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A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

169 points by a1371 4y ago

SergeAx 4y ago
This is because there's no such thing as large format laser printers anymore. There are large format LED printers, and it is basically the same technology sans scanning mirror and actual laser. If you click first Google result - first link on that page is what you want.
2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
Well, reports about the relative uselessness of modern search engines was bound to hit the general population at some point. I've suggested that people try Bing or DDG rather than Google for some searches, but it seems it's more a question of luck rather than anything else nowadays.
- lbriner 4y ago
  I've tried using Ecosia for their good environmental work but I frequently get a server error when searching but also it seems like searching for programming content rarely returns the right stuff, which might be page 1 on Google. Google do have a lot of headstart over other search engines. Maybe what we need is a Developers search engine which weights results towards programming sites and also downgrades those drivereasy type posts which have a lot of fluff followed by "download drivereasy to sort all your problems".
- jonatron 4y ago
  Bing's results look just as bad for "large format laser printer"
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
    I'm not surprised. As said: it seems to be a matter of luck more than anything else.
chrischen 4y ago
It seems like maybe both large format and laser printer is such a niche product that any site actually talking about it does not have enough SEO juice to overpower these spam sites despite relevancy. The sad thing is these articles seem to be just keyword stuffing because those printers mentioned on that website are all literally not laser printers despite the text saying they are... The problem is Google has no competition, and thus no incentive to improve the product. However, if my understanding of the Chinese market is correct, the Chinese Google (Baidu.com) doesn't seem to hold hostage the Chinese internet the way Google does. I'm not sure exactly why but maybe the Google killer isn't a general web search engine at all. It's looking more and more like Reddit could even be the Google killer, albeit unintentionally. I also want to give another anecdote: one of our biggest marketing categories revolves around pets, and despite it actually being a large chunk of our sales (and therefore implicitly relevant), when you search google for keywords relating to our product and "pets" we don't even show up until page 7 or 8 despite being exactly on topic. The people who do end up finding about us are searching for other keywords unrelated to pets and converting to paying customers. This is implying if they searched "on topic" they aren't getting the results they want. While there are other keywords where we do show up, it pretty much shows how poor Google is at actually ranking websites these days unless one specifically pays for SEO (buying links on spam sites for popular keywords). So for a commercial keyword "[our product] + pets" there's so much spam we're lost in the fray. But for a non-commercial keyword that we also have relevancy for "AI + [our product]" we actually rank easily on the first page for, since nobody is selling anything. Maybe the key here is to just create a better search system for commercial products and services, since Google works relatively well when on topics where there is no incentive to spam.
- benoliver999 4y ago
  I've lost count of the number of times I add 'reddit' to my google search queries.
  - aulin 4y ago
    Sure but most of the time reddit is completely unable to provide a decent answer to any non banal search. And whenever I tried to directly ask something specific in a dedicated subreddit it always ends up in one of the following: - I'm violating one of their moderator rules - wrong subreddit try this one, you try that one and they recommend the first - not enough upvotes for the question to be seen by anyone - short attention span, if you don't get an answer in a couple of hours your question won't be seen by anyone - hivemind bandwagoning, each subreddit has its set of default recommendations and everyone just repeats those forever - US centric, especially frustrating for DIY searches where you can find only information specific to US common practices and regulations
quickthrower2 4y ago
Is this the canary for don’t invest in Google? Also we expect alot for nothing! There are consumer review companies you can join, for a fee, to get genuine reviews on consumer products.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  No. For that canary you would have to identify the signal associated with companies stopping big expensive ad campaigns. This process can go on for an extremely long time after Google becomes useless for those searching the web. The primary clients of Google are those with big budget ad campaigns, not the people actually using it for search. > Also we expect alot for nothing! There are consumer review companies you can join, for a fee, to get genuine reviews on consumer products. Those of us old enough remember, there was a time when online search existed in a goldilocks zone [0] of accuracy, productivity, and reliability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone
orangepurple 4y ago
Wow. At that point I would identify the top manufacturers of laser printers and review offerings from each manufacturer's website manually.
- Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
  Sure, but have you seen just how bad manufacturers of anything expensive and technical are at actual presenting their product catalogs in a clear and informative manner that lends itself to comparing with the competition?
aulin 4y ago
a rant on google would have been a more appropriate title
sokoloff 4y ago
Anything A3+ (13” x 19”) or smaller in the commercial printing industry is pretty universally considered “small format”. (Some places consider anything sheet-fed as small format and sheets come a lot bigger than A3+.) It’s not surprising that searching using a specific industry term that’s different from your understanding of it would bring results for that larger-than-you-thought category of product. Further, the smallbiztrends article that comes up first for me, that Adam claims “not a single one is an actual laser printer”, contains several printers that use the same dry toner, electrostatic process as laser printers and that most people outside of printing, if asked to name the printing tech, would call a “laser printer” (because they’ve never heard of an LED printer). The print quality issues that started his search were likely fuser-related not laser-related, meaning these colloquially incorrectly called laser printers would have been fine. Search engines have problems, but this video isn’t hitting on them for me.
- mhio 4y ago
  Are there even lasers in the large format (50cm+ x roll of paper) realm? I thought it was all ink plotters/printers, at least that's all I've seen in print shops or design places. A lack of lasers might contributes to the SEO spam for the odd terms. Maybe `a3 laser` or `wide format laser` ?
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Yes. There are are "presses" that are effectively industrial laser printers. Commonly used for print on demand and other lower production volume jobs.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    A3 lasers certainly exist. But A3 is not wide format. I've never heard of a true wide format laser (A2 and larger), and I suspect the technology doesn't exist to make an affordable one. You'd need super-precise optics, an absolutely huge toner/fuser system, and a supply chain for all of the above. And there would be limited sales. Wide format printers are used for high quality art/photo printing, signage and ads, and sometimes for fabric printing. Lasers are optimised for office document printing. You don't often need an A2 or larger office document. And when you do - cartography and blueprints - you're probably going to use a plotter.
Lio 4y ago
Would better filtering of procedurally generated pages and ecommerce sites help? It feels like they drown out all the useful information when I'm searching for stuff. I usually resort to constraining searches to forum sites but that rejects a lot of blogs and other useful sources of information.
numpad0 4y ago
... large format laser printer, like A2 and up, in full color? Looks like there are few full-sized office photocopiers that can handle it as well as few models sold as drafting plotters, but the failed print he is holding in the video is an A4 sheet. Any lasers can do A4 just fine, some A3 as well.
- Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
  Does he really need to hold up a botched A2 printout to prove that he needs non-botched A2 printouts? Surely those are orthogonal requirements, the size of the sheets and the ability to successfully fuse the toner? Can’t we in all fairness take him at his word that he sometimes wants to print at a larger size?
  - numpad0 4y ago
    I think most large format printers are open pedestal roll feed design that takes A0(2.8x3.9ft) or A1(1.95x2.76ft) rolls so material is like 3ft wide paper towel. I know because I borrowed one back in University to print out Apollo control panel for myself, which in hindsight probably wasn't allowed. I know Adam Savage is an ex-ILM professional propmaker and legendary Mythbusters host, but if he by million to one chance would call me to procure an A0 laser printer to print on special plastic sheets, I'd ask him if he mean it.
fragmede 4y ago
The SEO optimized site, smallbiztrends.com, lists six large format laser printers though! Their title is for eight of them though, and two of them are inkjets, and I'm assuming they didn't change their list in response to the video.
- freeone3000 4y ago
  The site is full of Markov chain garble using random products as seeds to useless copy in order to sell ad space and affiliate links. There's no person who would even want to update the site.
unwind 4y ago
Meta: this is a video with Adam Savage (perhaps most widely known from hosting Mythbusters on TV) from Tested.com. Perhaps would have been worth at least naming him in the title, since the source of a video rant can influence one's interest in clicking.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ErneX 4y ago
I searched for a particular piece of music gear using the shopping tab on Google the other day and they show you the results starting from the cheapest price, well the 1st result was like half the rest of legitimate shops and it was this stupid blog which was linking to Amazon with affiliate links that was worthless because the price was wrong.
aaron695 4y ago
eterevsky 4y ago
I see a lot of inkjet printers in the results, but literally the first printer on the first result page is OKI C844dnw A3 Color which looks to be a laser printer.
cryptos 4y ago
The rant is really about how bad Google went or how good SEO experts are today. Google search results are basically unusable for some subjects and Google should fix it, if it doesn't want to end up like Altavista!
- xvector 4y ago
  Google won't end up like Altavista since any alternatives will be faced with the same issue. Google just needs to invest more in stopping SEO.
  - aulin 4y ago
    it's not just SEO, they removed essential features like verbatim search, they constantly autocorrect uncommon search terms and they keep trying to optimize searches to only look for results within your bubble
    - cryptos 4y ago
      Maybe its time for Microsoft to invest a bit more in Bing ...
      - rplnt 4y ago
        It's the investing that ruined Google search. Instead of search it's super smart, and as a result super annoying. It would be so much better if they kept it as is and just worked on removing spam.
        kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
        Manual curation could probably improve things a lot more than people think. I’d pay for that.
    - mcv 4y ago
      Google once started out with the goal to index all human knowledge so people could find anything, but they seem to have settled into only helping people find the obvious easy to find stuff, while actively hiding anything that's slightly out of the ordinary.
brassattax 4y ago
I have an HP m377dw laser and this exact thing was happening when I printed on card stock. TIL via the comments of this video that there should be a paper thickness setting in the driver.
- bradfa 4y ago
  Yeah, paper thickness, color, paper type, and any coatings on the paper. All these things should matter for a proper setting of the fuser temperature the printer uses. If your printer is advanced enough, it should run the fuser at the proper temperature for the stated paper.
kingcharles 4y ago
All printers suck. I've tried every range and type of printer imaginable over the last 35 years and every single one has made me hate my life. I just threw a laser out of the window because it got to the point where it would only print one page before jamming. I bought a Canon inkjet and that has lasted a couple of months, but now you have to push each piece of paper in to get it started, and a couple of weeks ago it stopped printing the left side of the paper, so I have to make sure everything I print is only on the right. So, this printer is going out the window as soon as the cartridge runs dry.
- dazc 4y ago
  I've had two cheap Canon Inkjet printers for 10 years plus and they both have worked like a charm for all of this time. Maybe I have been lucky?
- nikau 4y ago
  If you can find one, a business printer like a hp 4200 from the early 2000s is the way to go. They do 12,000+ pages on a cheap toner and are built like tanks. They use Postscript so drivers are reliable and have wired ethernet just works.
heeen2 4y ago
The solution for consumers are product/price comparison sites like gh.de and idealo.de (german). I don't know the US equivalents of those, but here they get the prices from many sellers and you can compare including shipping, filter by many spec criteria and even find the cheapest solution for a basket of items, split by seller and including shipping which I believe is a NP hard problem (knapsack or traveling salesman?). sample listing for laser printers: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=prl https://geizhals.eu/?cat=prl
- morjom 4y ago
  I think we have an equivalent of sort here in Finland called hinta.fi Laser printer listing: https://hinta.fi/g28/tulostimet?l=1&fq=Laser&fg=1 https://hinta.fi/g28/tulostimet?l=1&fq=Laser&fg=1 Many product categories don't have an extensive filtering available tho.
- yowmamasita 4y ago
  I was just looking at laser printers in Idealo yesterday, didn't bother even looking at Google because I share the same experience as Adam. There many cases like this just from my search history. Point is: Google is not the best indexer to shop. Price comparison websites is also present on other countries but it's more scammy websites than legitimate ones. In Southeast Asia for example, maybe 99% of content is in Amazon, Lazada and Shopee.
  - dolmen 4y ago
    https://shopping.google.com/ https://shopping.google.com/
- stevesimmons 4y ago
  The Dutch version is https://tweakers.net/ https://tweakers.net/
  - tda 4y ago
    specifically https://tweakers.net/pricewatch https://tweakers.net/pricewatch
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kazinator 4y ago
Huawei's petalsearch.com finds some "large format laser printer" results.
- kazinator 4y ago
  Wow, even if you put "large format laser printer" in quotes, and put Google in verbatim mode, that smallbiztrends crap comes up first, followed by useless results.
mcv 4y ago
The rant is not so much about laser printers, but about search engines and crappy SEO. I mean, it starts with a laser printer problem he has, but he doesn't blame his printer. He blames Google for not helping him find a better laser printer. And I checked: DuckDuckGo has a different top result, but the same problem: an article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers. These are crap articles that lie intentionally and search engines should filter them out.
- spaniard89277 4y ago
  It's the same everywhere. Amazon and Google are absolutely worhtless for anything that is slightly not mainstream. What I personally do is, when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them. I am probably not getting the best deal, but it's better than no deal whatsoever or exhausting myself searching for a solution, or buying something in the internet that is not worth it. I've done this succesfully for thousends of items. This is a lot of time and headaches I did not have to endure in front of my PC. If I was him I would look for some distributor or just go where these laser printers are used and ask. A phone call is more useful than a search engine.
  - dmos62 4y ago
    > when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them I don't think that I would get good buying advice that way. E.g. I was looking at eink Android tablets. The information I got from reddit, HN and youtube reviews was so niche that I'd have been suprised if a random electronics store salesman would have had it.
    - spaniard89277 4y ago
      For that maybe, for laptop chargers and batteries, cables, electronic components etc I've got better luck at that store. Keep in mind that they are not a general public storem you don't buy consumer electronics there, but for professionals. Technicians of all kinds go there to buy, so they are not just salespeople. Their website is absolutely awful though: https://www.cetronic.es/ https://www.cetronic.es/
rplnt 4y ago
Using google is so much more frustrating than say 10 years ago. And generated websites is just a small problem with that. In the past google didn't try to be that smart and gave you more control. Now it's optimized for users asking full sentences instead of search queries. Now it's incorporating your location and perceived language into the query. Age of the document plays a huge role. Popularity of words in different context can skew your results towards some random topics. Some time ago you were able to search for things you knew you saw online. Not a chance today. Google will ignore even quoted queries and simply show you different results than those you asked for. It's really annoying at times.
- yason 4y ago
  In my experience the quoted search does work. Google will report it can't find what I asked if there are no such pages with the exact quote: No results found for "...". Results for ... (without quotes): It's just very cumbersome, the old +/- syntax was more usable. Actually, I'd prefer if each word I write would just default to being a hard requirement. I could then manually allow more creative interpretation with a specific syntax, like ~word, or exclude specific words alltogether with -word.
  - rplnt 4y ago
    That works for the case you described. It will still ignore typos, dialects, or in my case a completely different language from the same language group. It will happily highlight different words that it deems to be equal to something I put in quotes.
    - 0x38B 4y ago
      It's infuriating when I search in Ukrainian on YouTube and all the top results are Russian. Using words dissimilar with Russian helps, but that's not always an option. More and more today, I'm fighting with services that want to show me engaging, trending content. It's as if they're holding the real gems hostage, only giving them up grudgingly when I fail to succumb to cat videos or [insert trending content].
- 4y ago
WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
In 2010-2012, google results were peak content farm stuff too. Then they fought it actively, in 2013 they announced that they changed a lot in their relevance calculations (did they call it “project Panda”? For some reason I remembered it being called that) and it really helped, and in 2013-2015 it was a golden age of search results. Content farms that worked by stuffing keywords and working in rings to boost their page rank went away almost overnight. And then dark SEO found its way around it again. And now we have a new cesspit, but it looks like Google doesn’t give a shit anymore. They only change the number of ads interspersed among search results. Time to build a good bookmark collection, I guess.
- newsclues 4y ago
  I’d love the inside story on how from a user perspective Google search went to shit.
- perceptronas 4y ago
  My guess would be that they are working on it. At their scale, it is hard to imagine them having technical difficulties removing SEO garbage from results. It also could be that search quality is no longer their sought after metric, but I find that hard to believe
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    > It also could be that search quality is no longer their sought after metric, but I find that hard to believe I think a regular, non-adblocked google search may result in almost the entire first page being ads. At this point, the ads are probably more relevant to the average user than whatever seo-spam "top x of y" would have been there on the first page. At least ads lead you to the product directly rather than make you visit another shady ad-infested site in the interim.
- Avamander 4y ago
  > Time to build a good bookmark collection, I guess. There are uBlock filter lists that help filter out generated content from search results, such as https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter
jliptzin 4y ago
I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of the page at the time it was removed so if the owner wants to appeal Google can say why it was removed.
- thatguyagain 4y ago
  I like this idea. So how would you prevent company X from flagging all their competitors as spam sites - and just in general how do you deal with the abuse of such a feature?
  - cjg 4y ago
    Google know a lot about a logged in user - especially ones that have had an account for a long time. They could lean on that.
    - Avamander 4y ago
      Can't wait for real people's personal accounts to get flagged or banned. Google Maps has companies lying about their info and people correcting those will get their accounts shadowbanned with no recourse.
- ZiiS 4y ago
  Because SEO firms would LOVE to go though marking all real sites as spam. They are _much_ more motivated then end users so the vast bulk of report will be false.
  - jliptzin 4y ago
    It would be verified by a human on Google’s side before something is taken down
scoutt 4y ago
I think the problem is that there is no other way to provide feedback to Google other than clicking on links. I used to search on Google without an account. Then I created a phony account at work to see if there is an improvement in my searches (because it should be "learning", right?). And after some months... nope, or at least it's not noticeable. How does Google know what I like, what I search or the content I want to see? Some combination of clicks and time-spent in a page through Google Analytics? I would rather add a couple of buttons after each search result to provide feedback and the feedback I provide is valid just for my user (so it cannot be gamed). Two buttons with "this is crap" / "this is fine". Then Google can learn from that feedback instead of guessing through AI. That, plus a "I'm not joe-six-pack" mode toggle, where Tools->Verbatim is enabled and finds exactly what I am looking for, without assuming I'm misspelling or confused.
- soco 4y ago
  As google changed their algorithms quite a few times in the last decade(s) I'd reckon they do use some metrics, other than simple clicks.
- toper-centage 4y ago
  If there was any other obvious way to influence google it would instantly be gamed. Both my companies tried to increase their relevance in certain keywords and by competitors reporting their websites.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  I believe one of the strongest signals they collect is when people return to the SERP after clicking through.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    The problem is people give up on ever getting a decent result after a few clicks on nonsense, and then never come back. Now Google thinks their last suggestion was obviously a success.
- thunderbong 4y ago
nraynaud 4y ago
there is some strong business lessons here. printer manufacturer trashed their user experience all the way, from your first google search to the last hit with a baseball bat in the woods.
xattt 4y ago
So since we’re on the topic, what’s the go-to colour laser for occasional at-home printing?
dazc 4y ago
I got a result for 'best laser printer' which was actually a retailer of laser printers. It was #8 but better than I expected. I am far from being a Google fan boy - quite the opposite - but I can also be pragmatic and understand that this may be an unfixable problem. The lesson here is that retailers of such products should be optimising for these kind of search terms. Of course there is going to be some bias but they will have at least some understanding of what they are talking about. And, people using such terms also ought to expect a lot of SEO junk. I mean, when has anyone ever gotten a result that is anything other? Seriously though, who is going to take the time and trouble to curate a list of the best laser printers who doesn't have a financial interest in doing so?
simonbackx 4y ago
This is not only with printers, but with everything you search for, it makes me so sad! Everything is just full of SEO optimised nonsense. In the past it was so easy to search for something and actually find it. Now you only find crappy sites, full of ads, pop ups and brain-dead content optimised for SEO. It looks like Google has stepped away from reputation based scoring to a score that is too much focused on the textual content of sites. I hope this creates opportunities for new players in the market that are able to solve this and can outperform Google. That would be good for the internet.
willyt 4y ago
Back to the old days when you had to learn from working in the industry what the best equipment is and how to use it. We used to have to read trade magazines to find out about new developments. Probably you need to subscribe to whatever the trade magazines are for the reprographics industry and browse their archives to find out what machines are available then you need to speak the sales team of the relevant company.
fguerraz 4y ago
I was a bout to rant that this in in fact a rant about search engines. Then I realised the irony.
thesaintlives 4y ago
15 years ago I bought a laser printer and it just worked. Printed on just about anything I put in it. No annoying pop-ups about running low on paper or toner and buying now. No driver issues or bloatware. It all just worked. What do we have now? Non of the above....
bradfa 4y ago
A large format laser printer is horribly expensive. And most of them are only black and white. It's quite hard to make what the industry calls "large format" in a toner-based printer machine. Just getting a belt that wide, or rollers that wide, or a fuser to heat evenly that wide, is going to be super hard and hence super expensive. But it sounds like he doesn't actually want what's called "large format" in the industry, he just wants an A3/tabloid size printer that doesn't suck. A3/tabloid is not "large format" in the printing industry. Large format means like A1 or A0 sized paper, usually on a roll. Probably the best way to get a cost effective high quality A3/tabloid size printer is going to be to buy a used commercial machine that's roughly 10-15 years old. You'll still be able to get parts and toner for it, these things normally last a few decades. But it won't be small and it won't be electrically efficient.
ale42 4y ago
Did anyone notice that somebody was filming him from the back with a smartphone (visible ~2:13 to 2:34)?
BashiBazouk 4y ago
He is not looking for a large format laser printer. True large format would be called a plotter and will print 36"x48" sheets faster than your home laser printer will pump out letter sized sheets but are almost all B&W. The most common ones are made by Oce who was bought out by Canon. Medium format color laser printers are usually called a digital press and are commonly 12"x18" and duplex so a booklet can be cut down to 11"x17" with full bleed. Both are industrial equipment and are expensive and require service contracts. Now what's interesting is the building industry has the same problem that Adam Savage has, the prints (plan sets) must be able to get wet without the ink/toner bleeding. That has been solved with ink jet technology that uses a wax based ink. Cartridges full of wax balls in the standard process colors, an example would be a Canon colorwave.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  As someone who has supported printers for decades, and has a friend who owns a print shop, almost nothing in this is true. > True large format would be called a plotter No, plotters are devices with pens. Layman may occasionally refer to a large format printer as a "plotter" because of its resemblance and it's faster to say, but nobody in the industry refers to them as plotters. > will print 36"x48" sheets faster than your home laser printer will pump out letter sized sheets but are almost all B&W. The most common ones are made by Oce You're describing large-format photocopiers. They operate exactly like an old-school optical-only photocopier which photographically exposes the drum (versus printers and digital copiers which image the drum via LEDs or a laser.) They are often called "plan copiers." Said friend's print shop has one and it is in fact made by Oce. > Medium format color laser printers are usually called a digital press and are commonly 12"x18" Many, many copiers can handle 12x18 paper. "Digital press" usually refers to enhanced paper storage, speed/volume, and finisher capabilities beyond what a typical office copier/MFC offers, often coupled with some sort of software and workstation for managing the print jobs. Often a "digital press" is indistinguishable from a heavy-duty copier with finisher units > Now what's interesting is the building industry has the same problem that Adam Savage has, the prints (plan sets) must be able to get wet without the ink/toner bleeding. Toner does not bleed. > That has been solved with ink jet technology that uses a wax based ink. Cartridges full of wax balls in the standard process colors, an example would be a Canon colorwave. Colorwave uses melted 'toner' and sprays it, like an inkjet, onto a page. You're confusing Colorwave with the Phaser printers made by Xerox, which use dyed wax. Phaser prints used to be cutting edge back in the 90's for proofing work, but have long since been eclipsed by every other printing technology. The wax can be scraped off the page. If the page is bent too much, it crinkles. It's easily damaged by even slight heat. It's dye based not pigment based, so the prints fade and color shift very quickly. The technology is such garbage that Xerox has tried renmaing it - they now call it "colorcube" or something similarly stupid. They push per-page figures, while ignoring the machine's horrific TCO (they consume massive amounts of electricity and require a lot of service work; if disturbed too much while at operating temperature, molten wax gets into places it shouldn't be and requires an expensive service call. Etc.)
1970-01-01 4y ago
Adam's rant adds yet another red-flag to anyone paying attention. "There is more noise than signal" has been increasing to the point that the tech is ripe for disruption. When the disruptor comes along and does the thing that the user wants without fuss, people will switch.
influxmoment 4y ago
Google has excellent AI and these is no application of it to their search to remove spam. Google needs competition or it'll never be fixed. Search is important
- JaimeThompson 4y ago
  Less spam might equal less ad sales so it isn't in Google's best short term interest to actually fix it.
Jemm 4y ago
Yet another example of the worst of humanity destroying something that had potentially world changing and improving potential.
TheArcane 4y ago
Sounds like a rant about Google search
postalrat 4y ago
Simple suggestion for google: any page with a significant number of affiliate links should not be indexed.
ChrisCinelli 4y ago
I am afraid that if you are optimizing for ads revenues this is exactly what you will get. Results with relevant ads at the top and results below that are not relevant at all. For me the quality of result on Google have been constantly going down. I sometimes find that among the first 3 results there is nothing that answer what I am looking for. I know for sure that around 2008 Google had humans evaluating both the quality of a website and how well it was satisfying the query. As far a as I know, they stopped doing that a while back. Maybe it's time to resume that practice?
sleepybrett 4y ago
Search engines do not replace industry experts.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
To my astonishment, I found that Yandex returns better results than google and bing (and derived from bing DDG).
Animats 4y ago
Part of the problem is the word "laser". Large format laser-driven xerographic printers are somewhat obsolete. A long bar of IC LEDs can be used instead of a laser, which avoids the mechanical problems of scanning a long distance with a rotating mirror. It's still xerography, with powdered toner and heated fusing, but it's not "laser". The Kyocera KIP series printers are good examples of that technology. There's a somewhat exotic technology used for sign and panel making - UV-cured inkjet printing. Here's a specialty flatbed printer for very thick (up to 10cm or so) stock. [1] This is often used for large advertising posters, because UV cured inks can survive bright sunlight. Hit hard by UV, the polymer strands crosslink and the liquid ink turns into a hard solid. (It doesn't "dry"; it's not solvent evaporation that's makes this work.)[2] Same concept as dental fillings and stereolithographic 3D printing. Front Panel Express offers UV-cured inkjet printing on metal as a service. That may be overkill for a prop maker - it's used to make real front panels for heavy use. Front Panel Express preps the blank panels in a plasma furnace before printing for better ink adhesion. After printing, a clear coat can be applied.[3] So, yes, there's an SEO problem here, but part of the problem is that printing technology has moved on and searching for "laser" is less useful. (I used to make steampunk props. So I've faced similar problems of surface marking.[4]) [1] https://www.sackel.com/products/sackel-corporation-uv-led-sac525.html https://www.sackel.com/products/sackel-corporation-uv-led-sa... [2] https://www.piworld.com/article/uv-curable-ink-works/ https://www.piworld.com/article/uv-curable-ink-works/ [3] https://www.frontpanelexpress.com/fpd-doc/en/index.htm?fpd_graphic_digitalprinting_uv_druck.htm https://www.frontpanelexpress.com/fpd-doc/en/index.htm?fpd_g... [4] http://www.aetherltd.com/aesthetic.html http://www.aetherltd.com/aesthetic.html
dolmen 4y ago
Use Google Shopping. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=shop&q=large+format+laser+printer&oq=large+format+laser+printer https://www.google.com/search?tbm=shop&q=large+format+laser+...
munhitsu 4y ago
search for a3 laser printer works

169 points by a1371 4y ago

This is because there's no such thing as large format laser printers anymore. There are large format LED printers, and it is basically the same technology sans scanning mirror and actual laser. If you click first Google result - first link on that page is what you want.

2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago

Well, reports about the relative uselessness of modern search engines was bound to hit the general population at some point. I've suggested that people try Bing or DDG rather than Google for some searches, but it seems it's more a question of luck rather than anything else nowadays.

lbriner 4y ago
I've tried using Ecosia for their good environmental work but I frequently get a server error when searching but also it seems like searching for programming content rarely returns the right stuff, which might be page 1 on Google. Google do have a lot of headstart over other search engines. Maybe what we need is a Developers search engine which weights results towards programming sites and also downgrades those drivereasy type posts which have a lot of fluff followed by "download drivereasy to sort all your problems".
jonatron 4y ago
Bing's results look just as bad for "large format laser printer"
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
  I'm not surprised. As said: it seems to be a matter of luck more than anything else.

chrischen 4y ago

It seems like maybe both large format and laser printer is such a niche product that any site actually talking about it does not have enough SEO juice to overpower these spam sites despite relevancy. The sad thing is these articles seem to be just keyword stuffing because those printers mentioned on that website are all literally not laser printers despite the text saying they are... The problem is Google has no competition, and thus no incentive to improve the product. However, if my understanding of the Chinese market is correct, the Chinese Google (Baidu.com) doesn't seem to hold hostage the Chinese internet the way Google does. I'm not sure exactly why but maybe the Google killer isn't a general web search engine at all. It's looking more and more like Reddit could even be the Google killer, albeit unintentionally. I also want to give another anecdote: one of our biggest marketing categories revolves around pets, and despite it actually being a large chunk of our sales (and therefore implicitly relevant), when you search google for keywords relating to our product and "pets" we don't even show up until page 7 or 8 despite being exactly on topic. The people who do end up finding about us are searching for other keywords unrelated to pets and converting to paying customers. This is implying if they searched "on topic" they aren't getting the results they want. While there are other keywords where we do show up, it pretty much shows how poor Google is at actually ranking websites these days unless one specifically pays for SEO (buying links on spam sites for popular keywords). So for a commercial keyword "[our product] + pets" there's so much spam we're lost in the fray. But for a non-commercial keyword that we also have relevancy for "AI + [our product]" we actually rank easily on the first page for, since nobody is selling anything. Maybe the key here is to just create a better search system for commercial products and services, since Google works relatively well when on topics where there is no incentive to spam.

benoliver999 4y ago
I've lost count of the number of times I add 'reddit' to my google search queries.
- aulin 4y ago
  Sure but most of the time reddit is completely unable to provide a decent answer to any non banal search. And whenever I tried to directly ask something specific in a dedicated subreddit it always ends up in one of the following: - I'm violating one of their moderator rules - wrong subreddit try this one, you try that one and they recommend the first - not enough upvotes for the question to be seen by anyone - short attention span, if you don't get an answer in a couple of hours your question won't be seen by anyone - hivemind bandwagoning, each subreddit has its set of default recommendations and everyone just repeats those forever - US centric, especially frustrating for DIY searches where you can find only information specific to US common practices and regulations

quickthrower2 4y ago

Is this the canary for don’t invest in Google? Also we expect alot for nothing! There are consumer review companies you can join, for a fee, to get genuine reviews on consumer products.

orangepurple 4y ago
No. For that canary you would have to identify the signal associated with companies stopping big expensive ad campaigns. This process can go on for an extremely long time after Google becomes useless for those searching the web. The primary clients of Google are those with big budget ad campaigns, not the people actually using it for search. > Also we expect alot for nothing! There are consumer review companies you can join, for a fee, to get genuine reviews on consumer products. Those of us old enough remember, there was a time when online search existed in a goldilocks zone [0] of accuracy, productivity, and reliability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone

orangepurple 4y ago

Wow. At that point I would identify the top manufacturers of laser printers and review offerings from each manufacturer's website manually.

Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
Sure, but have you seen just how bad manufacturers of anything expensive and technical are at actual presenting their product catalogs in a clear and informative manner that lends itself to comparing with the competition?

aulin 4y ago

a rant on google would have been a more appropriate title

sokoloff 4y ago

Anything A3+ (13” x 19”) or smaller in the commercial printing industry is pretty universally considered “small format”. (Some places consider anything sheet-fed as small format and sheets come a lot bigger than A3+.) It’s not surprising that searching using a specific industry term that’s different from your understanding of it would bring results for that larger-than-you-thought category of product. Further, the smallbiztrends article that comes up first for me, that Adam claims “not a single one is an actual laser printer”, contains several printers that use the same dry toner, electrostatic process as laser printers and that most people outside of printing, if asked to name the printing tech, would call a “laser printer” (because they’ve never heard of an LED printer). The print quality issues that started his search were likely fuser-related not laser-related, meaning these colloquially incorrectly called laser printers would have been fine. Search engines have problems, but this video isn’t hitting on them for me.

mhio 4y ago
Are there even lasers in the large format (50cm+ x roll of paper) realm? I thought it was all ink plotters/printers, at least that's all I've seen in print shops or design places. A lack of lasers might contributes to the SEO spam for the odd terms. Maybe `a3 laser` or `wide format laser` ?
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Yes. There are are "presses" that are effectively industrial laser printers. Commonly used for print on demand and other lower production volume jobs.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  A3 lasers certainly exist. But A3 is not wide format. I've never heard of a true wide format laser (A2 and larger), and I suspect the technology doesn't exist to make an affordable one. You'd need super-precise optics, an absolutely huge toner/fuser system, and a supply chain for all of the above. And there would be limited sales. Wide format printers are used for high quality art/photo printing, signage and ads, and sometimes for fabric printing. Lasers are optimised for office document printing. You don't often need an A2 or larger office document. And when you do - cartography and blueprints - you're probably going to use a plotter.

Lio 4y ago

Would better filtering of procedurally generated pages and ecommerce sites help? It feels like they drown out all the useful information when I'm searching for stuff. I usually resort to constraining searches to forum sites but that rejects a lot of blogs and other useful sources of information.

numpad0 4y ago

... large format laser printer, like A2 and up, in full color? Looks like there are few full-sized office photocopiers that can handle it as well as few models sold as drafting plotters, but the failed print he is holding in the video is an A4 sheet. Any lasers can do A4 just fine, some A3 as well.

Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
Does he really need to hold up a botched A2 printout to prove that he needs non-botched A2 printouts? Surely those are orthogonal requirements, the size of the sheets and the ability to successfully fuse the toner? Can’t we in all fairness take him at his word that he sometimes wants to print at a larger size?
- numpad0 4y ago
  I think most large format printers are open pedestal roll feed design that takes A0(2.8x3.9ft) or A1(1.95x2.76ft) rolls so material is like 3ft wide paper towel. I know because I borrowed one back in University to print out Apollo control panel for myself, which in hindsight probably wasn't allowed. I know Adam Savage is an ex-ILM professional propmaker and legendary Mythbusters host, but if he by million to one chance would call me to procure an A0 laser printer to print on special plastic sheets, I'd ask him if he mean it.

fragmede 4y ago

The SEO optimized site, smallbiztrends.com, lists six large format laser printers though! Their title is for eight of them though, and two of them are inkjets, and I'm assuming they didn't change their list in response to the video.

freeone3000 4y ago
The site is full of Markov chain garble using random products as seeds to useless copy in order to sell ad space and affiliate links. There's no person who would even want to update the site.

unwind 4y ago

Meta: this is a video with Adam Savage (perhaps most widely known from hosting Mythbusters on TV) from Tested.com. Perhaps would have been worth at least naming him in the title, since the source of a video rant can influence one's interest in clicking.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ErneX 4y ago

I searched for a particular piece of music gear using the shopping tab on Google the other day and they show you the results starting from the cheapest price, well the 1st result was like half the rest of legitimate shops and it was this stupid blog which was linking to Amazon with affiliate links that was worthless because the price was wrong.

aaron695 4y ago

eterevsky 4y ago

I see a lot of inkjet printers in the results, but literally the first printer on the first result page is OKI C844dnw A3 Color which looks to be a laser printer.

cryptos 4y ago

The rant is really about how bad Google went or how good SEO experts are today. Google search results are basically unusable for some subjects and Google should fix it, if it doesn't want to end up like Altavista!

xvector 4y ago
Google won't end up like Altavista since any alternatives will be faced with the same issue. Google just needs to invest more in stopping SEO.
- aulin 4y ago
  it's not just SEO, they removed essential features like verbatim search, they constantly autocorrect uncommon search terms and they keep trying to optimize searches to only look for results within your bubble
  - cryptos 4y ago
    Maybe its time for Microsoft to invest a bit more in Bing ...
    - rplnt 4y ago
      It's the investing that ruined Google search. Instead of search it's super smart, and as a result super annoying. It would be so much better if they kept it as is and just worked on removing spam.
      - kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
        Manual curation could probably improve things a lot more than people think. I’d pay for that.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Google once started out with the goal to index all human knowledge so people could find anything, but they seem to have settled into only helping people find the obvious easy to find stuff, while actively hiding anything that's slightly out of the ordinary.

brassattax 4y ago

I have an HP m377dw laser and this exact thing was happening when I printed on card stock. TIL via the comments of this video that there should be a paper thickness setting in the driver.

bradfa 4y ago
Yeah, paper thickness, color, paper type, and any coatings on the paper. All these things should matter for a proper setting of the fuser temperature the printer uses. If your printer is advanced enough, it should run the fuser at the proper temperature for the stated paper.

kingcharles 4y ago

All printers suck. I've tried every range and type of printer imaginable over the last 35 years and every single one has made me hate my life. I just threw a laser out of the window because it got to the point where it would only print one page before jamming. I bought a Canon inkjet and that has lasted a couple of months, but now you have to push each piece of paper in to get it started, and a couple of weeks ago it stopped printing the left side of the paper, so I have to make sure everything I print is only on the right. So, this printer is going out the window as soon as the cartridge runs dry.

dazc 4y ago
I've had two cheap Canon Inkjet printers for 10 years plus and they both have worked like a charm for all of this time. Maybe I have been lucky?
nikau 4y ago
If you can find one, a business printer like a hp 4200 from the early 2000s is the way to go. They do 12,000+ pages on a cheap toner and are built like tanks. They use Postscript so drivers are reliable and have wired ethernet just works.

heeen2 4y ago

The solution for consumers are product/price comparison sites like gh.de and idealo.de (german). I don't know the US equivalents of those, but here they get the prices from many sellers and you can compare including shipping, filter by many spec criteria and even find the cheapest solution for a basket of items, split by seller and including shipping which I believe is a NP hard problem (knapsack or traveling salesman?). sample listing for laser printers: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=prl https://geizhals.eu/?cat=prl

morjom 4y ago
I think we have an equivalent of sort here in Finland called hinta.fi Laser printer listing: https://hinta.fi/g28/tulostimet?l=1&fq=Laser&fg=1 https://hinta.fi/g28/tulostimet?l=1&fq=Laser&fg=1 Many product categories don't have an extensive filtering available tho.
yowmamasita 4y ago
I was just looking at laser printers in Idealo yesterday, didn't bother even looking at Google because I share the same experience as Adam. There many cases like this just from my search history. Point is: Google is not the best indexer to shop. Price comparison websites is also present on other countries but it's more scammy websites than legitimate ones. In Southeast Asia for example, maybe 99% of content is in Amazon, Lazada and Shopee.
- dolmen 4y ago
  https://shopping.google.com/ https://shopping.google.com/
stevesimmons 4y ago
The Dutch version is https://tweakers.net/ https://tweakers.net/
- tda 4y ago
  specifically https://tweakers.net/pricewatch https://tweakers.net/pricewatch

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kazinator 4y ago

Huawei's petalsearch.com finds some "large format laser printer" results.

kazinator 4y ago
Wow, even if you put "large format laser printer" in quotes, and put Google in verbatim mode, that smallbiztrends crap comes up first, followed by useless results.

mcv 4y ago

The rant is not so much about laser printers, but about search engines and crappy SEO. I mean, it starts with a laser printer problem he has, but he doesn't blame his printer. He blames Google for not helping him find a better laser printer. And I checked: DuckDuckGo has a different top result, but the same problem: an article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers. These are crap articles that lie intentionally and search engines should filter them out.

spaniard89277 4y ago
It's the same everywhere. Amazon and Google are absolutely worhtless for anything that is slightly not mainstream. What I personally do is, when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them. I am probably not getting the best deal, but it's better than no deal whatsoever or exhausting myself searching for a solution, or buying something in the internet that is not worth it. I've done this succesfully for thousends of items. This is a lot of time and headaches I did not have to endure in front of my PC. If I was him I would look for some distributor or just go where these laser printers are used and ask. A phone call is more useful than a search engine.
- dmos62 4y ago
  > when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them I don't think that I would get good buying advice that way. E.g. I was looking at eink Android tablets. The information I got from reddit, HN and youtube reviews was so niche that I'd have been suprised if a random electronics store salesman would have had it.
  - spaniard89277 4y ago
    For that maybe, for laptop chargers and batteries, cables, electronic components etc I've got better luck at that store. Keep in mind that they are not a general public storem you don't buy consumer electronics there, but for professionals. Technicians of all kinds go there to buy, so they are not just salespeople. Their website is absolutely awful though: https://www.cetronic.es/ https://www.cetronic.es/

rplnt 4y ago

Using google is so much more frustrating than say 10 years ago. And generated websites is just a small problem with that. In the past google didn't try to be that smart and gave you more control. Now it's optimized for users asking full sentences instead of search queries. Now it's incorporating your location and perceived language into the query. Age of the document plays a huge role. Popularity of words in different context can skew your results towards some random topics. Some time ago you were able to search for things you knew you saw online. Not a chance today. Google will ignore even quoted queries and simply show you different results than those you asked for. It's really annoying at times.

yason 4y ago
In my experience the quoted search does work. Google will report it can't find what I asked if there are no such pages with the exact quote: No results found for "...". Results for ... (without quotes): It's just very cumbersome, the old +/- syntax was more usable. Actually, I'd prefer if each word I write would just default to being a hard requirement. I could then manually allow more creative interpretation with a specific syntax, like ~word, or exclude specific words alltogether with -word.
- rplnt 4y ago
  That works for the case you described. It will still ignore typos, dialects, or in my case a completely different language from the same language group. It will happily highlight different words that it deems to be equal to something I put in quotes.
  - 0x38B 4y ago
    It's infuriating when I search in Ukrainian on YouTube and all the top results are Russian. Using words dissimilar with Russian helps, but that's not always an option. More and more today, I'm fighting with services that want to show me engaging, trending content. It's as if they're holding the real gems hostage, only giving them up grudgingly when I fail to succumb to cat videos or [insert trending content].
4y ago

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago

In 2010-2012, google results were peak content farm stuff too. Then they fought it actively, in 2013 they announced that they changed a lot in their relevance calculations (did they call it “project Panda”? For some reason I remembered it being called that) and it really helped, and in 2013-2015 it was a golden age of search results. Content farms that worked by stuffing keywords and working in rings to boost their page rank went away almost overnight. And then dark SEO found its way around it again. And now we have a new cesspit, but it looks like Google doesn’t give a shit anymore. They only change the number of ads interspersed among search results. Time to build a good bookmark collection, I guess.

newsclues 4y ago
I’d love the inside story on how from a user perspective Google search went to shit.
perceptronas 4y ago
My guess would be that they are working on it. At their scale, it is hard to imagine them having technical difficulties removing SEO garbage from results. It also could be that search quality is no longer their sought after metric, but I find that hard to believe
- antisthenes 4y ago
  > It also could be that search quality is no longer their sought after metric, but I find that hard to believe I think a regular, non-adblocked google search may result in almost the entire first page being ads. At this point, the ads are probably more relevant to the average user than whatever seo-spam "top x of y" would have been there on the first page. At least ads lead you to the product directly rather than make you visit another shady ad-infested site in the interim.
Avamander 4y ago
> Time to build a good bookmark collection, I guess. There are uBlock filter lists that help filter out generated content from search results, such as https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

jliptzin 4y ago

I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of the page at the time it was removed so if the owner wants to appeal Google can say why it was removed.

thatguyagain 4y ago
I like this idea. So how would you prevent company X from flagging all their competitors as spam sites - and just in general how do you deal with the abuse of such a feature?
- cjg 4y ago
  Google know a lot about a logged in user - especially ones that have had an account for a long time. They could lean on that.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    Can't wait for real people's personal accounts to get flagged or banned. Google Maps has companies lying about their info and people correcting those will get their accounts shadowbanned with no recourse.
ZiiS 4y ago
Because SEO firms would LOVE to go though marking all real sites as spam. They are _much_ more motivated then end users so the vast bulk of report will be false.
- jliptzin 4y ago
  It would be verified by a human on Google’s side before something is taken down

scoutt 4y ago

I think the problem is that there is no other way to provide feedback to Google other than clicking on links. I used to search on Google without an account. Then I created a phony account at work to see if there is an improvement in my searches (because it should be "learning", right?). And after some months... nope, or at least it's not noticeable. How does Google know what I like, what I search or the content I want to see? Some combination of clicks and time-spent in a page through Google Analytics? I would rather add a couple of buttons after each search result to provide feedback and the feedback I provide is valid just for my user (so it cannot be gamed). Two buttons with "this is crap" / "this is fine". Then Google can learn from that feedback instead of guessing through AI. That, plus a "I'm not joe-six-pack" mode toggle, where Tools->Verbatim is enabled and finds exactly what I am looking for, without assuming I'm misspelling or confused.

soco 4y ago
As google changed their algorithms quite a few times in the last decade(s) I'd reckon they do use some metrics, other than simple clicks.
toper-centage 4y ago
If there was any other obvious way to influence google it would instantly be gamed. Both my companies tried to increase their relevance in certain keywords and by competitors reporting their websites.
jeffbee 4y ago
I believe one of the strongest signals they collect is when people return to the SERP after clicking through.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  The problem is people give up on ever getting a decent result after a few clicks on nonsense, and then never come back. Now Google thinks their last suggestion was obviously a success.
thunderbong 4y ago

nraynaud 4y ago

there is some strong business lessons here. printer manufacturer trashed their user experience all the way, from your first google search to the last hit with a baseball bat in the woods.

xattt 4y ago

So since we’re on the topic, what’s the go-to colour laser for occasional at-home printing?

dazc 4y ago

I got a result for 'best laser printer' which was actually a retailer of laser printers. It was #8 but better than I expected. I am far from being a Google fan boy - quite the opposite - but I can also be pragmatic and understand that this may be an unfixable problem. The lesson here is that retailers of such products should be optimising for these kind of search terms. Of course there is going to be some bias but they will have at least some understanding of what they are talking about. And, people using such terms also ought to expect a lot of SEO junk. I mean, when has anyone ever gotten a result that is anything other? Seriously though, who is going to take the time and trouble to curate a list of the best laser printers who doesn't have a financial interest in doing so?

simonbackx 4y ago

This is not only with printers, but with everything you search for, it makes me so sad! Everything is just full of SEO optimised nonsense. In the past it was so easy to search for something and actually find it. Now you only find crappy sites, full of ads, pop ups and brain-dead content optimised for SEO. It looks like Google has stepped away from reputation based scoring to a score that is too much focused on the textual content of sites. I hope this creates opportunities for new players in the market that are able to solve this and can outperform Google. That would be good for the internet.

willyt 4y ago

Back to the old days when you had to learn from working in the industry what the best equipment is and how to use it. We used to have to read trade magazines to find out about new developments. Probably you need to subscribe to whatever the trade magazines are for the reprographics industry and browse their archives to find out what machines are available then you need to speak the sales team of the relevant company.

fguerraz 4y ago

I was a bout to rant that this in in fact a rant about search engines. Then I realised the irony.

thesaintlives 4y ago

15 years ago I bought a laser printer and it just worked. Printed on just about anything I put in it. No annoying pop-ups about running low on paper or toner and buying now. No driver issues or bloatware. It all just worked. What do we have now? Non of the above....

bradfa 4y ago

A large format laser printer is horribly expensive. And most of them are only black and white. It's quite hard to make what the industry calls "large format" in a toner-based printer machine. Just getting a belt that wide, or rollers that wide, or a fuser to heat evenly that wide, is going to be super hard and hence super expensive. But it sounds like he doesn't actually want what's called "large format" in the industry, he just wants an A3/tabloid size printer that doesn't suck. A3/tabloid is not "large format" in the printing industry. Large format means like A1 or A0 sized paper, usually on a roll. Probably the best way to get a cost effective high quality A3/tabloid size printer is going to be to buy a used commercial machine that's roughly 10-15 years old. You'll still be able to get parts and toner for it, these things normally last a few decades. But it won't be small and it won't be electrically efficient.

ale42 4y ago

Did anyone notice that somebody was filming him from the back with a smartphone (visible ~2:13 to 2:34)?

BashiBazouk 4y ago

He is not looking for a large format laser printer. True large format would be called a plotter and will print 36"x48" sheets faster than your home laser printer will pump out letter sized sheets but are almost all B&W. The most common ones are made by Oce who was bought out by Canon. Medium format color laser printers are usually called a digital press and are commonly 12"x18" and duplex so a booklet can be cut down to 11"x17" with full bleed. Both are industrial equipment and are expensive and require service contracts. Now what's interesting is the building industry has the same problem that Adam Savage has, the prints (plan sets) must be able to get wet without the ink/toner bleeding. That has been solved with ink jet technology that uses a wax based ink. Cartridges full of wax balls in the standard process colors, an example would be a Canon colorwave.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
As someone who has supported printers for decades, and has a friend who owns a print shop, almost nothing in this is true. > True large format would be called a plotter No, plotters are devices with pens. Layman may occasionally refer to a large format printer as a "plotter" because of its resemblance and it's faster to say, but nobody in the industry refers to them as plotters. > will print 36"x48" sheets faster than your home laser printer will pump out letter sized sheets but are almost all B&W. The most common ones are made by Oce You're describing large-format photocopiers. They operate exactly like an old-school optical-only photocopier which photographically exposes the drum (versus printers and digital copiers which image the drum via LEDs or a laser.) They are often called "plan copiers." Said friend's print shop has one and it is in fact made by Oce. > Medium format color laser printers are usually called a digital press and are commonly 12"x18" Many, many copiers can handle 12x18 paper. "Digital press" usually refers to enhanced paper storage, speed/volume, and finisher capabilities beyond what a typical office copier/MFC offers, often coupled with some sort of software and workstation for managing the print jobs. Often a "digital press" is indistinguishable from a heavy-duty copier with finisher units > Now what's interesting is the building industry has the same problem that Adam Savage has, the prints (plan sets) must be able to get wet without the ink/toner bleeding. Toner does not bleed. > That has been solved with ink jet technology that uses a wax based ink. Cartridges full of wax balls in the standard process colors, an example would be a Canon colorwave. Colorwave uses melted 'toner' and sprays it, like an inkjet, onto a page. You're confusing Colorwave with the Phaser printers made by Xerox, which use dyed wax. Phaser prints used to be cutting edge back in the 90's for proofing work, but have long since been eclipsed by every other printing technology. The wax can be scraped off the page. If the page is bent too much, it crinkles. It's easily damaged by even slight heat. It's dye based not pigment based, so the prints fade and color shift very quickly. The technology is such garbage that Xerox has tried renmaing it - they now call it "colorcube" or something similarly stupid. They push per-page figures, while ignoring the machine's horrific TCO (they consume massive amounts of electricity and require a lot of service work; if disturbed too much while at operating temperature, molten wax gets into places it shouldn't be and requires an expensive service call. Etc.)

1970-01-01 4y ago

Adam's rant adds yet another red-flag to anyone paying attention. "There is more noise than signal" has been increasing to the point that the tech is ripe for disruption. When the disruptor comes along and does the thing that the user wants without fuss, people will switch.

influxmoment 4y ago

Google has excellent AI and these is no application of it to their search to remove spam. Google needs competition or it'll never be fixed. Search is important

JaimeThompson 4y ago
Less spam might equal less ad sales so it isn't in Google's best short term interest to actually fix it.

Jemm 4y ago

Yet another example of the worst of humanity destroying something that had potentially world changing and improving potential.

TheArcane 4y ago

Sounds like a rant about Google search

postalrat 4y ago

Simple suggestion for google: any page with a significant number of affiliate links should not be indexed.

ChrisCinelli 4y ago

I am afraid that if you are optimizing for ads revenues this is exactly what you will get. Results with relevant ads at the top and results below that are not relevant at all. For me the quality of result on Google have been constantly going down. I sometimes find that among the first 3 results there is nothing that answer what I am looking for. I know for sure that around 2008 Google had humans evaluating both the quality of a website and how well it was satisfying the query. As far a as I know, they stopped doing that a while back. Maybe it's time to resume that practice?

sleepybrett 4y ago

Search engines do not replace industry experts.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

To my astonishment, I found that Yandex returns better results than google and bing (and derived from bing DDG).

Animats 4y ago

Part of the problem is the word "laser". Large format laser-driven xerographic printers are somewhat obsolete. A long bar of IC LEDs can be used instead of a laser, which avoids the mechanical problems of scanning a long distance with a rotating mirror. It's still xerography, with powdered toner and heated fusing, but it's not "laser". The Kyocera KIP series printers are good examples of that technology. There's a somewhat exotic technology used for sign and panel making - UV-cured inkjet printing. Here's a specialty flatbed printer for very thick (up to 10cm or so) stock. [1] This is often used for large advertising posters, because UV cured inks can survive bright sunlight. Hit hard by UV, the polymer strands crosslink and the liquid ink turns into a hard solid. (It doesn't "dry"; it's not solvent evaporation that's makes this work.)[2] Same concept as dental fillings and stereolithographic 3D printing. Front Panel Express offers UV-cured inkjet printing on metal as a service. That may be overkill for a prop maker - it's used to make real front panels for heavy use. Front Panel Express preps the blank panels in a plasma furnace before printing for better ink adhesion. After printing, a clear coat can be applied.[3] So, yes, there's an SEO problem here, but part of the problem is that printing technology has moved on and searching for "laser" is less useful. (I used to make steampunk props. So I've faced similar problems of surface marking.[4]) [1] https://www.sackel.com/products/sackel-corporation-uv-led-sac525.html https://www.sackel.com/products/sackel-corporation-uv-led-sa... [2] https://www.piworld.com/article/uv-curable-ink-works/ https://www.piworld.com/article/uv-curable-ink-works/ [3] https://www.frontpanelexpress.com/fpd-doc/en/index.htm?fpd_graphic_digitalprinting_uv_druck.htm https://www.frontpanelexpress.com/fpd-doc/en/index.htm?fpd_g... [4] http://www.aetherltd.com/aesthetic.html http://www.aetherltd.com/aesthetic.html

dolmen 4y ago

Use Google Shopping. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=shop&q=large+format+laser+printer&oq=large+format+laser+printer https://www.google.com/search?tbm=shop&q=large+format+laser+...

munhitsu 4y ago

search for a3 laser printer works