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Is there any Printer that isn't broken and unfixable in less than a decade?
Hey there, I live in Germany and here I need to print a lot of stuff, coupons, government stuff etc. So we had a normal home Epson printer and I just had to throw it away (with tears in my eyes) because the inkpad is dirty and fixing it isn't recommended and it is also locked in the firmware. I don't mind to pay more money, I just don't want to throw stuff away all the time.
I can't believe it is 2022 and companies can't build a fucking printer that you don't need to throw it completely away and just replace the parts that end up having issues. Is a printer such hard thing to make?
Am I crazy? It is hard to believe for me we are progressing as a society when everything is made with planned obsolescence. Shouldn't it be the opposite?
Can't maybe YC fund a company that tries to shift around this planned obsolescence economy? I already had to throw away so many things: washing machines, printers, TVs... so many!
I can't believe we have even reusable rockets but can't build a fucking printer that we can pass to different generations on our family and our future human beings can just replace some parts and keep it going.
HN, I think that together I believe we can change this. TELL ME HUMANITY IS BETTER THAN THIS.
Do you have any recommendations of printers that don't make me throw a few kilos of plastic away?
Thanks HN!
- spitfire 5y agoI'm still using a NeXT 400DPI Laser printer from 1990. The upside is that it's a software printer, so you get a NeXT Station/Cube as a print server. Edit: It uses a Canon-SX engine and HP 95A cartridges - same as HP laser jet II/III and Apple laserwriter II. So parts and consumables are easily available. Obviously the HP laser jets and apple laserwriters with network cards in them are also excellent choices.
- anyfoo 5y agoDo not get an ink printer. Do not get an ink printer. Since my student days in the early 2000s, I have been buying laser printers, only two in total since then. They have been affordable even as a student in Germany with no money. The first was 180€ I think (not sure), the second slightly more expensive but comes with a useful scanner. It doubles as a photocopier as well. I'm not printing very often, but also not never. The first printer got relatively heavy use during University, the second one saw large visa-related bouts of use. Among the two printers, I only remember replacing the toner cartridge... two or three times. In almost two decades. More parts than that are replaceable, I just did not have to. Printing is quick. Really quick. A page comes out in a second or two. Quality is amazing. Inkjets are painfully slow, expensive, break down easily, and the quality looks like crap. My printers have every only been monochrome, but I never really missed color so far. I don't know if color lasers are significantly more expensive, what their toner usage is, or how easily they break down. The scanner part is of course a color scanner.
- troydavis 5y agoHere’s an option from an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24977699&p=2#24979163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24977699&p=2#24979163 The Brother MFC-L2750DW is still working great.
- yuppie_scum 5y agoVery happy with our Brother printer after a series of shitty HP and Canons
- simonblack 5y agoI recommend a multifunction laser printer (office quality! not the cheapest) that will print, scan, photocopy and fax. (OK. I admit that I'd be lucky to send one fax per year these days) My current unit was made by HP, it will print black-and-white, but scan in color. It will handle both sides of a sheet of paper. And has a multi-sheet paper feed. I have it as a network printer using wifi. It also has ethernet and USB, and I believe it also has IR but I have never used that, so I can't be certain. My previous unit was a 'home' level multifunction printer. It still printed very well, and it scanned single sheets of paper when I replaced it, but the flimsier 'home quality' multi-sheet feeder broke and was not repairable. I once bought a color laser multifunction unit but the color copies that came out used a waxy color ink that was disgusting to store and use. I also tended to use it in black-white mode more often than not. I personally wouldn't bother with a color printer unless you specifically need color output for some reason.