4 ms·

And the really nice thing about Brother is there's none of this "500mb universal printer driver" shit. Want just the printer driver? 10 mb. Want linux driver

by paulmd 6y ago

And the really nice thing about Brother is there's none of this "500mb universal printer driver" shit. Want just the printer driver? 10 mb. Want linux drivers? Here's CUPS drivers. They sell you a printer, here's drivers that work, end of story. I adore (and have always adored) my Brother B+W lasers and am thinking about one of the color lasers one of these days, especially now that I am living at home instead of having access to a Xerox network copier at work (we are allowed reasonable personal usage of office supplies, no worries). The Brother fan club is loud and for very good reason. In contrast (I had a brother B+W at home) I owned an HP color laser for my office at school, and nope, never again, the driver package was fucking terrible and while I could usually get it to work after some finangling, it was constantly a pain. Literally threw it in the trash and got a B+W brother MFC instead even though that was a "step down".

blux 6y ago
I recently bought a dirt cheap Brother B+W printer to replace a Canon inktjet printer and am very happy with the decision. It is a small printer, Windows/Linux network printing is easy to setup and just works. My only gripe with it is that it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi. It has been a pleasure to use the printer again.
- paulmd 6y ago
  > My only gripe with it is that it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi I noted the same thing and eh. While this means your router has to continue to support a 2.4 GHz AP, I don't think that's an unusual decision as far as the "internet of things", due to cost reasons (as opposed to migrating every IOT to 5 GHz). I think you will have to maintain all three now. Devices are eventually going to segregate themselves onto their own networks: 2.4 GHz for legacy / low-cost / IOT, 5 GHz for data rate, wigig/wifi 6/etc for extreme data rate. The performance hit on your other bands should be minimal even considering contetion. There's no sense updating the wireless module for faster wifi and probably not any sense updating past 100 mbit wired ethernet either. > I recently bought a dirt cheap Brother B+W printer to replace a Canon inktjet printer and am very happy with the decision. Do note that canon inkjet printers can often be easily retrofitted for bulk "continuous tank" ink, which can actually make them surprisingly affordable to run as far as inkjets go! The ink itself isn't really that expensive, just packaging (it's a "priced according to demand" product). I'd look at bulk ink "cost per page" for photo before you toss it. I think it'll probably still work out to being economically cheaper per page to get a brother B+W or color laser but if you can argue the bulk ink inkjet with printing some photos or school projects at home then maybe. Laser (color or B+W) is cheaper for b+w and occasional color presentation, and sending out to costco/kinkos/whatever is better for photos or premium presentation. (There still is no comparison to professional photo printers of course - check out White House Custom Color, despite the "we're a pro service house! what is your professional account number" facade they're open to you even if you just want a couple family photos printed nice, and they have equipment and expertise you don't. Work out your cost per page and if you fuck up once on a big print you probably lose vs just sending it out, I bet.)
  - Out_of_Characte 6y ago
    >Devices are eventually going to segregate themselves onto their own networks: 2.4 GHz for legacy / low-cost / IOT, 5 GHz for data rate, wigig/wifi 6/etc for extreme data rate. That would be rather annoying. Wifi is so usefull because you can connect everything to the same network. Especially when most consumers are oblivious to any computer architecture design decisions. And can you really expect someone living in a tiny apartment to purchase three network types? (2.4; 5ghz; wifi6) or one expensive device with all three technologies? Communicating data rates and transmission power will be the way to go I believe. If I can hook up a printer to a network switch then that's what I usually go for. And pray that the printer actually works.
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      I mean, it's still the same network. They show up as different options in your wi-fi menu, but devices can still talk to each other on 192.168.0.x, right? Most (?) wi-fi routers now support 2.4+5, and it's not meaningfully more expensive. I assume wifi 6 will have the same kind of gradual introduction 5 had? I've never heard of anyone buying separate routers for multiple wavelengths.
  - blux 6y ago
    For me cost per print is not an issue since I print very rarely. When I do need to print, the printer should just work, and there the Canon printer had some issues (Pixma MP620). After upgrading to Windows 10 it turned out the printer was no longer (support stopped after Windows 7). I never got the CUPS driver for it to work; it is an unofficial unmaintained one. other people have reported success with it. The Brother worked (almost) out of the box on both Windows and Linux. Knowing that decent Linux drivers are available gives me some comfort that upgrading an OS will no longer disable the printer. In the end I was surprised just how cheap the laser printer was. All in all I paid less than 120 euro for the printer plus one extra toner that is probably going to last a lifetime considering how often I print. Regarding the WiFi situation I agree, it is not a big problem. I have a separate 2.4GHz network in the house now and that does not influence the speed of the 5GHz network in a way I notice.
neltnerb 6y ago
I just got a Brother duplex color laserjet. I plugged it into our network and went to my computer expecting to need to spend the next half hour setting it up on Linux. It was just... there. Printed immediately with no fuss, including duplex. But honestly, I got the Brother printer because HP ink cartridges are filled with DRM and I have no reason to think they won't obsolete a cartridge model in order to force people to buy new printers. In fact it seems naive to think they won't, even if they try they will inevitably have to discontinue things.
- josalhor 6y ago
  I also have a Brother (laser, color, duplex). It literally just works. It has everything you would expect. It is a little bit too loud when printing and a minute after (after cooling it falls back to 0 rpm). I cannot recommend Brother enough.
- ziotom78 6y ago
  This was more or less my experience. My old HP laserjet (P1005) was a crap: it required to be connected to a computer through the USB cable every time it was turned on, so that the 500MB HP Windows driver could be able to upload the firmware (the printer apparently has no permanent memory). And, boy, the Windows driver was awful: it was a pain to install, and in fact my wife has never been able to print from her Windows laptop. I used a patched driver found somewhere on Internet for my Linux laptop that worked miraculously well. Last month I bought a wireless Brother laser printer, and the difference is astonishing! I was immediately able to print from my Linux laptop (no, I did not need to install any driver, the printer just got installed and configured automatically through wifi), and the same for my wife's computer. And, best of all, we can now print documents from our Android devices as well. I am moved to tears when I think of all the time I've spent in past years to re-configure my HP printer for the 1000th time!
- abandonliberty 6y ago
  A friend has HP printers, and bought the wrong print cartridge. It was the right shape, but had 'physical rights management' - tabs that prevented it from fitting in the holder. Quite clever. Easily enough modified with a knife, but I was still foiled by DRM.

by paulmd 6y ago

blux 6y ago

I recently bought a dirt cheap Brother B+W printer to replace a Canon inktjet printer and am very happy with the decision. It is a small printer, Windows/Linux network printing is easy to setup and just works. My only gripe with it is that it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi. It has been a pleasure to use the printer again.

paulmd 6y ago
> My only gripe with it is that it only supports 2.4GHz WiFi I noted the same thing and eh. While this means your router has to continue to support a 2.4 GHz AP, I don't think that's an unusual decision as far as the "internet of things", due to cost reasons (as opposed to migrating every IOT to 5 GHz). I think you will have to maintain all three now. Devices are eventually going to segregate themselves onto their own networks: 2.4 GHz for legacy / low-cost / IOT, 5 GHz for data rate, wigig/wifi 6/etc for extreme data rate. The performance hit on your other bands should be minimal even considering contetion. There's no sense updating the wireless module for faster wifi and probably not any sense updating past 100 mbit wired ethernet either. > I recently bought a dirt cheap Brother B+W printer to replace a Canon inktjet printer and am very happy with the decision. Do note that canon inkjet printers can often be easily retrofitted for bulk "continuous tank" ink, which can actually make them surprisingly affordable to run as far as inkjets go! The ink itself isn't really that expensive, just packaging (it's a "priced according to demand" product). I'd look at bulk ink "cost per page" for photo before you toss it. I think it'll probably still work out to being economically cheaper per page to get a brother B+W or color laser but if you can argue the bulk ink inkjet with printing some photos or school projects at home then maybe. Laser (color or B+W) is cheaper for b+w and occasional color presentation, and sending out to costco/kinkos/whatever is better for photos or premium presentation. (There still is no comparison to professional photo printers of course - check out White House Custom Color, despite the "we're a pro service house! what is your professional account number" facade they're open to you even if you just want a couple family photos printed nice, and they have equipment and expertise you don't. Work out your cost per page and if you fuck up once on a big print you probably lose vs just sending it out, I bet.)
- Out_of_Characte 6y ago
  >Devices are eventually going to segregate themselves onto their own networks: 2.4 GHz for legacy / low-cost / IOT, 5 GHz for data rate, wigig/wifi 6/etc for extreme data rate. That would be rather annoying. Wifi is so usefull because you can connect everything to the same network. Especially when most consumers are oblivious to any computer architecture design decisions. And can you really expect someone living in a tiny apartment to purchase three network types? (2.4; 5ghz; wifi6) or one expensive device with all three technologies? Communicating data rates and transmission power will be the way to go I believe. If I can hook up a printer to a network switch then that's what I usually go for. And pray that the printer actually works.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I mean, it's still the same network. They show up as different options in your wi-fi menu, but devices can still talk to each other on 192.168.0.x, right? Most (?) wi-fi routers now support 2.4+5, and it's not meaningfully more expensive. I assume wifi 6 will have the same kind of gradual introduction 5 had? I've never heard of anyone buying separate routers for multiple wavelengths.
- blux 6y ago
  For me cost per print is not an issue since I print very rarely. When I do need to print, the printer should just work, and there the Canon printer had some issues (Pixma MP620). After upgrading to Windows 10 it turned out the printer was no longer (support stopped after Windows 7). I never got the CUPS driver for it to work; it is an unofficial unmaintained one. other people have reported success with it. The Brother worked (almost) out of the box on both Windows and Linux. Knowing that decent Linux drivers are available gives me some comfort that upgrading an OS will no longer disable the printer. In the end I was surprised just how cheap the laser printer was. All in all I paid less than 120 euro for the printer plus one extra toner that is probably going to last a lifetime considering how often I print. Regarding the WiFi situation I agree, it is not a big problem. I have a separate 2.4GHz network in the house now and that does not influence the speed of the 5GHz network in a way I notice.

neltnerb 6y ago

I just got a Brother duplex color laserjet. I plugged it into our network and went to my computer expecting to need to spend the next half hour setting it up on Linux. It was just... there. Printed immediately with no fuss, including duplex. But honestly, I got the Brother printer because HP ink cartridges are filled with DRM and I have no reason to think they won't obsolete a cartridge model in order to force people to buy new printers. In fact it seems naive to think they won't, even if they try they will inevitably have to discontinue things.

josalhor 6y ago
I also have a Brother (laser, color, duplex). It literally just works. It has everything you would expect. It is a little bit too loud when printing and a minute after (after cooling it falls back to 0 rpm). I cannot recommend Brother enough.
ziotom78 6y ago
This was more or less my experience. My old HP laserjet (P1005) was a crap: it required to be connected to a computer through the USB cable every time it was turned on, so that the 500MB HP Windows driver could be able to upload the firmware (the printer apparently has no permanent memory). And, boy, the Windows driver was awful: it was a pain to install, and in fact my wife has never been able to print from her Windows laptop. I used a patched driver found somewhere on Internet for my Linux laptop that worked miraculously well. Last month I bought a wireless Brother laser printer, and the difference is astonishing! I was immediately able to print from my Linux laptop (no, I did not need to install any driver, the printer just got installed and configured automatically through wifi), and the same for my wife's computer. And, best of all, we can now print documents from our Android devices as well. I am moved to tears when I think of all the time I've spent in past years to re-configure my HP printer for the 1000th time!
abandonliberty 6y ago
A friend has HP printers, and bought the wrong print cartridge. It was the right shape, but had 'physical rights management' - tabs that prevented it from fitting in the holder. Quite clever. Easily enough modified with a knife, but I was still foiled by DRM.