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This story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. I can print in the library. Since Covid started I needed to do that twice: The first ti

This story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. I can print in the library. Since Covid started I needed to do that twice: The first time they had stopped accepting cash because of the infection risk(!). And I loaded 2 Euros on my library card for 10 pages but obviously did not use all of them. The second time they were surprised that I had money on my library card. To be fair I have printed a couple of times at the office. But I think I have been below 10 pages a year for at least 10 years, office and library combined. The only case seems to be having to send documents to an authority abroad. That happens to me, but infrequently enough. Now people might say, do you trust the library with your personal documents? First I don't remember when I had something seriously sensitive. And then I would say do you trust all that closed source software on your own Windows PC? As Linux user I would have probably not even been able to open the secret windows the article described.

tdeck 4y ago
For those of us who need to print a bit more often, my advice is to buy a black and white laser printer for ~$40 on Craigslist and you'll get years of cheap, reliable occasional printing in your own home while you use up the rest of the toner cartridge that came with it. When it breaks you can probably find another one in the same price range.
- rtpg 4y ago
  I'm going to advise against this. Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. I have gotten 2 used printers out of not wanting to generate e-waste, only to have constant printer jams and other frustrations leading to me having to just print at the grocery store instead. "That Brother printer" will cost you more (and be Yet Another Plastic Thing To Go To A Landfill Later), but will ... print every time. Sure, after a while you might need to clean the rollers or something, but at least you know it will be that and not some random bricking.
  - Freak_NL 4y ago
    I got a Brother laser printer (HL-3170CDW) and in terms of economy it's hard to beat. (Never buy an ink printer though. That advice holds.) About the random bricking though… While this printer doesn't actually brick itself, it does have a very curious failure state where if you leave it off, but plugged into the mains, it will eventually refuse to boot up until you unplug it, wait for ten minutes, and plug it back in. No error message, no blinking lights, nothing to indicate that something is wrong, just nothing until you let it reset itself by removing the power cable for a while. I just leave it unplugged most of the time now.
    - amelius 4y ago
      Is it properly grounded?
      - Freak_NL 4y ago
        Perfectly. At least from the cable onwards. This seems to be a fairly common problem for Brother printers, oddly enough. I eventually figured out the issue from one of several Youtube videos addressing it.
        amelius 4y ago
        Perhaps you can restart it faster if you: 1. unplug the printer 2. press the power button 3. plug in the printer 4. press the power button (Step 2 could discharge some capacitors.)
    - dnh44 4y ago
      Epson have a line called ecoTank that let allows you to refill from a bottle which are also economical.
    - mnw21cam 4y ago
      I did buy a (Brother DCP-J4120DW) colour inkjet printer all-in-one device. And (surprisingly to me) it actually doesn't suck. The Linux drivers work. Sure, the ink is pricey, but it has generally been trouble-free. I left it for a couple of years without printing anything and it clogged up, but when the pandemic hit and I started having to print at home again, it cleared up with a couple of head-cleaning operations. I'm not printing much - maybe a double-sided sheet a week. So yeah, the advice to never buy an inkjet - it's true but not disastrously true all the time.
serf 4y ago
>This story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. If it's that easy for you, great. Fact is that desktop printers offer a service that is so valuable to some people/professions that manufacturers can be as outwardly customer-hostile as they please and still ship plenty of product.
- tmountain 4y ago
  I have a home office, and life without my printer would be terribly inconvenient. Driving to the library or copy center every time I need to print something is a nonstarter.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    What're you printing? At some point I realised it was extremely rare that I printed anything other than a return label (and was doing so at the office while largely working from home, not that convenient), so I just got a label printer.
    - optimiz3 4y ago
      If you do anything financial, legal, or business frequently you have to provide PDFs of signed physical documents. Every quarter I have to print->sign->scan->email multiple forms. Inefficient and wasteful? Yes. Also required by law.
      - chatmasta 4y ago
        Most places (government included) accept e-signature now, don't they? You might need to upload the PDF to docusign to make it a "legit" e-signature, but that sounds better than the absurdity of printing and rescanning an originally digital document.
        mbreese 4y ago
        Nope. Many places will still require a physical signature on a scanned document. Why? Because on their end, they print it back out and keep a physical copy. That is their workflow. Many offices are still paper based. Even at my work, we use docusign for some stuff, but will require physical signatures for others. Printing and rescanning is absurd, but also very easy for anyone. Especially now, it’s less “print and rescan” and more “print and send me a photo with your phone”.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
My laserjet 1020 is messed up and gets jammed up if put more than one sheet into the tray. So I need to print the pages one by one by waiting until the status led flashes orange, then load the next sheet and click next / briefly opening the top lid. But I rather keep just doing this than dealing with any of that modern drm crap.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  Sounds like you need to purchase the laserjet 1020 maintenance kit. It has these replacement pickup rollers that are supposed to be replaced after x number of years/x number of prints.
  - gregmac 4y ago
    Another thing I've been told by a manufacturer: paper quality is apparently the biggest factor in longevity of a printer. To the point they custom order "the worst paper" for testing purposes (which apparently a speciality paper mill agreed to do, but absolutely refused to put their name on). I don't know the specifics of this, beyond if you buy the cheapest paper you can probably expect your printer to jam up sooner.
    - mwint 4y ago
      Used to work for a BigCo printer maker. This is true. You wouldn’t believe the things people print on, there are racks and racks of weird papers from around the world. Tested at different temps/humidities (matters for the electrostatic process in laser printers). Bamboo paper is a thing.
      - ta988 4y ago
        And how does bamboo paper behave?
      - robinsonb5 4y ago
        I spent a "happy" 20 minutes peeling semi-molten polyester labels off a fuser belt a few months back. (Lesson learned, I duly told the machine it was printing on a thinner paper stock, and ran the rest of the job without issue...)
Spooky23 4y ago
I never get why people get so angry about this. I’m a stupid consumer with printers. I have a HP office jet and pay like $5/month for their ink subscription. I print 30-80 pages a month. The economics work. I have a cheap capable inkjet MFP in the same cost envelope of a bigger, lower toner cost laser. The printer talks PCL and works with anything I’ve tried including Linux.
- criddell 4y ago
  It works for you because you print a lot (1-3 pages per day!). OP prints fewer than 10 pages per year.
  - YuriNiyazov 4y ago
    There’s a $1/month subscription. You get 10 pages a month. The author would pay $12/year for 10 pages per year, without the cost of the cartridge. You need 20 years before you reach the cost of a $240 cartridge. The cartridge would’ve dried out before then. This entire article is an exercise in “I can’t do math”
    - mthoms 4y ago
      Are you talking about something else? The article is about region locking which means, by definition, that the ink available in North America won’t work. Money isn’t the only consideration in these situations anyways. For some people it’s the principle. More directly to your point - the author plainly acknowledges the sunk cost fallacy at play here. I’m pretty sure he can do the math.
      - YuriNiyazov 4y ago
        I’m talking about the snide remarks towards InstankInk throughout the article. The GP says that because the author prints 10 pages a year it’s a bad deal. I’m arguing that InstantInk is a great deal for someone that prints 10 pages a year. The author should’ve said “yea, I followed principles here, but honestly I should’ve gotten InstankInk from the very beginning” instead of crapping on it
antonvs 4y ago
The article opens with a hint at another possible course of action: buy a cheap Brother laser printer, which currently go for about $129 in the US. Read the beginning of the article for the testimony, which many people have found for themselves. What you actually need to avoid are manufacturers like HP, unless the idea of an “ink subscription” appeals to you. It’s also best to avoid ink jets both because of ink costs but also because they’re much less reliable especially if you don’t use them often - the ink dries up and the autoclean option never quite works right.
- kmarc 4y ago
  I happen to have an HP inkjet printer which I use every three or so months, and never had the dried ink problem. Always works reliably, including the display ink level function. I think this "the ink dries up!" mantra is either outdated, doesn't affect HP anymore, or I got extremely lucky with my HP printers since 2014
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    Same here. I’m on the third cartridge in almost 3 years.
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    Counterpoint annecdata - my cheap HP injet printer dried up. I got what I paid for (I guess even less).
  - aprdm 4y ago
    Same here .. and it was super cheap. Their subscription is a dollar a month and they mail me inks when I’m about to run out of — happened once
  - antonvs 4y ago
    The reason I posted is that I'm about to throw out an HP OfficeJet Pro with that issue. It's a few years old but it hasn't worked properly for a while now, and given the costs of ink it's not worth repairing. I used to have a laser and I'm planning to switch back.
the_third_wave 4y ago
> Never ever buy a printer Change that to "Only buy a laser printer" or "Never ever buy an inkjet printer" and you're closer to the truth. Better still, "Only buy an older - but no too old - office-type laser printer at the thrift store" or something along those lines and you're golden. Cheap toner which lasts for years, the machine has a network connection so you can just wire it to a switch or router somewhere where it is convenient. The "not too old" is mostly because really old laser printers are power hogs, get one with a power-saving mode. It might take a few more seconds before the first page comes out when it as to heat the fuser first but who cares? I have a HP Laserjet 2200dtn and a Canon MF9220Cdn in different locations, both of them switched off but ready for use after being switched on. Toner does not dry out like ink does, nozzles do not get clogged, the things tend to just work when needed. With enough toner for at least 3 years (and more to be had for cheap on eBay et al) we're set and we do not need to go to any library - which would be a long cycle ride seeing how as we're living on a farm in the Swedish countryside - to print out those stupid forms, schematic diagrams and presentations.

tdeck 4y ago

For those of us who need to print a bit more often, my advice is to buy a black and white laser printer for ~$40 on Craigslist and you'll get years of cheap, reliable occasional printing in your own home while you use up the rest of the toner cartridge that came with it. When it breaks you can probably find another one in the same price range.

rtpg 4y ago
I'm going to advise against this. Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. I have gotten 2 used printers out of not wanting to generate e-waste, only to have constant printer jams and other frustrations leading to me having to just print at the grocery store instead. "That Brother printer" will cost you more (and be Yet Another Plastic Thing To Go To A Landfill Later), but will ... print every time. Sure, after a while you might need to clean the rollers or something, but at least you know it will be that and not some random bricking.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  I got a Brother laser printer (HL-3170CDW) and in terms of economy it's hard to beat. (Never buy an ink printer though. That advice holds.) About the random bricking though… While this printer doesn't actually brick itself, it does have a very curious failure state where if you leave it off, but plugged into the mains, it will eventually refuse to boot up until you unplug it, wait for ten minutes, and plug it back in. No error message, no blinking lights, nothing to indicate that something is wrong, just nothing until you let it reset itself by removing the power cable for a while. I just leave it unplugged most of the time now.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Is it properly grounded?
    - Freak_NL 4y ago
      Perfectly. At least from the cable onwards. This seems to be a fairly common problem for Brother printers, oddly enough. I eventually figured out the issue from one of several Youtube videos addressing it.
      - amelius 4y ago
        Perhaps you can restart it faster if you: 1. unplug the printer 2. press the power button 3. plug in the printer 4. press the power button (Step 2 could discharge some capacitors.)
  - dnh44 4y ago
    Epson have a line called ecoTank that let allows you to refill from a bottle which are also economical.
  - mnw21cam 4y ago
    I did buy a (Brother DCP-J4120DW) colour inkjet printer all-in-one device. And (surprisingly to me) it actually doesn't suck. The Linux drivers work. Sure, the ink is pricey, but it has generally been trouble-free. I left it for a couple of years without printing anything and it clogged up, but when the pandemic hit and I started having to print at home again, it cleared up with a couple of head-cleaning operations. I'm not printing much - maybe a double-sided sheet a week. So yeah, the advice to never buy an inkjet - it's true but not disastrously true all the time.

serf 4y ago

>This story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. If it's that easy for you, great. Fact is that desktop printers offer a service that is so valuable to some people/professions that manufacturers can be as outwardly customer-hostile as they please and still ship plenty of product.

tmountain 4y ago
I have a home office, and life without my printer would be terribly inconvenient. Driving to the library or copy center every time I need to print something is a nonstarter.
- OJFord 4y ago
  What're you printing? At some point I realised it was extremely rare that I printed anything other than a return label (and was doing so at the office while largely working from home, not that convenient), so I just got a label printer.
  - optimiz3 4y ago
    If you do anything financial, legal, or business frequently you have to provide PDFs of signed physical documents. Every quarter I have to print->sign->scan->email multiple forms. Inefficient and wasteful? Yes. Also required by law.
    - chatmasta 4y ago
      Most places (government included) accept e-signature now, don't they? You might need to upload the PDF to docusign to make it a "legit" e-signature, but that sounds better than the absurdity of printing and rescanning an originally digital document.
      - mbreese 4y ago
        Nope. Many places will still require a physical signature on a scanned document. Why? Because on their end, they print it back out and keep a physical copy. That is their workflow. Many offices are still paper based. Even at my work, we use docusign for some stuff, but will require physical signatures for others. Printing and rescanning is absurd, but also very easy for anyone. Especially now, it’s less “print and rescan” and more “print and send me a photo with your phone”.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

My laserjet 1020 is messed up and gets jammed up if put more than one sheet into the tray. So I need to print the pages one by one by waiting until the status led flashes orange, then load the next sheet and click next / briefly opening the top lid. But I rather keep just doing this than dealing with any of that modern drm crap.

nebula8804 4y ago
Sounds like you need to purchase the laserjet 1020 maintenance kit. It has these replacement pickup rollers that are supposed to be replaced after x number of years/x number of prints.
- gregmac 4y ago
  Another thing I've been told by a manufacturer: paper quality is apparently the biggest factor in longevity of a printer. To the point they custom order "the worst paper" for testing purposes (which apparently a speciality paper mill agreed to do, but absolutely refused to put their name on). I don't know the specifics of this, beyond if you buy the cheapest paper you can probably expect your printer to jam up sooner.
  - mwint 4y ago
    Used to work for a BigCo printer maker. This is true. You wouldn’t believe the things people print on, there are racks and racks of weird papers from around the world. Tested at different temps/humidities (matters for the electrostatic process in laser printers). Bamboo paper is a thing.
    - ta988 4y ago
      And how does bamboo paper behave?
    - robinsonb5 4y ago
      I spent a "happy" 20 minutes peeling semi-molten polyester labels off a fuser belt a few months back. (Lesson learned, I duly told the machine it was printing on a thinner paper stock, and ran the rest of the job without issue...)

Spooky23 4y ago

I never get why people get so angry about this. I’m a stupid consumer with printers. I have a HP office jet and pay like $5/month for their ink subscription. I print 30-80 pages a month. The economics work. I have a cheap capable inkjet MFP in the same cost envelope of a bigger, lower toner cost laser. The printer talks PCL and works with anything I’ve tried including Linux.

criddell 4y ago
It works for you because you print a lot (1-3 pages per day!). OP prints fewer than 10 pages per year.
- YuriNiyazov 4y ago
  There’s a $1/month subscription. You get 10 pages a month. The author would pay $12/year for 10 pages per year, without the cost of the cartridge. You need 20 years before you reach the cost of a $240 cartridge. The cartridge would’ve dried out before then. This entire article is an exercise in “I can’t do math”
  - mthoms 4y ago
    Are you talking about something else? The article is about region locking which means, by definition, that the ink available in North America won’t work. Money isn’t the only consideration in these situations anyways. For some people it’s the principle. More directly to your point - the author plainly acknowledges the sunk cost fallacy at play here. I’m pretty sure he can do the math.
    - YuriNiyazov 4y ago
      I’m talking about the snide remarks towards InstankInk throughout the article. The GP says that because the author prints 10 pages a year it’s a bad deal. I’m arguing that InstantInk is a great deal for someone that prints 10 pages a year. The author should’ve said “yea, I followed principles here, but honestly I should’ve gotten InstankInk from the very beginning” instead of crapping on it

antonvs 4y ago

The article opens with a hint at another possible course of action: buy a cheap Brother laser printer, which currently go for about $129 in the US. Read the beginning of the article for the testimony, which many people have found for themselves. What you actually need to avoid are manufacturers like HP, unless the idea of an “ink subscription” appeals to you. It’s also best to avoid ink jets both because of ink costs but also because they’re much less reliable especially if you don’t use them often - the ink dries up and the autoclean option never quite works right.

kmarc 4y ago
I happen to have an HP inkjet printer which I use every three or so months, and never had the dried ink problem. Always works reliably, including the display ink level function. I think this "the ink dries up!" mantra is either outdated, doesn't affect HP anymore, or I got extremely lucky with my HP printers since 2014
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  Same here. I’m on the third cartridge in almost 3 years.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Counterpoint annecdata - my cheap HP injet printer dried up. I got what I paid for (I guess even less).
- aprdm 4y ago
  Same here .. and it was super cheap. Their subscription is a dollar a month and they mail me inks when I’m about to run out of — happened once
- antonvs 4y ago
  The reason I posted is that I'm about to throw out an HP OfficeJet Pro with that issue. It's a few years old but it hasn't worked properly for a while now, and given the costs of ink it's not worth repairing. I used to have a laser and I'm planning to switch back.

the_third_wave 4y ago

> Never ever buy a printer Change that to "Only buy a laser printer" or "Never ever buy an inkjet printer" and you're closer to the truth. Better still, "Only buy an older - but no too old - office-type laser printer at the thrift store" or something along those lines and you're golden. Cheap toner which lasts for years, the machine has a network connection so you can just wire it to a switch or router somewhere where it is convenient. The "not too old" is mostly because really old laser printers are power hogs, get one with a power-saving mode. It might take a few more seconds before the first page comes out when it as to heat the fuser first but who cares? I have a HP Laserjet 2200dtn and a Canon MF9220Cdn in different locations, both of them switched off but ready for use after being switched on. Toner does not dry out like ink does, nozzles do not get clogged, the things tend to just work when needed. With enough toner for at least 3 years (and more to be had for cheap on eBay et al) we're set and we do not need to go to any library - which would be a long cycle ride seeing how as we're living on a farm in the Swedish countryside - to print out those stupid forms, schematic diagrams and presentations.