enabled and it still works like a champ. Never ever will I buy another brand.
Thanks mate. Will check it out.
I have a Brother DCP L2541DW. Bought it last year and has been working since with no hiccups nor drum change.
Regardless of brand, don’t buy “at home” printers. Those are straight up scams. Just buy office printers.
I have a Brother HL-2365DW. It’s a home printer, or maybe at most a home-office printer. I’ve had it nearly a decade with only two toner replacements. Being laser and networked solve the two biggest problems I’ve had with inkjet printers in the past, and those two categories are the main things I would strongly recommend to people when choosing a printer.
edit: I initially wrote “it’s not a home printer” (emphasis added here for demonstrative purposes). This was the exact opposite of what I intended to say.
I need to print in colour because I do papercraft :/ any tips?
There do exist colour laser printers, although I suspect if you’re interested in artistic printing their quality may not be good enough.
I couldn’t tell you what brands or models are good, but I’m sure some inkjet printers do exist in a less user-hostile business model. You just might need to pay a bit more for them up-front. You’d need to ask the opinions of other people in your hobby’s community for better advice I think.
Papercraft, it doesn’t have to be god-like quality. But better is… well better.
I will check it out! Thanks friend
Yeah, Brother have been real good so far. Their shit is rock fucking solid reliable, and you can use third party ink with no issues.
I have a epson EcoTank printer and I really really love it.
The Ink is cheap and very good. I will never go back to cartriges.
Can confirm. Those EcoTank printers are awesome!
Interesting. I will check it out. Thank you!
I have had no trouble with my Brother printer in ~7-8 years of use. Of course, laser vs inkjet is not a particularly fair comparison, but I am still never going back to HP, Canon, and the like.
I need to print in colour, I’m afraid. Any tips?
If you aren’t doing photography prints there are plenty of nice brother color laser printers.
If you are doing photography… I hear good things about the ecotank printers.
Papercraft, so better the print, the better. I’ll check those out. Thank you!
In what way was the Epson dogshit? I’m mostly asking because I just bought an Epson printer a few days ago
It was a long time ago, so I can’t remember the specifics. But it was the ol’ asking for ink when it was obviously still full, bad software, unresponsivness and gradually getting worse and worse prints as it aged.
HP reached its pinnacle in 1993 with the 4L laser printer. They were practically indestructible. I bought one and it took 15 years of heavy use to kill it.
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I wish there was a cheap simple laser engraver that could just “burn” black the surface of generic bulk printer paper. As in an inkless monochrome printer.
A bit like How to Cut, Score, and Engrave Paper With a Laser but without the need to use dedicated laser cutter.
With the explosion of interest in 3D printing, machining and laser cutters, I’m just eager to get hold of a printer like that and forever give up on liquid ink and toners of all sorts.
This does exist and you can see it in almost every supermarket in the World: the ticket printer. And the tickets end up fading
Ticket printers use a special thermosensitive paper.
Thermal printer is the technical name.
Back when I used to work as a cashier I would blow my employees mind by heating up random things with my lighter and pressing them onto the paper when nobody was looking. Had everyone thinking the printer was hacked
I get the sense that everyone responding to this is completely missing the joke.
They mean laser printers, people.
Laser printers don’t burn the paper. They require toners. So it wasn’t a joke unless they also didn’t know how a laser printer works.
No he clearly says no ink and no toner. Toner is melted onto the paper after a laser (now mostly LEDs) heat up a drum. He’s talking about burning the paper with a laser… Which would be interesting but really hard to do where a top layer is burned black without toasting the rest of the layers.
Pretty sure that’s how my receipt printer works, but it’s just one color onto specialized paper.
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specialized paper
Thermal paper. Thermal printer.
What would be interesting is if there was a way to use lasers to alter molecules in a way that permitted them to absorb all wavelengths of light. Then you really could turn things black with lasers, without having to char the paper. You just turn its molecules into weird resonance structures that are so amorphous they can find a way to absorb any photon (any photon above infrared at least; it’s got to release the energy somehow).
Maybe because they already have dot matrix printer, so that new type of printer might not be high in demand if it’s on the market today.
