6 ms·

If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets / photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that only does black and white is the wo

by lmm 3y ago

If you just want to occasionally print out concert tickets / photocopy id documents / etc., half-assing it by getting a that only does black and white is the worst of both worlds - better to either save the space by not owning a printer at all, or avoid ever having to go to a print shop by having a printer that can do colour when you need it. If you're actually printing out a lot of documents then yeah laser makes sense, but I've never understood the HN home laser dogma.

tverbeure 3y ago
I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140 Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of your life.
- Liftyee 3y ago
  This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical part back into place every year, but the service manual is so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
- lmm 3y ago
  I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
  - lupire 3y ago
    Do you print at least weekly?
    - lmm 3y ago
      No. I print when I need to, and there have been stretches of at least several months when I haven't printed anything.
xmprt 3y ago
Yup. I was on the laser printer is the best printer train until I actually had to buy a printer for my home (until then I was printing from the college lab or office). I quickly realized that a laser printer made no sense for the reasons you outlined.
- culopatin 3y ago
  I don’t understand the reasons the person you replied to or you are making references to. You rather having to go print every little thing just because once a year you want it to be color? What most people print at home must be Amazon return labels, some school papers and resumes which are all black and white. If you’re in college reading lots of papers with graphs in color you can easily print at school. I got so tired of being asked by friends and family to help them with their shit inkjet printers that I’ll never ever touch one again. I don’t even know when I would HAVE to print color but if I must, and I’m not working in an office, I’ll just go to any store near me and get it done. The laser is painless 99% of the time, where the inkjet is pain 99% of the time. Before I moved across the country I donated my brother laser printer to the least tech savvy aunt in the family that could NEVER print and I have not heard of a single printing issue in almost a year. Where it was always always something. “Some” cartridge failed, not even 20% used. Didn’t say which one to make you change both. Change one, pray, if you’re lucky it works. A week later, black one fails. Or they get clogged, or they need to clean the whatever, which uses 10% of the ink. Such shit I can’t believe there isn’t a mass lawsuit against this.
  - lmm 3y ago
    > I don’t understand the reasons the person you replied to or you are making references to. You rather having to go print every little thing just because once a year you want it to be color? What most people print at home must be Amazon return labels If you're returning a package you've got to go somewhere to drop off the package anyway, so may as well print the label there. > some school papers and resumes which are all black and white. If you’re in college reading lots of papers with graphs in color you can easily print at school. Again that sounds like like you're getting the worst of both worlds. If you're going to go to the trouble of getting a printer so you can print off papers, you want to be able to print off all your papers, not just the ones that don't have graphs in. If you're just going to print them at school why wouldn't you print them all at school including the black-and-white ones? (FWIW a CV where I live is expected to have a colour photo embedded)
lagt_t 3y ago
You can print concert tickets and photocopy ids in black and white, I don't understand your point. Noone requires color for those use cases.
- lmm 3y ago
  I've had cases where colour was required e.g. one of my ID stamps was unreadable in black-and-white, my tax return form has colour sections (might have been accepted in black-and-white but was certainly clearer in colour)...
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I absolutely 100% guarantee that you can submit tax forms printed in black and white. I suspect the IRS is more surprised when they see printed forms that are anything but.
    - lmm 3y ago
      Not the IRS (whatever that is), was a bank, and they absolutely reacted positively to it being in colour as an original.
      - kstrauser 3y ago
        An original what? Thing is, I also own a color scanner. It’s just as easy for me to make a color copy of a doc as a B/W copy. That’s pretty common now. If your bank thinks that a form with red lines on it must be an original, then they suck at technology more than most banks.
        lmm 3y ago
        > An original what? An original tax return form. > If your bank thinks that a form with red lines on it must be an original, then they suck at technology more than most banks. Be that as it may, I don't have a banking license and wasn't about to turn my nose up at a bank that finally let me open a corporate account after about 4 months of effort.
CharlesW 3y ago
> …I've never understood the HN home laser dogma. It's not really a mystery — if your main use case is documents (b&w or color), a laser printer is generally a better choice. If your main use case is photos and photographic imagery (like for stickers), you still need to go inkjet. My daily driver for the last 7 years has been a Brother color laser, but this year I replaced it with an Epson ET-8500 inkjet because my needs had changed.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  I have the same HP b&w laser that I bought used for $90 circa 2004. Same toner cartridge. Meanwhile my parents have been through roughly a half dozen inkjets in the same time. It's pretty obvious which is better for most home use cases.
kstrauser 3y ago
Mainly because lasers always work. You can ignore one for a year, then turn it on to print something and it’ll greet you like a Labrador retriever seeing you get home from work. I’ve never had that experience with any inkjet, however expensive. If I don’t use one for several months, it’s always a flip of the coin whether it’ll work without draining half the tank in self-cleaning cycles. Lasers are just vastly more reliable than inkjets. I can always count on my laser waking up and printing before falling back into a coma. I can’t trust any inkjet.
- lmm 3y ago
  > I’ve never had that experience with any inkjet, however expensive. If I don’t use one for several months, it’s always a flip of the coin whether it’ll work without draining half the tank in self-cleaning cycles. Shrug. I've used boring consumer HP/Canon/Epsom inkjets and never had a problem. I think the first printer my parents ever had 20 years ago occasionally needed to print a test page, but I haven't had that happen since then.

by lmm 3y ago

tverbeure 3y ago

I almost never print, but when I do I don't want to struggle with an inkjet printer that has dried up nozzles. A $140 Brother laser printer will pretty much work for the rest of your life.

Liftyee 3y ago
This anecdotally holds up, at least for Brother laser printers made in the 2010's. Over a decade later it's still working perfectly. Granted I do have to nudge a mechanical part back into place every year, but the service manual is so good that maintenance is near-trivial.
lmm 3y ago
I've been using inkjets for decades and never had this "dried up nozzles" problem, shrug.
- lupire 3y ago
  Do you print at least weekly?
  - lmm 3y ago
    No. I print when I need to, and there have been stretches of at least several months when I haven't printed anything.

xmprt 3y ago

Yup. I was on the laser printer is the best printer train until I actually had to buy a printer for my home (until then I was printing from the college lab or office). I quickly realized that a laser printer made no sense for the reasons you outlined.

culopatin 3y ago
I don’t understand the reasons the person you replied to or you are making references to. You rather having to go print every little thing just because once a year you want it to be color? What most people print at home must be Amazon return labels, some school papers and resumes which are all black and white. If you’re in college reading lots of papers with graphs in color you can easily print at school. I got so tired of being asked by friends and family to help them with their shit inkjet printers that I’ll never ever touch one again. I don’t even know when I would HAVE to print color but if I must, and I’m not working in an office, I’ll just go to any store near me and get it done. The laser is painless 99% of the time, where the inkjet is pain 99% of the time. Before I moved across the country I donated my brother laser printer to the least tech savvy aunt in the family that could NEVER print and I have not heard of a single printing issue in almost a year. Where it was always always something. “Some” cartridge failed, not even 20% used. Didn’t say which one to make you change both. Change one, pray, if you’re lucky it works. A week later, black one fails. Or they get clogged, or they need to clean the whatever, which uses 10% of the ink. Such shit I can’t believe there isn’t a mass lawsuit against this.
- lmm 3y ago
  > I don’t understand the reasons the person you replied to or you are making references to. You rather having to go print every little thing just because once a year you want it to be color? What most people print at home must be Amazon return labels If you're returning a package you've got to go somewhere to drop off the package anyway, so may as well print the label there. > some school papers and resumes which are all black and white. If you’re in college reading lots of papers with graphs in color you can easily print at school. Again that sounds like like you're getting the worst of both worlds. If you're going to go to the trouble of getting a printer so you can print off papers, you want to be able to print off all your papers, not just the ones that don't have graphs in. If you're just going to print them at school why wouldn't you print them all at school including the black-and-white ones? (FWIW a CV where I live is expected to have a colour photo embedded)

lagt_t 3y ago

You can print concert tickets and photocopy ids in black and white, I don't understand your point. Noone requires color for those use cases.

lmm 3y ago
I've had cases where colour was required e.g. one of my ID stamps was unreadable in black-and-white, my tax return form has colour sections (might have been accepted in black-and-white but was certainly clearer in colour)...
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I absolutely 100% guarantee that you can submit tax forms printed in black and white. I suspect the IRS is more surprised when they see printed forms that are anything but.
  - lmm 3y ago
    Not the IRS (whatever that is), was a bank, and they absolutely reacted positively to it being in colour as an original.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      An original what? Thing is, I also own a color scanner. It’s just as easy for me to make a color copy of a doc as a B/W copy. That’s pretty common now. If your bank thinks that a form with red lines on it must be an original, then they suck at technology more than most banks.
      - lmm 3y ago
        > An original what? An original tax return form. > If your bank thinks that a form with red lines on it must be an original, then they suck at technology more than most banks. Be that as it may, I don't have a banking license and wasn't about to turn my nose up at a bank that finally let me open a corporate account after about 4 months of effort.

CharlesW 3y ago

> …I've never understood the HN home laser dogma. It's not really a mystery — if your main use case is documents (b&w or color), a laser printer is generally a better choice. If your main use case is photos and photographic imagery (like for stickers), you still need to go inkjet. My daily driver for the last 7 years has been a Brother color laser, but this year I replaced it with an Epson ET-8500 inkjet because my needs had changed.

bongodongobob 3y ago
I have the same HP b&w laser that I bought used for $90 circa 2004. Same toner cartridge. Meanwhile my parents have been through roughly a half dozen inkjets in the same time. It's pretty obvious which is better for most home use cases.

kstrauser 3y ago

Mainly because lasers always work. You can ignore one for a year, then turn it on to print something and it’ll greet you like a Labrador retriever seeing you get home from work. I’ve never had that experience with any inkjet, however expensive. If I don’t use one for several months, it’s always a flip of the coin whether it’ll work without draining half the tank in self-cleaning cycles. Lasers are just vastly more reliable than inkjets. I can always count on my laser waking up and printing before falling back into a coma. I can’t trust any inkjet.

lmm 3y ago
> I’ve never had that experience with any inkjet, however expensive. If I don’t use one for several months, it’s always a flip of the coin whether it’ll work without draining half the tank in self-cleaning cycles. Shrug. I've used boring consumer HP/Canon/Epsom inkjets and never had a problem. I think the first printer my parents ever had 20 years ago occasionally needed to print a test page, but I haven't had that happen since then.