They may not have as many ebooks as Amazon, but they do offer DRM free ebooks, and may be worth keeping in mind to check before going straight to Amazon.
Thanks. I had a collection from several years ago of Amazon books, though these days it's my absolute last choice for anything.
Old school pirating or new school? Last time I remember pirates was like... Napster, Limewire, Kazaa... Then went to TPB before it got raided like 8 times... What's the current? Is it still torrenting with proxies?
Set up your profiles for Radarr/Sonarr to pick the quality of release you want (1080p, min/max file size, etc)
Feed Radarr/Sonarr your qbittorrent info, nzbget & Usenet info
They will automatically search the indexes (I use 1337x for torrents & nzbgeek for Usenet) for the files that fit your parameters, download it, and organize it.
All you have to do is point Plex at the output folders and BAM, automated pirating.
I even took it a step further and set up Doplarr - a Discord bot that handles requests. Now friends/family can ping the bot with their movie/show requests and it'll sync up to Radarr/Sonarr and add their requests!
Oh, the high seas are very, very busy these days. Still a bit difficult for the non technical user, but there is buried treasure out there.
Content leaving isn't a problem. If they give up some things they have more money to get the rights to other content, and usually by the time it leaves I've either watched it or don't want to. If it's one of the rare things I want to watch several times, I can just buy it.
But cracking down on password sharing is ridiculous. They've been functioning fine with people sharing passwords. I bet the current pricing accounts for password sharing. But now people in college can't be on the family netflix? Pure greed.
Content leaving is totally a problem. I’ve lost track of the number of times my spouse and I say, “Oh hey, what about we finally watch xyz that’s been in our queue for ages? Yeah that seems like a good one for Friday pizza night! …oh, it’s vanished from our queue, hooray.”
It’s not my full time job to keep tabs on what’s coming and going from the damn entertainment service that I hope to use in my ever dwindling reserves of free time. Especially when there’s alternative means available that are not too difficult to use.
If they were not aware of it before buying then it is illegal.
You don’t actually need to be aware of it. Because you said you were aware of it, when you clicked Accept on the EULA, and on page 62 of the EULA it said they have the right to disable your printer remotely at any time and for any reason.
In decent nations, an EULA is considered an attempt by the seller to, after the purchase, change the terms of the implicit contract which was the sale, so it's has no legal standing whatsoever.
Absolutelly, the seller can set contract terms before the sale is done (and even then there are lots of limitations to avoid things like bait & switch, so it usualy has to be pretty clear and upfront and there are certain rights that a retail buyer simply cannot loose, even contractually), but never after the sale has been done.
EULAs only have legal standing in a few places, including a few States in the US.
When ever I am forced to sign something (like some contract addendum for my job) I write that I don't understand anything on that paper, or now I write it in email before e-signing.
It should be. But you agreed to it. Gotta print out that child support declaration in 20 minutes before your lawyer has to go to court? Hey fuck you consumer. Have a medical emergency and need to print something to save a patient? Fuck you consumer.
Someone should sue them for everything they are. Because they are thieves of the highest order.
But you agreed to it.
When does an agreement become null and void when the knowledge and time needed to understand the terms, and especially whether they even stand in the various jurisdictions, is simply unfeasible for a layperson to be expected to possess?
In a similar vein, if an agreement requires a lawyer on call/retainer to interpret, what court besides a bought court would possibly uphold such a standard?
Fwiw I'm not asking this with the expectation of you personally having the answers, but to further highlight the absurdity of many of these so-called agreements.
EULAs and TOSs have been tossed out in court before under the logic that you need to understand an agreement for it to be legally binding and that not reading the agreement inherently prevents you from understanding it.
Can you provide case law? I'm interested.
Wikipedia has an overview and their enforceability varies pretty dramatically across the US (which is why many such agreements attempt to specify which states or courts they must be litigated against in).
In most of the World EULAs have no legal standing whatsoever because they're an attempt by the seller to after the sale change the terms of the sale.
It's mainly in the US that those things aren't instantly dismissed by the court as legally meaningless, but then again the US is way less consumer friendly that, for example, pretty much all of Europe.
Third voice for a Brother. I used to work an office supply store and they were by far the most reliable printers we sold.
I’ve had my Brother printer for several years and never had an issue. I don’t have the color one, just black and white. Would buy again.
I treat my Brother laser like a rented uhaul truck and it just keeps going.
I have one of the complicated brother ones that scans and prints, including double sides, in colour, and it's a tank. Works fine in Linux too. Connected or through the network.
It even does fax, which someone, somewhere probably finds useful.
That was because of a misunderstanding. Brother started a subscription service and people assumed that meant you had to pay a monthly fee to use the printers like with HP. Instead, it’s a toner subscription like Dollar Shave Club or Amazon’s Subscribe and Save where they auto-send a new toner at your requested interval.
I use cheap Chinese knockoff toner in my Brother laser
Saw some people posting recently they sold out also
I also heard a rumor about something somewhere, that maybe something might have happened. But I'm not sure. /S
I just installed a Brother printer for my dad, absolutely zero bullshit.
Yes, some of their firmware updates started breaking aftermarket toner cartridges and support said "that sucks" like it was very intentional. It seems constrained to a few of the MFC color models more than anything tho I've never had any issues other than bad wifi modules in the b&w home office lasers. Which if you're using wifi on a printer that's your own damn fault lol
Eh, I am all about wired networking wherever I can, but my awesome old Brother laser printer gets used like once per month or two, and it lives off in a far corner of the house where it isn’t taking up valuable space. Plus it could work with a tiny fraction of the LAN bandwidth available to it.
On wi-fi it stays, lol. I think I may have had to reconnect it once in the decade+ we’ve had it. Otherwise, the printout is ready before I can even walk to the printer (unless it has a ton of pages, naturally).
I don’t even know how old it is at this point. I just know it’s over a decade because I didn’t buy a third party toner cartridge until 2014.
Yeah I'm not sure whether this is shenanigans or an actual problem Brother is managing here. The post does mention there are problems with incorrect response to temperature management with the unoriginal cartridge, which again could theoretically cause harm.
I honestly wasn't aware unoriginal cartridges were a thing for Brother printers, since the originals tend to be quite reasonable.
But to continue using the unoriginal cartridges he can as the answer states, use BRAdmin to downgrade the firmware.
So it's not like Brother is attempting to take control of your printer like HP likes to do.
I'm sure HP didn't ramp up their bullshit from 0 to 11 overnight, the question now is how much we can trust Brother not to be walking the same path and mandating more and more restrictive firmwares in the future. I think them opensourcing drivers and firmwares would help mitigate that, and if their business model is really to be that sole good guy and antagonize the likes of HP/Epson/... they don't have anything to lose and a lot to win (or as a minimum, myself as a customer).
HP has done the ink cartridge shenanigans for more than 30 years now. They just recently found a new trick. Apart from that nothing has really changed.
I am not aware Brother ever did similar things to basically trick or cheat their customers. Most other vendors are somewhere in between. AFAIK none are as bad as HP.
My dad is running his Brother HL-1212W printer on the open source Linux driver, works perfectly fine, and I was actually surprised about the high quality of his prints for such a cheap printer.
AFAIK Brother is among the best regarding opensource drivers too.
All this printer talk almost makes me want to buy a new printer. My current printer is a 14 year old Samsung color laser, and the print quality is not that stellar anymore. ;) The Samsung open source driver kind of suck for this printer. There isn't even a driver for this specific model CLP-325W, so I have to choose another Samsung printer that is (mostly) compatible.
The Brother printer was completely plug and play. The system recognized the printer, and installed the correct open source driver, no hassle at all.
I just read an article the other day that said LG is about to start charging subscription fees for washing machines 🙄
I will go old school and start washing my clothes against a rock in the river before I'll pay a fucking subscription to use my own washing machine
That is crazy.
Like a damn laundromat. So is LG gonna supply water and power too? Wtf are the charging for? The right to buy their product? Lmao. Fuck off.
Go analog. Real analog. Sticks and stones baby.
The article said the subscription was for "software updates" which really seems like something they should provide for free anyway so you're really just paying for the privilege to use their precious machine that you already paid for lol
Software updates for what? New ways to wash your clothes? I only use like two or three settings in mine
Knowing LG it's probably updates to make it play Jingle Bells at Christmas time or something lol
Sounds like paywalling security updates.
Those pesky hackers turning off my washing machine when I'm trying to do laundry!
Well, if your washing machine was connected to the internet you would also need security updates. Of course the only reason you'd connect your washing machine to the internet would be in order to get said security updates in the first place.
Great job creating a need by developing the fix for it in the first place.
Potentially more serious than that. A poorly protected washing machine (or any other IOT device) can serve as an attack vector into your local network.
You're not wrong, but why the hell does a washing machine need to be Internet connected in the first place?
And since the first answer is always "So it can tell me when the cycle is done," set a frickin timer if it's that big of a deal.
I think it's for "smart" washing machines that you can control from your phone etc. So that's likely what the "updates" would be related too...why you'd need to control your washing machine from afar is beyond me but some people love smart gadgets and will by anything that connects to their phone.
I hate the make everything a smart appliance trend... Grills, washers and dryers, dishwashers, coffee machines... WHY? No one needs this shit.
There are cases for it, eg programming a wash to occur when energy demand is low.
In my opinion we should be pursuing technologies to do this that don't require an internet connection. Even being able to program a schedule into the machine and it can detect if something is in there or not. That would be enough since energy usage follows a relatively consistent plot. These companies don't give a shit about anything other than coming up with ways to make more money.
The cost of the laundry subscription is likely to vastly out cost the energy savings it may provide.
Fucking software updates for a washing machine? If my washing machine needs a software update, that should be a fucking recall. A washing machine should be a fully embedded system imo.
It's updates for the cybersecurity that exists strictly only because it is connected to the internet which in turn is something that exists strictly only because there's software updates.
Megaman Battle Network was prophetic. Terrorist will flood your house using a phone.
Why would anyone connect a washing machine to the internet??? To play Skyrim?
I hope this is rage bait because I can’t think of any reason a washing machine would ever need a software update. Is it like a smart machine? If so then just let me disable it
what is the difference between a subscription and a never ending loan
With a loan you actually receive money at the start.
A loan usually comes with full support and warranty service for the duration of the loan. With a subscription I bet you get to pay without receiving these benefits in return.
If they could get away with it, they would have made paper that only works on their printer, and it would be more expensive than normal paper but you have to use it.
I love the fact that brother basically does no marketing as far as I know. They just end up shining like a diamond because they make a generally good product and everyone else around them makes absolute trash.
I only bought a brother printer because of recommendations from reddit. It's so much better than my old hp inkjet that randomly started asking me to sign in in order to print or scan.
Why tf would I need to sign in to my HP account online in order to print in my own fucking home.
Yep, totally. In the vile shit that printer business is, Brother seems to be the only brand to not be straight-up anti consumer. I have a Brother all-in-one machine at work, it works out of the box on all devices, scans with whatever app, doesn't push some bullshit custom nagware every time you print and, best of all, ACCEPTS NONAME TONERS without saying a single word of complain. It doesn't refuse to print, doesn't even mention that you may get worse quality prints (yeah right). It just prints and we don't have to think about it and I really appreciate it.
I shit you not I have a brother laser printer that I don't even know how old it is. My dad pulled out of our basement and cleaned it up and got it running so I could use it in college back in 2009. Skip ahead to 2016 and I'm using it for the table cards at our wedding. It's 2023 and I still use it from time to time. I've only changed the toner once and cleaned it a handful of times, but that sums up the entirety of the maintenance while I've had it. I have to plug it into my computer via USB which isn't so bad. But they don't have a driver available for OSX anymore so it's now a PC only printer. I'll keep using it until it stops working or isn't compatible with any computer anymore.
No joke. I had HP and I knew Brother was painfree experience and when I was buying said HP, I completely forgot about them. Few years forward my old HP avoided destruction by sheer luck and my brother's will to try and tame it. These days I have Brother laser printer and it takes whatever you throw at it without complaints. It's so obedient am having issues accepting such behavior.
(or a laser printer in general, Brother is just a Known Brand)
That article was a surprisingly funny read. Thanks for sharing it.
HP can make good printers. It has the right hardware, capabilities and price (Of the printers, not the ink) to be a very good product. It's just their obnoxiously asshole-design software that is designed to make you to keep paying for using a product you already own.
Can confirm. Support brother for their ethics and quality.
The driver support for Linux is just awful. I couldn't get the Brother 7055W to work on Arch. It worked on Fedora though, but I don't have that anymore.
I gave up also. The entire software experience is just shit and buggy as hell. Avoid.
It has been normalized by Streaming Services. Sad situation.
Looks like pirating is back on the menu, boys!
Never stopped my friend...
What the fuck is wrong with people? It's been common knowledge that hp is trash for decades now. The whole idea of capitalism is that the bad products fail when customers go to the competitors who do a better job, but hp is not a monopoly and there are better competitors that exist, but people keep in buying HP because frankly, they are too fucking stupid. Capitalism is a lie because consumers are too stupid to pick the best products.
The average person is not invested into printers and just needs a printer to occasionally print something. It's not something they know a lot about and in the store they see a cheap printer from a well known brand that gave them good experiences with other products. It makes total sense for them to buy it. I'm sure they will know what products/brands to avoid in other areas that are unknown to you.
To add to yours, when the person who isn’t up on printers goes to a store like walmart that has 4 different HP models on the shelf ranging from $40 to $90, one cannon for $80, and one brother for $120, they will be much more apt to get the HP because they just don’t know.
My hp laptop works fine, but yeah hp printers are terrible. They are very slow to print, and the ink was quite expensive.
The simplest proof that the Homo Economicus human model used in the mathematical models that justify Free Market Theory is complete total bollocks is that the Marketing that has no mention of the qualities of the product whatsoever, actually works (perfumes and cars are prime examples but there are tons of examples for consumer tech also).
That and some people from Behavioural Economics (the only part of that domain which is actually scientific) have shown with various experiments that there are lots of ways in which people are not rational in their economic decisions, hence not at all the "pure personal upside maximizer" which is the Homo Economicus model.
People sticking to a well-known name such as HP is probably down to the effect of familiarity (at times known as "name recognition") - maybe one of the biggest irrationalities in human economic behaviour and one of the pathways most commonly exploited by marketing.
And for example, the products that sell the most on amazon are not the best products, they're the ones that give amazon the biggest advertising budget.
Most people just buy a printer, they're not doing research on the subject. And if they're not using computers day to day, or for work, they're even less likely to know what shit hp is up to.
There was a time when Hewlet Packard products were the best, them it became HP and...
HP printers are now pure scamming dog shit. The HP printer division must have been taken over by criminals.
The first laser printer I worked with was a HP 4L and it was fantastic.
So fantastic, that we implemented it company wide, and they were close to immortal.
The last of them got killed off when we got follow-me print.
If you want a decent laser printer today, stay clear of HP and get a Brother instead.
I've been saying for about 15 years now -- you'd have to be a masochist to buy HP printers. Why do people keep enabling these shits? You just encourage them to be even worse. Don't stand for even a little of their bullshit and they will change or die. You make a noose for your own neck.
HP have been on my shitlist for so long. Everyone needs to have a shitlist. Anti consumer behaviour should never be forgotten.
On a side note, Vodafone are also on my shitlist. I did give them a reprieve once only to be reminded of why they were on my shitlist.
People, get your shit together.
Anti consumer behaviour should never be forgotten.
This is true if everybody do it, otherwise nothing will change. As we know there are too many people on the planet and too many idiots among them that will buy these products and so company can't get away with everything nowadays.
Look at Facebook, Twitter, reddit, hp.
In my country there's a huge food company that put fucking poison in baby formulas, and killed some of them (and others with lifetime growth issues) and guess what? People stopped buying from them for 2 years, they pulled through and now they are one of the top companies.
People are still buying HP printers because there are no alternatives. In my experience Epson is the worst. The are all the same, and we have no alternative other than letting them fuck with us. And they know it.
Brother has been amazing. Good products, manufacturer support for all operating systems, no subscription bullshit.
No, I think that's blatantly wrong.
Idk if Brother is the best no-bullshit alternative, but it's definitely supposed to be a no-bullshit alternative.
Even if we had no other alternative, we could crowd-fund one.
Funny thing is, I know all of this and their bad behavior. I needed a new printer, ordered it but they didn't have it in stock so they asked me to change my order and offered HP with extra toner and all that. Half asleep I didn't even think twice. It was good price, extra toner.
From day one, nothing but problems until I broke the spell last year and got a Brother printer. Night and day in terms of quality and obedience.
I assume that's the case with many people. Cheap printer available right now or some local deals make it even better looking. Someone who doesn't know better like mom or pop buys it and there it is, pain. Then they realize what they have done and perhaps sell the damn thing, so pain jumps on someone else who just needed a cheap printer.
I've bought HP a few times, because the new printer was about the same price as buying new ink cartridges. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just being real. And I'm not proud
That's how they get ya. The high cost of being poor
So they have all these printers connected to their servers I guess. Nice. Not a security risk at all.
Best printer I've owned has been Brother. But hp is always at the top of reviews, because hp pays them off I guess.
A shame to hear how far HP has fallen. Back in the day they had some solid, workhorse laser printers that delivered for years with no issues and pretty good toner efficiency. Based on what I've read here, I'm not likely to buy another.
HP peaked with the LaserJet IIIsi. It's all been downhill ever since.
Brother.
Love my brother laser printer. I've had it for years, print infrequently, haven't had to change toner once, and it works everytime I ask it to print on the first time
Turns out that didn't make the stock price go up fast enough to enable buy-backs for the execs.
I liked their reverse polish programmable calculators once.
Homeowner-targeted inkjet printers are evil, especially from HP. NEVER buy one that works a subscription into the purchase. They are garbage, and can disable your cartridges if you cancel your subscription.
HP is a horrible company. They make things up just to make life difficult for consumers. Everyone should boycott them I make sure none of the hardware the company I work for is HP as well.
I guess this sentence is already became the reality in some countries if you can't even buy a god damn printer without it locking you out.
Terminal capitalism looks a lot like communism.
My mom's Amazon Halo that counts steps just shut off because they ended the service. I do not trust anything that requires live service at this point.
I'd also add so-called cloud storage. There is no magical cloud, there's only someone else's server/PC. Don't trust it with personal data ever, or make your own "cloud" instaed.
This is generally for a business lease contract with HP. I've never seen this done to a printer the person buys outright, only for contracted leased "pay-per-use" printers.
HP does an ink subscription thing. They will try to trick you into it, too, so I'm sure lots of people sign up without realizing just by trying to use their printer software. Anyway, that ink stops working if you stop paying.
Yeah I looked into it, some models require the HP+ subscription to work. That's only on some of their loss leader models but still misleading, so that's still shitty
They come with a cartridge and "six months free ink" if you register.
But if you register and then six months later realize you never use it and you cancel...
They lock the cartridge
Yeah no thanks on ink subscription. Also, my printer still works great... but HP forgot how to write software apparently so now I use a 3rd party android print app. Ugh. I'm kind of fed up with the HP experience lately.
Yes. Co-worker got a super cheap printer, and then tried to cancel the ink subscription. turns out he couldn't just buy ink from them, and his printer was useless.
Well I guess I will keep my 13 years old b/w laser printer then. Still works like a charm. There is no dried ink, no DRM, nothing. And it just works even it has not turned on for a year.
Honestly just having a laser/led printer removes so many of the problems with printers. All inkjets should be replaced.
Idk about LED printers but ink jet is better than laser for printing photos. For general use I think laser should be the standard over ink jet, definitely.
If I need photos printed, I'll go to a shop. It doesn't happen that often and, frankly, inkjets suck so badly that I honestly doubt I'd save time or money owning one. All the headaches I've dealt with just trying to print basic stuff like shipping labels and documents disappeared the moment I bought a Brother laser printer.
I hate these things. I took one out to an abandoned reservoir and blew it to pieces with a .12 gauge shotgun. Very therapeutic.
"PC load letter? What the fuck does that mean?"
It was .12 gauge triple ought buckshot Office Space.
I would never buy another HP printer, except for target practice.
Well if your going that route (and I'm ok with it) go with Mossberg 590 Shockwave. I run mine w/ double ought w/ a sidesaddle of more rounds. I don't have a HP printer but I did take a faulty firewall that would get me called out every other night for hanging to the range. It got a lovely sprinkling of 7.62x39 and x54r, it was from the heart, true love.
Then it went to the E-Recyclers, got to be Earth conscience.
I was using a Mossberg. I eventual stopped doing it because it was blowing glass and toxic circuit board stuff all over the place.
Buy a brother printer instead. They may be a bit more expensive, but their easy mantainance and the amount of bootleg ink you can find online makes it worth the extra price.
Last time this came up, people were quick to bring up brother, and others (and that was new) to mention that brother started to do the same crap (limiting 3rd party toners). So I really don't know what to think of them anymore.
I could be in the market for a b&w laser printer/scanner soon so I'll keep an eye on replies here.
Brother pulls similar shit. My brother printer day my ink is out, and prints shittty pages, but the test page it prints is absolutely gorgeous.
I still use the same printer I got in 2004. Hp color laser jet 2600n. Highly recommend. It’s large and loud and toner is pricey. But toner is widely available, you can easily get 2,000+ pages out of a toner cart, I’ve generally found it to have native driver support in macOS and Linux at this point, it has an Ethernet jack so you can print over network, etc. the toner is also much more reasonable if you only print black and white, the $$$ is if you change all the toner carts at once.
It does have a toner tracking chip but you can override that in the firmware. they used to actually allow you to do such a thing!! It’s not even like a secret developer menu thing, it’s just an option you can pick although iirc it warns you print quality may suffer. or you can just buy blank chips for a few bucks, it’s just a little plastic tab that you break off and then you slide the old one out and the new one in. But that’s more for if you plan to refill the toner carts which I do not recommend; it’s a messy process where you have to burn/cut a hole in the cart, refill with powder, then seal it with tape. I tried it a few times and it was a huge mess and lead to leaky carts; not worth saving the $50 bucks or whatever
I’m pretty sure in like 2040 my house will be an anachronism of old tech like this. It’s already mostly there with some notable exceptions. If I have to subscribe I won’t buy it; if I buy it and find out I need to subscribe I’ll return it or sell it. I will pay month by month for items that justify a need for ongoing payment (like I pay once a year for Usenet access). But I don’t think I am in the target demo for basically any company lol
FWIW I've an $100 brother laser (2140) the same age. The toner cartridges are $20 on eBay. I've bought two or three in the last 20 years.
When I last did a TCO analysis of printers brothers came out on top by a big margin.
I've done a few TCO's over the years... Brother is almost always up there...
I've had my current color laserjet for damn near a decade... bought it used/refurbed from them. I just hope brother doesn't try what the others are doing.
black toner is cheap, everything else is expensive as hell.
But yes, toner printers are probably your best option for cheap printing.
Pretty sure toner is cheaper than what HP charges for ink.
I had an ancient laserjet for years and HP stopped making toner. Wished I had kept it and used 3rd party toner but I heard about others not having great experiences with that.
That said our old OfficeJet 8600 is still going great and no subscriptions.
How it is legal to charge a subscription for a device like that is beyond me. Need to pass state laws to stop that bullshit I think. That's the only way that might actually be remotely feasible.
Same, except it's an Officejet 6600 from early 2010. I use third party ink cartridges in it. Fuck those expensive "genuine" ink cartridges!
I switched to one of the Epson EcoTanks after the HP Ink got super expensive (Over $150 to replace all 4 cartridges). Printer was $$$ but the ink in bottles ($15 a pop, Costco sells them all in a pack for $40) is cheap enough that for the in-frequent printing we do at home (My partner uses it more than me for making buttons and stuff)
At this point I'm afraid to update anything because it will turn into a debilitating subscription fee. One is whatever, but 50 of them is insane, and that's kinda where it's going. Monthly fee for breathing next.
Remember when mr krabs tried to make them pay for every little thing while at work
++ for brother. Still running my mfc j470 ink jet purchased in 2013. I purchased it because of their support of Linux and Android. I've NEVER used official ink cartridges besides what came with it. it's printed 6900 pages
Except for the original deskjet they had back in the early 90s, I haven't touched HP, on purpose anyways, since then. I hate their printers, their computers, and their software. Nothing about their stuff works properly and has been garbage for me.
Damn you made me nostalgic now, still remembering the HP Deskjet 695C that I used with Windows 3.11 and the drivers you had in multiple floppy disks. It just never stopped working, until we replaced it with a Brother laser printer.
Their measuring equipment and calculators are some of the best. The rest is as sad as you make it sound.
My in laws bought one of those damn HP’s. It had an issue 1 month in and required the special setup cartridges to re-run the wizard. But those had already been used up and discarded. It wouldn’t f-ing work with regular cartridges, and their subscription wouldn’t let them get more setup carts. Literal 1 month old e waste
What is this "setup cartridge" and who thought it would be a good idea?
I have absolutely no idea why anyone buys inkjet printers or cartridge razors. There are perfectly good alternatives that don't try and force you into a subscription model.
I've been wanting a laser printer for home use, can you recommend one?
It's always funny to see content creators you watch appear randomly somewhere else Wendigoon is a great long form content creator for unfiction and conspiracy theories and here he is talking about a printer.
True I followed him because I loved his conspiracy iceberg playlist.
His video about the Waco siege was what really got me into his videos.
Yeh very weird for me as I discovered this YouTuber last week.
Business class laser printers are where it's at. I don't get why people still buy inkjets.
It really does depend on the quantity you print and what you are printing. Some like my self only print a few pages a year. Ink also gives a much better finish when it comes to photo printing.
Okay so I see all this talk about ducky printers but if I want one that's not trying to guck me over which would that be?
Brother printers are fantastic. They cost a but more upfront but actually work
Additional hot take: get a laser printer for your normal documents and just get photos printed somewhere else. The money you'd spend buying 4x6 photos on someone else's ink and paper would probably be less than you'll pay for color ink unless you're an absolute photo printing maniac. And a laser printer toner cartridge will last you like 1,000+ pages.
Agreed, my wife and I got a Brother laser printer about 3 years ago and I still haven't had to change the toner. It's been telling me the toner is low for months but still keeps going strong. Granted we don't print a TON, but we print enough that the initial cost of a laser printer made sense.
This is the way to do it. Getting your photos printed by somebody else will be tons cheaper AND give you better results.
Second this. Bought a Dell one 10 years ago and it's still working like a charm! Got me through all of Uni Ani besides the finicky diva driver it's just amazing!
Yep, I bought a Brother laser printer for $120 a few years ago. I don't use it super often, but it's been reliable and easy to use whenever I need it. I've never had to replace the toner. It just works.
Is it good for someone who constantly needs to print documents
This is just anecdotal, but I work in IT and I can’t recall a brother printer ever giving me a headache. HP is obviously the worst.
HP is obviously the worst.
HP is special kind of printers shitcompany. They probably spent years on doing market research to understand what people NOT want, so they can do exactly that. 😂
HP used to make rock solid laser printers back in the late 90s and 00s. Shame what they turned into.
I recently had an HP printer to set up for a client (IT as well), and it only had USB 2.0 and Ethernet interfaces. The printer needed an internet connection and activation online before it would even let you print over USB, and of course the Ethernet port was dead and wouldn't connect, so now it's just a shitty white brick with HP stamped on it. At least they were able to return but how does that make sense in practice?
A laser printer is best no matter if you print a lot or a little.
Brother will generally be an excellent choice. While HP will generally be probably the worst choice you can make.
Edit:
Just to be clear, laser is better if you print a little, because the laser cartridge doesn't dry, and can last a decade. While even if you don't print a lot, you will need to replace ink cartridges regularly, because they dry out.
If you print a lot, the laser printer is both more reliable, faster and cheaper to use.
As long as you don’t need color a laser printer is way better for printing documents.
I love my color laser. (Again, props to Brother). It takes off-brand toner with no fuss and hasn't failed to print yet.
I don't know that I would print photos with it, but it's more than sufficient for everyday documents and even game manuals.
Needed something to print the occasional document for bureaucracy stuff, and I also got a Brother printer a while ago. Used, laser (very important for good value imo), 100 bucks. An older model, black-and-white but with wifi support. Didn't need to register my license, create a cloud account or whatever other shit companies come up with these days, I could just turn it on and it worked.
They're incredibly reliable. I've had the same Brother laser printer for a good 15 years now. Possibly longer. Old enough that there's no wifi or bluetooth options, but it's a network printer because it has ethernet.
I made my old brother a wifi printer with the help of a raspberry pi.
Second the recommendation for a Brother. I've rarely had problems with them. Above all do NOT buy an HP printer because they come with every form of nickel-and-dime known to mankind.
Alternatively, for the once in a blue moon that the average person needs to actually print things in the modern day, bring your local library a fiver and use their printer. This is the way I do things, because I rarely ever need to print a document. When I do, it's a ten minute drive and a five dollar or less cost and then I don't have to bother with owning a printer.
But in general, Brother is a good brand, and a laser printer will be less hassle and easier to manage than an inkjet, but will have a bit higher purchase cost.
Yes on the Libraries! Libraries are often incredibly cheap for printing, and most of them have an online uploading tool so you can print things from your home computer or phone without any hassle. Plus, at least at the library I work at, we have incredibly high quality printers and your docs / photos will come out a lot better than how they would if you were at home, as well as a scanner that can give you a 600dpi TIFF file
Just please try not to hand us a twenty for something that costs 1/100th of that - we often don't have enough small bills to make change. (Or do and put it on your account for later, if that's an offered option, or better yet donate the remainder 😉)
A lot of my printing happens when parents visit. They love to print everything. I'm much more likely to use the scanner on my Brother printer than actually print.
Brother ist the way to go. Also OK for Linux in my experience
From my experience, printer support on Linux is often better than on Windows because all the drivers are included in the kernel and you don't have to go driver hunting on obscure websites.
Source: my dad worked at HP so most of my computers and printers growing up were HP.
it was an amazing company that did legendary, pioneering research and development and made outstanding research tools. the HP of today is the result of 50 years of mergers, acquisitions, conglomeration, and violent shittification.
The HP you mention still exists today as Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, a separate company from HP Inc, which is the consumer-facing brand. It's very similar to what Motorola did in splitting into enterprise and consumer companies.
Fun fact! Motorola started out as a company making record players specifically for cars. The big name in record players at the time was Victrola, and since they were making them for motorcars they called themselves MotoRola.
learn to print to pdf and save the file. can always print but even better you can email it etc. brother laser scanner is best I've owned. son bought me one of these, "Brother MFC-L2710DW series Printer" to replace a still working brother laser 2170w, 10 yo. I don't print a lot but wife prints every receipt which end up in the trash
Fuck HP
Maybe not the same, as its more of a service contract. At work, we have had a site which has been closed for 2 years. for 2 whole years, every week the vending machine company arrive, try to get in, can't, ring us, and we say "that site is closed".
Well we finally after 2 years got them to remove that site from their system?
Their response? to remove ALL food from ALL vending machines at all our sites, to remove the coffee machines, and to remove the water coolers. The water coolers are especially egregious, as they just sit there doing nothing. they are from tap water, so not even replacing bottles etc.
Sometimes subscriptions are useful. I wish the BBC TV licence in the UK was a subscription. I cannot justify spending £150 on a licence for an entire year, just to watch a month of shows. but other times it sucks. I just want Microsoft office. I don't care if it will cost me £200. Right now my favourite game is subscription based, but i don't think i can justify the £9.99 a month, or £50 for a whole year. £50 for lifetime access? maybe.
LibreOffice has more functionality and it's actually free
With the current situation, no way you are getting a lifetime access. Companies have discovered that people actually pay for subscriptions even if they don't add anything worthwhile to keep you renewing.
You are just renting and there is no option to buy.
You can still buy liscenses for office. I just bought a key off a shady vendor for $30 and have a fully activated, non subscription office 2022
HP Printers is definitely one of the worst printers right now; I hate you need a account to use your HP printers
You can still run the old software without account, as long as you never upgrade. Some third party file hosters keep it around. We got an HP at work and I refuse to give them even my business email.
buy laser printers. ink is pretty cheap and as we refill cartridge. i have a hp and and never suffer these subscription shit.
Buy Brother laser printers, specifically.
Even worse, if you subscribe to the ink service with an HP printer, it will update the firmware. But if you decide to cancel the service, they don't change the firmware so you now own a brick.
HP certainly needs fucked with a pineapple, Epson otoh, I'm not so sure, I have two eco-tank printers and have had no issues with them whatsoever.
I have an ecotank too. No BS subscription shenanigans, painless to get it working. What impresses me is the lack of it breaking if it sits even months between uses, usually not even needing to be cleaned.
And since ink can be bought in bulk, it's cheap to run too.
Epson are ok as long as you remember they're descended from Tamagochis. Leave them alone for a month and they'll sometimes clog up for ever.
I was so sad to find out that Samsung pulled out of the printer business a few years back. I've had a Samsung color laser (it's actually LED, but it looks like any other laser printer) for over 10 years and it has been nearly flawless all this time. I don't print a ton and on an ink jet printer, then cartridges would have dried out between the few times I would actually need to print something. Then you'd waste like 1/2 the ink just to unclog it and realign everything. But this Samsung just doesn't skip a beat if I let it sit for 3 months - it fires right up if I need something. And unlike HP's offerings, the drivers for this printer aren't like 2 GBs in size with a ton of bloatware.
Brother is still a good contender here for laser printing - I've had a new color laser from Brother for a year or so and I've had zero problems with getting it to work on Linux, the toner is cheap, and the print quality is great.
Won't give HP and Canon another dime so long as Brother is quality.
I hope to never have to replace this Samsung, but Brother is one of the few brands I would consider. I remember back in the day Epson made the best print-quality ink jets. No idea if they make laser printers these days, but I might consider them as well.
Meanwhile my laser Kyocera prints full color full duplex and doesn't try any funny business.
I got a printer where I fill up the ink tank myself. Fuck all these other printers.
This should be illegal, hell I have a TP-Link router and it’s got a subscription model for the features, that a decade ago were basic features of a router that you’re spending hundreds of dollars on.
Unless we make it unpopular from a media/social standpoint, they’ll keep it up. Too make it worse, the router won’t even allow you to manually choose your own channels, you have to let it decide for you. Even if you have an IT background and can decipher the better channel, it decides to choose heavily trafficked channels on all bands. Let me make me own mistakes and learn, I don’t want to be forced like an invalid in a nursing home.
The printer business is tantamount to the gangster era. Fucking thieves.
debit card on file had expired
How do you input your credit card into the printer? Or is this some printer-lease-contract situation?
I just bought a Brother laser printer for my dad, because he needed help changing the ink cartridges, after having printed maybe 8 pages in ½ a year. It's just too stupid to use ink printers today, no matter if you print a little or a lot.
I'm guessing the laser cartridge will last my dad a decade. lol
And it uses dry toner, so it'll never clog because you didn't use it!
Ford’s patent document also mentioned playing annoying audio meant to bother drivers dodging payments.
The patent filing also clarified that late payments might result in a driver given partial access to their vehicle during the week so they can earn money for financing, Insider reports.
Sounds like they want to be in court a lot. There's no way any of that is safe.
Oh yeah. How long until the vehicle repossesses itself when a child is in the car? The lawsuits would be massive.
Ford’s patent application mentions the possibility of payment plans for financially struggling drivers and exceptions for when a person is hospitalized or out of the country.
Same thing happened to my mom's HP except that they sent her the wrong cartridges so she closed her account. They bricked her printer. I bought her a Brother.
It very likely is tied to the firmware that bricked HPs around the world in May or so. HP is silent on it and customer service isn't acknowledging the issue.
Welcome to the future you now have to pay a sub or learn how to jail break your printer to get full use of it owner ship is almost dead folks time to break up big printer so you can refill your ink cartridges and print without a subscription
This is only supposed to happen if you stop paying for Instant Ink. Buying a new cartridge should still work. I'd take the printer back to the shop you bought it from and tell them its broken.
…I’ve somehow lived this long without realizing that HP printers apparently need subscriptions to run now.
My HP only works when I don't need it anymore. It's always doing shit when I want to orint something. It takes forever and then i just give up..
Most don’t. There is a subscription service where you get ink every quarter automatically and you can’t skip shipments, but you have to choose that. Otherwise, most businesses have leased copy machines and printers for a long time now. Outsourcing maintenance can save money and simplify office administration.
So happy now that I've been too lazy to let my printer update anything for the last year.
Seems related
Heh. Another symptom of the second gilded age we now find ourselves experiencing.
Incredibly annoying. Especially with all these apps that want to charge you monthly. Fucking nuts thinking I'm gonna pay 30 a year for the rest of my life to look at radar.
*buy it
Yesterday i got the standard setup steps from windows after booting. I use to skip them most of the time, because i don t want to use edge and so on and sometimes they reapear. Yesterday i thought, i'll do them now, then never again this will bother me. When i got to the point of logging into my microsoft account i could not remember the password and had no possibility on the gui to get back and skip all, leaving me seemingly unable to use my own frickin computer. As i got more and more angry i clicked on "forgot password" which sends me an email with a code. I see the email appear on my phone and without even a chance of entering the code it sent me back to the enter password prompt. Even more angry and cursing to myself i pressed the forgort password text again leaving me with the same result. As i was close to exploding, my computer somehow decided to show "You are finished!" like he knew i had enough.
I fucking hate this shit with passion and purposely setup my PC without internet connected every damn time I format.
I once connected to WiFi during the setup and got stuck in the same place and I wanted to burn my house down.
Basically users Apple account gets flagged for “fraudulent problems”. User loses access to all “bought”/rented content associated with Apple account. CS is useless. CS manager useless as well.
It’s a well documented story with any content platform. This is far from being an isolated issue.
Personally, piracy and ripping Blu-rays is back on the table for me and using a media server only accessible via VPN.
I was actually thinking of getting an Apple account and backing my files up to their cloud. Glad I read this before I made that mistake.
Other than the recent nonsense, this is why I cancelled Netflix and went back to pirating. Content leaves unexpectedly? Not on my Nas.
I've taken to de-DRMing any e-books I bought from Amazon for that reason.
Also, the "You can only view this book on 3 devices" -- yeah .... fuck off.
Calibre + DeDRM plugin + KFX plugin. Perfectly legal too, as long as you aren't distributing them.
Btw, did you know of Weightless Books and Smashwords?
They may not have as many ebooks as Amazon, but they do offer DRM free ebooks, and may be worth keeping in mind to check before going straight to Amazon.
Thanks. I had a collection from several years ago of Amazon books, though these days it's my absolute last choice for anything.
Except when I accidentally rm -rf the media folder but shhhhhhhh
Old school pirating or new school? Last time I remember pirates was like... Napster, Limewire, Kazaa... Then went to TPB before it got raided like 8 times... What's the current? Is it still torrenting with proxies?
I just got my automated pirating machine set up!
Here's the wiki for the *arr apps!
Set up your profiles for Radarr/Sonarr to pick the quality of release you want (1080p, min/max file size, etc)
Feed Radarr/Sonarr your qbittorrent info, nzbget & Usenet info
They will automatically search the indexes (I use 1337x for torrents & nzbgeek for Usenet) for the files that fit your parameters, download it, and organize it.
All you have to do is point Plex at the output folders and BAM, automated pirating.
I even took it a step further and set up Doplarr - a Discord bot that handles requests. Now friends/family can ping the bot with their movie/show requests and it'll sync up to Radarr/Sonarr and add their requests!
Oh, the high seas are very, very busy these days. Still a bit difficult for the non technical user, but there is buried treasure out there.
Torrents are still around, lots of sites out there for them.
Content leaving isn't a problem. If they give up some things they have more money to get the rights to other content, and usually by the time it leaves I've either watched it or don't want to. If it's one of the rare things I want to watch several times, I can just buy it. But cracking down on password sharing is ridiculous. They've been functioning fine with people sharing passwords. I bet the current pricing accounts for password sharing. But now people in college can't be on the family netflix? Pure greed.
Content leaving is totally a problem. I’ve lost track of the number of times my spouse and I say, “Oh hey, what about we finally watch xyz that’s been in our queue for ages? Yeah that seems like a good one for Friday pizza night! …oh, it’s vanished from our queue, hooray.”
It’s not my full time job to keep tabs on what’s coming and going from the damn entertainment service that I hope to use in my ever dwindling reserves of free time. Especially when there’s alternative means available that are not too difficult to use.
Shit that should be fucking illegal, this.
If they were not aware of it before buying then it is illegal.
You don’t actually need to be aware of it. Because you said you were aware of it, when you clicked Accept on the EULA, and on page 62 of the EULA it said they have the right to disable your printer remotely at any time and for any reason.
In decent nations, an EULA is considered an attempt by the seller to, after the purchase, change the terms of the implicit contract which was the sale, so it's has no legal standing whatsoever.
Absolutelly, the seller can set contract terms before the sale is done (and even then there are lots of limitations to avoid things like bait & switch, so it usualy has to be pretty clear and upfront and there are certain rights that a retail buyer simply cannot loose, even contractually), but never after the sale has been done.
EULAs only have legal standing in a few places, including a few States in the US.
When ever I am forced to sign something (like some contract addendum for my job) I write that I don't understand anything on that paper, or now I write it in email before e-signing.
Word
It should be. But you agreed to it. Gotta print out that child support declaration in 20 minutes before your lawyer has to go to court? Hey fuck you consumer. Have a medical emergency and need to print something to save a patient? Fuck you consumer.
Someone should sue them for everything they are. Because they are thieves of the highest order.
When does an agreement become null and void when the knowledge and time needed to understand the terms, and especially whether they even stand in the various jurisdictions, is simply unfeasible for a layperson to be expected to possess?
In a similar vein, if an agreement requires a lawyer on call/retainer to interpret, what court besides a bought court would possibly uphold such a standard?
Fwiw I'm not asking this with the expectation of you personally having the answers, but to further highlight the absurdity of many of these so-called agreements.
EULAs and TOSs have been tossed out in court before under the logic that you need to understand an agreement for it to be legally binding and that not reading the agreement inherently prevents you from understanding it.
Can you provide case law? I'm interested.
Wikipedia has an overview and their enforceability varies pretty dramatically across the US (which is why many such agreements attempt to specify which states or courts they must be litigated against in).
In most of the World EULAs have no legal standing whatsoever because they're an attempt by the seller to after the sale change the terms of the sale.
It's mainly in the US that those things aren't instantly dismissed by the court as legally meaningless, but then again the US is way less consumer friendly that, for example, pretty much all of Europe.
Third voice for a Brother. I used to work an office supply store and they were by far the most reliable printers we sold.
I’ve had my Brother printer for several years and never had an issue. I don’t have the color one, just black and white. Would buy again.
I treat my Brother laser like a rented uhaul truck and it just keeps going.
I have one of the complicated brother ones that scans and prints, including double sides, in colour, and it's a tank. Works fine in Linux too. Connected or through the network.
It even does fax, which someone, somewhere probably finds useful.
That was because of a misunderstanding. Brother started a subscription service and people assumed that meant you had to pay a monthly fee to use the printers like with HP. Instead, it’s a toner subscription like Dollar Shave Club or Amazon’s Subscribe and Save where they auto-send a new toner at your requested interval.
I use cheap Chinese knockoff toner in my Brother laser
Saw some people posting recently they sold out also
I also heard a rumor about something somewhere, that maybe something might have happened. But I'm not sure. /S
I just installed a Brother printer for my dad, absolutely zero bullshit.
Yes, some of their firmware updates started breaking aftermarket toner cartridges and support said "that sucks" like it was very intentional. It seems constrained to a few of the MFC color models more than anything tho I've never had any issues other than bad wifi modules in the b&w home office lasers. Which if you're using wifi on a printer that's your own damn fault lol
Eh, I am all about wired networking wherever I can, but my awesome old Brother laser printer gets used like once per month or two, and it lives off in a far corner of the house where it isn’t taking up valuable space. Plus it could work with a tiny fraction of the LAN bandwidth available to it.
On wi-fi it stays, lol. I think I may have had to reconnect it once in the decade+ we’ve had it. Otherwise, the printout is ready before I can even walk to the printer (unless it has a ton of pages, naturally).
I don’t even know how old it is at this point. I just know it’s over a decade because I didn’t buy a third party toner cartridge until 2014.
Yeah I'm not sure whether this is shenanigans or an actual problem Brother is managing here. The post does mention there are problems with incorrect response to temperature management with the unoriginal cartridge, which again could theoretically cause harm.
I honestly wasn't aware unoriginal cartridges were a thing for Brother printers, since the originals tend to be quite reasonable.
But to continue using the unoriginal cartridges he can as the answer states, use BRAdmin to downgrade the firmware.
So it's not like Brother is attempting to take control of your printer like HP likes to do.
I'm sure HP didn't ramp up their bullshit from 0 to 11 overnight, the question now is how much we can trust Brother not to be walking the same path and mandating more and more restrictive firmwares in the future. I think them opensourcing drivers and firmwares would help mitigate that, and if their business model is really to be that sole good guy and antagonize the likes of HP/Epson/... they don't have anything to lose and a lot to win (or as a minimum, myself as a customer).
HP has done the ink cartridge shenanigans for more than 30 years now. They just recently found a new trick. Apart from that nothing has really changed.
I am not aware Brother ever did similar things to basically trick or cheat their customers. Most other vendors are somewhere in between. AFAIK none are as bad as HP.
My dad is running his Brother HL-1212W printer on the open source Linux driver, works perfectly fine, and I was actually surprised about the high quality of his prints for such a cheap printer.
AFAIK Brother is among the best regarding opensource drivers too.
All this printer talk almost makes me want to buy a new printer. My current printer is a 14 year old Samsung color laser, and the print quality is not that stellar anymore. ;) The Samsung open source driver kind of suck for this printer. There isn't even a driver for this specific model CLP-325W, so I have to choose another Samsung printer that is (mostly) compatible.
The Brother printer was completely plug and play. The system recognized the printer, and installed the correct open source driver, no hassle at all.
I've had the same brother inkjet printer for 14 years now, and it still works great.
I just read an article the other day that said LG is about to start charging subscription fees for washing machines 🙄
I will go old school and start washing my clothes against a rock in the river before I'll pay a fucking subscription to use my own washing machine
That is crazy.
Like a damn laundromat. So is LG gonna supply water and power too? Wtf are the charging for? The right to buy their product? Lmao. Fuck off.
Go analog. Real analog. Sticks and stones baby.
The article said the subscription was for "software updates" which really seems like something they should provide for free anyway so you're really just paying for the privilege to use their precious machine that you already paid for lol
Software updates for what? New ways to wash your clothes? I only use like two or three settings in mine
Knowing LG it's probably updates to make it play Jingle Bells at Christmas time or something lol
Sounds like paywalling security updates.
Those pesky hackers turning off my washing machine when I'm trying to do laundry!
Well, if your washing machine was connected to the internet you would also need security updates. Of course the only reason you'd connect your washing machine to the internet would be in order to get said security updates in the first place.
Great job creating a need by developing the fix for it in the first place.
Potentially more serious than that. A poorly protected washing machine (or any other IOT device) can serve as an attack vector into your local network.
You're not wrong, but why the hell does a washing machine need to be Internet connected in the first place?
And since the first answer is always "So it can tell me when the cycle is done," set a frickin timer if it's that big of a deal.
I think it's for "smart" washing machines that you can control from your phone etc. So that's likely what the "updates" would be related too...why you'd need to control your washing machine from afar is beyond me but some people love smart gadgets and will by anything that connects to their phone.
I hate the make everything a smart appliance trend... Grills, washers and dryers, dishwashers, coffee machines... WHY? No one needs this shit.
There are cases for it, eg programming a wash to occur when energy demand is low.
In my opinion we should be pursuing technologies to do this that don't require an internet connection. Even being able to program a schedule into the machine and it can detect if something is in there or not. That would be enough since energy usage follows a relatively consistent plot. These companies don't give a shit about anything other than coming up with ways to make more money.
The cost of the laundry subscription is likely to vastly out cost the energy savings it may provide.
Huh. I do my best to avoid anything that connects to my phone.
Fucking software updates for a washing machine? If my washing machine needs a software update, that should be a fucking recall. A washing machine should be a fully embedded system imo.
It's updates for the cybersecurity that exists strictly only because it is connected to the internet which in turn is something that exists strictly only because there's software updates.
Megaman Battle Network was prophetic. Terrorist will flood your house using a phone.
Why would anyone connect a washing machine to the internet??? To play Skyrim?
I hope this is rage bait because I can’t think of any reason a washing machine would ever need a software update. Is it like a smart machine? If so then just let me disable it
what is the difference between a subscription and a never ending loan
With a loan you actually receive money at the start.
A loan usually comes with full support and warranty service for the duration of the loan. With a subscription I bet you get to pay without receiving these benefits in return.
Yeah. I think I'd rather employ someone to wash my clothes for me than pay a subscription
man the world is so fucked up that I was more surprised that they weren't already doing this
Every time I think printers can't get any worse, they get worse.
What's next? are they going to have to scan your anus to confirm that it's actually you printing things? I shouldn't give them ideas.
By the way, I'm sure there's a way to get into the firmware of the printer to disconnect it from that centralized service.
Or get the brother printer while they're still good.
Printed ads.
Yes
I can picture it, if you don't want ads printed at the bottom of every page you have to subscribe.
I would think it plays an ad on the screen and you have to touch it to start so it knows you're there and doesn't print until the ad is finished.
Oh god, imagine your printer waking you up at 3 am as it spits out an ad for Arby's. But hey, ink at half price!
The firmware will ask for a tip every 10 pages.
Please drink a verification can
"PLAYER ATTEMPTING TO STEAL ONLINE PLAY!!!"
mom just walked in the room
If they could get away with it, they would have made paper that only works on their printer, and it would be more expensive than normal paper but you have to use it.
Why not just not allow it to connect to any internet and use wired printing?
Even better!
A whole other brown ring of quality
Ready boys? Say it with me, now.
BROTHER👏LASER👏PRINTER👏
I love the fact that brother basically does no marketing as far as I know. They just end up shining like a diamond because they make a generally good product and everyone else around them makes absolute trash.
I only bought a brother printer because of recommendations from reddit. It's so much better than my old hp inkjet that randomly started asking me to sign in in order to print or scan.
Why tf would I need to sign in to my HP account online in order to print in my own fucking home.
Yep, totally. In the vile shit that printer business is, Brother seems to be the only brand to not be straight-up anti consumer. I have a Brother all-in-one machine at work, it works out of the box on all devices, scans with whatever app, doesn't push some bullshit custom nagware every time you print and, best of all, ACCEPTS NONAME TONERS without saying a single word of complain. It doesn't refuse to print, doesn't even mention that you may get worse quality prints (yeah right). It just prints and we don't have to think about it and I really appreciate it.
I shit you not I have a brother laser printer that I don't even know how old it is. My dad pulled out of our basement and cleaned it up and got it running so I could use it in college back in 2009. Skip ahead to 2016 and I'm using it for the table cards at our wedding. It's 2023 and I still use it from time to time. I've only changed the toner once and cleaned it a handful of times, but that sums up the entirety of the maintenance while I've had it. I have to plug it into my computer via USB which isn't so bad. But they don't have a driver available for OSX anymore so it's now a PC only printer. I'll keep using it until it stops working or isn't compatible with any computer anymore.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Brother are also going down the subscription path.
No joke. I had HP and I knew Brother was painfree experience and when I was buying said HP, I completely forgot about them. Few years forward my old HP avoided destruction by sheer luck and my brother's will to try and tame it. These days I have Brother laser printer and it takes whatever you throw at it without complaints. It's so obedient am having issues accepting such behavior.
Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it's fine - The Verge
(or a laser printer in general, Brother is just a Known Brand)
That article was a surprisingly funny read. Thanks for sharing it.
HP can make good printers. It has the right hardware, capabilities and price (Of the printers, not the ink) to be a very good product. It's just their obnoxiously asshole-design software that is designed to make you to keep paying for using a product you already own.
Can confirm. Support brother for their ethics and quality.
The driver support for Linux is just awful. I couldn't get the Brother 7055W to work on Arch. It worked on Fedora though, but I don't have that anymore.
I gave up also. The entire software experience is just shit and buggy as hell. Avoid.
Subscriptions are out of fucking hand.
It has been normalized by Streaming Services. Sad situation.
Looks like pirating is back on the menu, boys!
Never stopped my friend...
What the fuck is wrong with people? It's been common knowledge that hp is trash for decades now. The whole idea of capitalism is that the bad products fail when customers go to the competitors who do a better job, but hp is not a monopoly and there are better competitors that exist, but people keep in buying HP because frankly, they are too fucking stupid. Capitalism is a lie because consumers are too stupid to pick the best products.
The average person is not invested into printers and just needs a printer to occasionally print something. It's not something they know a lot about and in the store they see a cheap printer from a well known brand that gave them good experiences with other products. It makes total sense for them to buy it. I'm sure they will know what products/brands to avoid in other areas that are unknown to you.
To add to yours, when the person who isn’t up on printers goes to a store like walmart that has 4 different HP models on the shelf ranging from $40 to $90, one cannon for $80, and one brother for $120, they will be much more apt to get the HP because they just don’t know.
My hp laptop works fine, but yeah hp printers are terrible. They are very slow to print, and the ink was quite expensive.
The simplest proof that the Homo Economicus human model used in the mathematical models that justify Free Market Theory is complete total bollocks is that the Marketing that has no mention of the qualities of the product whatsoever, actually works (perfumes and cars are prime examples but there are tons of examples for consumer tech also).
That and some people from Behavioural Economics (the only part of that domain which is actually scientific) have shown with various experiments that there are lots of ways in which people are not rational in their economic decisions, hence not at all the "pure personal upside maximizer" which is the Homo Economicus model.
People sticking to a well-known name such as HP is probably down to the effect of familiarity (at times known as "name recognition") - maybe one of the biggest irrationalities in human economic behaviour and one of the pathways most commonly exploited by marketing.
And for example, the products that sell the most on amazon are not the best products, they're the ones that give amazon the biggest advertising budget.
Most people just buy a printer, they're not doing research on the subject. And if they're not using computers day to day, or for work, they're even less likely to know what shit hp is up to.
There was a time when Hewlet Packard products were the best, them it became HP and...
HP printers are now pure scamming dog shit. The HP printer division must have been taken over by criminals.
The first laser printer I worked with was a HP 4L and it was fantastic. So fantastic, that we implemented it company wide, and they were close to immortal. The last of them got killed off when we got follow-me print.
If you want a decent laser printer today, stay clear of HP and get a Brother instead.
I've been saying for about 15 years now -- you'd have to be a masochist to buy HP printers. Why do people keep enabling these shits? You just encourage them to be even worse. Don't stand for even a little of their bullshit and they will change or die. You make a noose for your own neck.
HP have been on my shitlist for so long. Everyone needs to have a shitlist. Anti consumer behaviour should never be forgotten.
On a side note, Vodafone are also on my shitlist. I did give them a reprieve once only to be reminded of why they were on my shitlist.
People, get your shit together.
I still don't buy Sony products after that time they booby trapped their CDs to install malware on everyone's computers.
This is true if everybody do it, otherwise nothing will change. As we know there are too many people on the planet and too many idiots among them that will buy these products and so company can't get away with everything nowadays. Look at Facebook, Twitter, reddit, hp. In my country there's a huge food company that put fucking poison in baby formulas, and killed some of them (and others with lifetime growth issues) and guess what? People stopped buying from them for 2 years, they pulled through and now they are one of the top companies.
People are still buying HP printers because there are no alternatives. In my experience Epson is the worst. The are all the same, and we have no alternative other than letting them fuck with us. And they know it.
Brother has been amazing. Good products, manufacturer support for all operating systems, no subscription bullshit.
No, I think that's blatantly wrong.
Idk if Brother is the best no-bullshit alternative, but it's definitely supposed to be a no-bullshit alternative.
Even if we had no other alternative, we could crowd-fund one.
Funny thing is, I know all of this and their bad behavior. I needed a new printer, ordered it but they didn't have it in stock so they asked me to change my order and offered HP with extra toner and all that. Half asleep I didn't even think twice. It was good price, extra toner.
From day one, nothing but problems until I broke the spell last year and got a Brother printer. Night and day in terms of quality and obedience.
I assume that's the case with many people. Cheap printer available right now or some local deals make it even better looking. Someone who doesn't know better like mom or pop buys it and there it is, pain. Then they realize what they have done and perhaps sell the damn thing, so pain jumps on someone else who just needed a cheap printer.
I've bought HP a few times, because the new printer was about the same price as buying new ink cartridges. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just being real. And I'm not proud
That's how they get ya. The high cost of being poor
Printer company are one of the biggest legalized scammer we currently have. Out water and some ink they make huge amount of Profit.
They are the Definition of making Gold out of shit.
Their laptops and desktops are terribly cheap too. Just avoid HP all together is everyone's best bet.
So they have all these printers connected to their servers I guess. Nice. Not a security risk at all.
Best printer I've owned has been Brother. But hp is always at the top of reviews, because hp pays them off I guess.
A shame to hear how far HP has fallen. Back in the day they had some solid, workhorse laser printers that delivered for years with no issues and pretty good toner efficiency. Based on what I've read here, I'm not likely to buy another.
HP peaked with the LaserJet IIIsi. It's all been downhill ever since.
Brother.
Love my brother laser printer. I've had it for years, print infrequently, haven't had to change toner once, and it works everytime I ask it to print on the first time
Turns out that didn't make the stock price go up fast enough to enable buy-backs for the execs.
I liked their reverse polish programmable calculators once.
Homeowner-targeted inkjet printers are evil, especially from HP. NEVER buy one that works a subscription into the purchase. They are garbage, and can disable your cartridges if you cancel your subscription.
HP is a horrible company. They make things up just to make life difficult for consumers. Everyone should boycott them I make sure none of the hardware the company I work for is HP as well.
"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy"
I guess this sentence is already became the reality in some countries if you can't even buy a god damn printer without it locking you out.
Terminal capitalism looks a lot like communism.
My mom's Amazon Halo that counts steps just shut off because they ended the service. I do not trust anything that requires live service at this point.
I'd also add so-called cloud storage. There is no magical cloud, there's only someone else's server/PC. Don't trust it with personal data ever, or make your own "cloud" instaed.
nobody should support companies that place restrictions on their hardware for RANSOM
This is generally for a business lease contract with HP. I've never seen this done to a printer the person buys outright, only for contracted leased "pay-per-use" printers.
HP does an ink subscription thing. They will try to trick you into it, too, so I'm sure lots of people sign up without realizing just by trying to use their printer software. Anyway, that ink stops working if you stop paying.
Yeah I looked into it, some models require the HP+ subscription to work. That's only on some of their loss leader models but still misleading, so that's still shitty
They come with a cartridge and "six months free ink" if you register.
But if you register and then six months later realize you never use it and you cancel...
They lock the cartridge
Yeah no thanks on ink subscription. Also, my printer still works great... but HP forgot how to write software apparently so now I use a 3rd party android print app. Ugh. I'm kind of fed up with the HP experience lately.
Yes. Co-worker got a super cheap printer, and then tried to cancel the ink subscription. turns out he couldn't just buy ink from them, and his printer was useless.
Well I guess I will keep my 13 years old b/w laser printer then. Still works like a charm. There is no dried ink, no DRM, nothing. And it just works even it has not turned on for a year.
Honestly just having a laser/led printer removes so many of the problems with printers. All inkjets should be replaced.
Idk about LED printers but ink jet is better than laser for printing photos. For general use I think laser should be the standard over ink jet, definitely.
If I need photos printed, I'll go to a shop. It doesn't happen that often and, frankly, inkjets suck so badly that I honestly doubt I'd save time or money owning one. All the headaches I've dealt with just trying to print basic stuff like shipping labels and documents disappeared the moment I bought a Brother laser printer.
I hate these things. I took one out to an abandoned reservoir and blew it to pieces with a .12 gauge shotgun. Very therapeutic.
"PC load letter? What the fuck does that mean?"
It was .12 gauge triple ought buckshot Office Space.
I would never buy another HP printer, except for target practice.
Well if your going that route (and I'm ok with it) go with Mossberg 590 Shockwave. I run mine w/ double ought w/ a sidesaddle of more rounds. I don't have a HP printer but I did take a faulty firewall that would get me called out every other night for hanging to the range. It got a lovely sprinkling of 7.62x39 and x54r, it was from the heart, true love.
Then it went to the E-Recyclers, got to be Earth conscience.
I was using a Mossberg. I eventual stopped doing it because it was blowing glass and toxic circuit board stuff all over the place.
Buy a brother printer instead. They may be a bit more expensive, but their easy mantainance and the amount of bootleg ink you can find online makes it worth the extra price.
Last time this came up, people were quick to bring up brother, and others (and that was new) to mention that brother started to do the same crap (limiting 3rd party toners). So I really don't know what to think of them anymore.
I could be in the market for a b&w laser printer/scanner soon so I'll keep an eye on replies here.
Brother pulls similar shit. My brother printer day my ink is out, and prints shittty pages, but the test page it prints is absolutely gorgeous.
In my experience laser Brothers are still less fussy and way more reliable and durable than competing brands.
I still use the same printer I got in 2004. Hp color laser jet 2600n. Highly recommend. It’s large and loud and toner is pricey. But toner is widely available, you can easily get 2,000+ pages out of a toner cart, I’ve generally found it to have native driver support in macOS and Linux at this point, it has an Ethernet jack so you can print over network, etc. the toner is also much more reasonable if you only print black and white, the $$$ is if you change all the toner carts at once.
It does have a toner tracking chip but you can override that in the firmware. they used to actually allow you to do such a thing!! It’s not even like a secret developer menu thing, it’s just an option you can pick although iirc it warns you print quality may suffer. or you can just buy blank chips for a few bucks, it’s just a little plastic tab that you break off and then you slide the old one out and the new one in. But that’s more for if you plan to refill the toner carts which I do not recommend; it’s a messy process where you have to burn/cut a hole in the cart, refill with powder, then seal it with tape. I tried it a few times and it was a huge mess and lead to leaky carts; not worth saving the $50 bucks or whatever
I’m pretty sure in like 2040 my house will be an anachronism of old tech like this. It’s already mostly there with some notable exceptions. If I have to subscribe I won’t buy it; if I buy it and find out I need to subscribe I’ll return it or sell it. I will pay month by month for items that justify a need for ongoing payment (like I pay once a year for Usenet access). But I don’t think I am in the target demo for basically any company lol
FWIW I've an $100 brother laser (2140) the same age. The toner cartridges are $20 on eBay. I've bought two or three in the last 20 years.
When I last did a TCO analysis of printers brothers came out on top by a big margin.
I've done a few TCO's over the years... Brother is almost always up there...
I've had my current color laserjet for damn near a decade... bought it used/refurbed from them. I just hope brother doesn't try what the others are doing.
black toner is cheap, everything else is expensive as hell. But yes, toner printers are probably your best option for cheap printing.
Pretty sure toner is cheaper than what HP charges for ink.
I had an ancient laserjet for years and HP stopped making toner. Wished I had kept it and used 3rd party toner but I heard about others not having great experiences with that.
That said our old OfficeJet 8600 is still going great and no subscriptions.
How it is legal to charge a subscription for a device like that is beyond me. Need to pass state laws to stop that bullshit I think. That's the only way that might actually be remotely feasible.
Same, except it's an Officejet 6600 from early 2010. I use third party ink cartridges in it. Fuck those expensive "genuine" ink cartridges!
I switched to one of the Epson EcoTanks after the HP Ink got super expensive (Over $150 to replace all 4 cartridges). Printer was $$$ but the ink in bottles ($15 a pop, Costco sells them all in a pack for $40) is cheap enough that for the in-frequent printing we do at home (My partner uses it more than me for making buttons and stuff)
At this point I'm afraid to update anything because it will turn into a debilitating subscription fee. One is whatever, but 50 of them is insane, and that's kinda where it's going. Monthly fee for breathing next.
Remember when mr krabs tried to make them pay for every little thing while at work
++ for brother. Still running my mfc j470 ink jet purchased in 2013. I purchased it because of their support of Linux and Android. I've NEVER used official ink cartridges besides what came with it. it's printed 6900 pages
Except for the original deskjet they had back in the early 90s, I haven't touched HP, on purpose anyways, since then. I hate their printers, their computers, and their software. Nothing about their stuff works properly and has been garbage for me.
Damn you made me nostalgic now, still remembering the HP Deskjet 695C that I used with Windows 3.11 and the drivers you had in multiple floppy disks. It just never stopped working, until we replaced it with a Brother laser printer.
Their measuring equipment and calculators are some of the best. The rest is as sad as you make it sound.
My in laws bought one of those damn HP’s. It had an issue 1 month in and required the special setup cartridges to re-run the wizard. But those had already been used up and discarded. It wouldn’t f-ing work with regular cartridges, and their subscription wouldn’t let them get more setup carts. Literal 1 month old e waste
What is this "setup cartridge" and who thought it would be a good idea?
I have absolutely no idea why anyone buys inkjet printers or cartridge razors. There are perfectly good alternatives that don't try and force you into a subscription model.
I've been wanting a laser printer for home use, can you recommend one?
Edit: color printer, preferably with a scanner.
It's always funny to see content creators you watch appear randomly somewhere else Wendigoon is a great long form content creator for unfiction and conspiracy theories and here he is talking about a printer.
True I followed him because I loved his conspiracy iceberg playlist.
His video about the Waco siege was what really got me into his videos.
Yeh very weird for me as I discovered this YouTuber last week.
THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW
Yeah, through an HP's building window
Epson, HP are assholes... Japanese are brothers
Business class laser printers are where it's at. I don't get why people still buy inkjets.
It really does depend on the quantity you print and what you are printing. Some like my self only print a few pages a year. Ink also gives a much better finish when it comes to photo printing.
Okay so I see all this talk about ducky printers but if I want one that's not trying to guck me over which would that be?
Brother printers are fantastic. They cost a but more upfront but actually work
Additional hot take: get a laser printer for your normal documents and just get photos printed somewhere else. The money you'd spend buying 4x6 photos on someone else's ink and paper would probably be less than you'll pay for color ink unless you're an absolute photo printing maniac. And a laser printer toner cartridge will last you like 1,000+ pages.
Agreed, my wife and I got a Brother laser printer about 3 years ago and I still haven't had to change the toner. It's been telling me the toner is low for months but still keeps going strong. Granted we don't print a TON, but we print enough that the initial cost of a laser printer made sense.
This is the way to do it. Getting your photos printed by somebody else will be tons cheaper AND give you better results.
Second this. Bought a Dell one 10 years ago and it's still working like a charm! Got me through all of Uni Ani besides the finicky diva driver it's just amazing!
Yep, I bought a Brother laser printer for $120 a few years ago. I don't use it super often, but it's been reliable and easy to use whenever I need it. I've never had to replace the toner. It just works.
Is it good for someone who constantly needs to print documents
This is just anecdotal, but I work in IT and I can’t recall a brother printer ever giving me a headache. HP is obviously the worst.
HP is special kind of printers shitcompany. They probably spent years on doing market research to understand what people NOT want, so they can do exactly that. 😂
HP used to make rock solid laser printers back in the late 90s and 00s. Shame what they turned into.
I recently had an HP printer to set up for a client (IT as well), and it only had USB 2.0 and Ethernet interfaces. The printer needed an internet connection and activation online before it would even let you print over USB, and of course the Ethernet port was dead and wouldn't connect, so now it's just a shitty white brick with HP stamped on it. At least they were able to return but how does that make sense in practice?
A laser printer is best no matter if you print a lot or a little.
Brother will generally be an excellent choice. While HP will generally be probably the worst choice you can make.
Edit:
Just to be clear, laser is better if you print a little, because the laser cartridge doesn't dry, and can last a decade. While even if you don't print a lot, you will need to replace ink cartridges regularly, because they dry out.
If you print a lot, the laser printer is both more reliable, faster and cheaper to use.
As long as you don’t need color a laser printer is way better for printing documents.
I love my color laser. (Again, props to Brother). It takes off-brand toner with no fuss and hasn't failed to print yet.
I don't know that I would print photos with it, but it's more than sufficient for everyday documents and even game manuals.
Needed something to print the occasional document for bureaucracy stuff, and I also got a Brother printer a while ago. Used, laser (very important for good value imo), 100 bucks. An older model, black-and-white but with wifi support. Didn't need to register my license, create a cloud account or whatever other shit companies come up with these days, I could just turn it on and it worked.
They're incredibly reliable. I've had the same Brother laser printer for a good 15 years now. Possibly longer. Old enough that there's no wifi or bluetooth options, but it's a network printer because it has ethernet.
I made my old brother a wifi printer with the help of a raspberry pi.
Second the recommendation for a Brother. I've rarely had problems with them. Above all do NOT buy an HP printer because they come with every form of nickel-and-dime known to mankind.
Alternatively, for the once in a blue moon that the average person needs to actually print things in the modern day, bring your local library a fiver and use their printer. This is the way I do things, because I rarely ever need to print a document. When I do, it's a ten minute drive and a five dollar or less cost and then I don't have to bother with owning a printer.
But in general, Brother is a good brand, and a laser printer will be less hassle and easier to manage than an inkjet, but will have a bit higher purchase cost.
Yes on the Libraries! Libraries are often incredibly cheap for printing, and most of them have an online uploading tool so you can print things from your home computer or phone without any hassle. Plus, at least at the library I work at, we have incredibly high quality printers and your docs / photos will come out a lot better than how they would if you were at home, as well as a scanner that can give you a 600dpi TIFF file
Just please try not to hand us a twenty for something that costs 1/100th of that - we often don't have enough small bills to make change. (Or do and put it on your account for later, if that's an offered option, or better yet donate the remainder 😉)
A lot of my printing happens when parents visit. They love to print everything. I'm much more likely to use the scanner on my Brother printer than actually print.
Brother ist the way to go. Also OK for Linux in my experience
From my experience, printer support on Linux is often better than on Windows because all the drivers are included in the kernel and you don't have to go driver hunting on obscure websites.
you will own nothing and you'll be happy
Fuck HP.
Source: my dad worked at HP so most of my computers and printers growing up were HP.
it was an amazing company that did legendary, pioneering research and development and made outstanding research tools. the HP of today is the result of 50 years of mergers, acquisitions, conglomeration, and violent shittification.
The HP you mention still exists today as Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, a separate company from HP Inc, which is the consumer-facing brand. It's very similar to what Motorola did in splitting into enterprise and consumer companies.
Fun fact! Motorola started out as a company making record players specifically for cars. The big name in record players at the time was Victrola, and since they were making them for motorcars they called themselves MotoRola.
Back in my days we were able to purchase the printers
learn to print to pdf and save the file. can always print but even better you can email it etc. brother laser scanner is best I've owned. son bought me one of these, "Brother MFC-L2710DW series Printer" to replace a still working brother laser 2170w, 10 yo. I don't print a lot but wife prints every receipt which end up in the trash
Fuck HP
Maybe not the same, as its more of a service contract. At work, we have had a site which has been closed for 2 years. for 2 whole years, every week the vending machine company arrive, try to get in, can't, ring us, and we say "that site is closed".
Well we finally after 2 years got them to remove that site from their system?
Their response? to remove ALL food from ALL vending machines at all our sites, to remove the coffee machines, and to remove the water coolers. The water coolers are especially egregious, as they just sit there doing nothing. they are from tap water, so not even replacing bottles etc.
Sometimes subscriptions are useful. I wish the BBC TV licence in the UK was a subscription. I cannot justify spending £150 on a licence for an entire year, just to watch a month of shows. but other times it sucks. I just want Microsoft office. I don't care if it will cost me £200. Right now my favourite game is subscription based, but i don't think i can justify the £9.99 a month, or £50 for a whole year. £50 for lifetime access? maybe.
LibreOffice has more functionality and it's actually free
With the current situation, no way you are getting a lifetime access. Companies have discovered that people actually pay for subscriptions even if they don't add anything worthwhile to keep you renewing.
You are just renting and there is no option to buy.
You can still buy liscenses for office. I just bought a key off a shady vendor for $30 and have a fully activated, non subscription office 2022
Looks like I'm not changing my almost 10 year HP LaserJet printer after all..
Picked up a brother monochrome laser printer 3 years ago. I'd never get anything else, it's a printing beast.
HP Printers is definitely one of the worst printers right now; I hate you need a account to use your HP printers
You can still run the old software without account, as long as you never upgrade. Some third party file hosters keep it around. We got an HP at work and I refuse to give them even my business email.
buy laser printers. ink is pretty cheap and as we refill cartridge. i have a hp and and never suffer these subscription shit.
Buy Brother laser printers, specifically.
Even worse, if you subscribe to the ink service with an HP printer, it will update the firmware. But if you decide to cancel the service, they don't change the firmware so you now own a brick.
What are good printer companies? Fuck HP and Epson
Get a Brother laser. Don't bother with color.
Brother
My Brother printer has been going for about 14 years, so I recommend them.
OK, but what printer does your brother use?
HP certainly needs fucked with a pineapple, Epson otoh, I'm not so sure, I have two eco-tank printers and have had no issues with them whatsoever.
I have an ecotank too. No BS subscription shenanigans, painless to get it working. What impresses me is the lack of it breaking if it sits even months between uses, usually not even needing to be cleaned.
And since ink can be bought in bulk, it's cheap to run too.
Epson are ok as long as you remember they're descended from Tamagochis. Leave them alone for a month and they'll sometimes clog up for ever.
Can you homebrew a printer? Maybe fake responses to phone-homes?
You probably can
I was so sad to find out that Samsung pulled out of the printer business a few years back. I've had a Samsung color laser (it's actually LED, but it looks like any other laser printer) for over 10 years and it has been nearly flawless all this time. I don't print a ton and on an ink jet printer, then cartridges would have dried out between the few times I would actually need to print something. Then you'd waste like 1/2 the ink just to unclog it and realign everything. But this Samsung just doesn't skip a beat if I let it sit for 3 months - it fires right up if I need something. And unlike HP's offerings, the drivers for this printer aren't like 2 GBs in size with a ton of bloatware.
Brother is still a good contender here for laser printing - I've had a new color laser from Brother for a year or so and I've had zero problems with getting it to work on Linux, the toner is cheap, and the print quality is great.
Won't give HP and Canon another dime so long as Brother is quality.
I hope to never have to replace this Samsung, but Brother is one of the few brands I would consider. I remember back in the day Epson made the best print-quality ink jets. No idea if they make laser printers these days, but I might consider them as well.
Meanwhile my laser Kyocera prints full color full duplex and doesn't try any funny business.
I got a printer where I fill up the ink tank myself. Fuck all these other printers.
My last ever hp printer went in the e waste skip last week for a similar reason.
I don't get how this is legal, and my guess is that it isn't in EU and many other countries that aren't USA.
Anyone ever heard one of these stories from EU?
This should be illegal, hell I have a TP-Link router and it’s got a subscription model for the features, that a decade ago were basic features of a router that you’re spending hundreds of dollars on. Unless we make it unpopular from a media/social standpoint, they’ll keep it up. Too make it worse, the router won’t even allow you to manually choose your own channels, you have to let it decide for you. Even if you have an IT background and can decipher the better channel, it decides to choose heavily trafficked channels on all bands. Let me make me own mistakes and learn, I don’t want to be forced like an invalid in a nursing home.
The printer business is tantamount to the gangster era. Fucking thieves.
How do you input your credit card into the printer? Or is this some printer-lease-contract situation?
I just bought a Brother laser printer for my dad, because he needed help changing the ink cartridges, after having printed maybe 8 pages in ½ a year. It's just too stupid to use ink printers today, no matter if you print a little or a lot.
I'm guessing the laser cartridge will last my dad a decade. lol
And it uses dry toner, so it'll never clog because you didn't use it!
It's so cool that we live in a world where you can 3d print a gun more reliably than you can 2d print an insurance card
Anyone find a source or proof on this having happened?
It's a printer, and for fucks sake, BMW is locking you out of certain features of their cars if you don't pay per month.
Telsa cars will drive themselves out of your house if you miss a payment.
Ford is doing this as well.
Sounds like they want to be in court a lot. There's no way any of that is safe.
Oh yeah. How long until the vehicle repossesses itself when a child is in the car? The lawsuits would be massive.
This is some dystopian shit right here.
Same thing happened to my mom's HP except that they sent her the wrong cartridges so she closed her account. They bricked her printer. I bought her a Brother.
It very likely is tied to the firmware that bricked HPs around the world in May or so. HP is silent on it and customer service isn't acknowledging the issue.
Welcome to the future you now have to pay a sub or learn how to jail break your printer to get full use of it owner ship is almost dead folks time to break up big printer so you can refill your ink cartridges and print without a subscription
This is only supposed to happen if you stop paying for Instant Ink. Buying a new cartridge should still work. I'd take the printer back to the shop you bought it from and tell them its broken.
…I’ve somehow lived this long without realizing that HP printers apparently need subscriptions to run now.
My HP only works when I don't need it anymore. It's always doing shit when I want to orint something. It takes forever and then i just give up..
Most don’t. There is a subscription service where you get ink every quarter automatically and you can’t skip shipments, but you have to choose that. Otherwise, most businesses have leased copy machines and printers for a long time now. Outsourcing maintenance can save money and simplify office administration.
So happy now that I've been too lazy to let my printer update anything for the last year.
Seems related
Heh. Another symptom of the second gilded age we now find ourselves experiencing.
Incredibly annoying. Especially with all these apps that want to charge you monthly. Fucking nuts thinking I'm gonna pay 30 a year for the rest of my life to look at radar.
*buy it
Yesterday i got the standard setup steps from windows after booting. I use to skip them most of the time, because i don t want to use edge and so on and sometimes they reapear. Yesterday i thought, i'll do them now, then never again this will bother me. When i got to the point of logging into my microsoft account i could not remember the password and had no possibility on the gui to get back and skip all, leaving me seemingly unable to use my own frickin computer. As i got more and more angry i clicked on "forgot password" which sends me an email with a code. I see the email appear on my phone and without even a chance of entering the code it sent me back to the enter password prompt. Even more angry and cursing to myself i pressed the forgort password text again leaving me with the same result. As i was close to exploding, my computer somehow decided to show "You are finished!" like he knew i had enough.
I fucking hate this shit with passion and purposely setup my PC without internet connected every damn time I format.
I once connected to WiFi during the setup and got stuck in the same place and I wanted to burn my house down.
All your worries with printers disappear the moment you replace them with a scanner.
And your scanner worries disappear when you replace it with just taking photos of documents with your phone
There’s a recent post on HN talking about this similar behavior with content platforms.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36974358 https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/15gechw/apple_just_stole_hundreds_of_dollars_from_me/
Basically users Apple account gets flagged for “fraudulent problems”. User loses access to all “bought”/rented content associated with Apple account. CS is useless. CS manager useless as well.
It’s a well documented story with any content platform. This is far from being an isolated issue.
Personally, piracy and ripping Blu-rays is back on the table for me and using a media server only accessible via VPN.
I was actually thinking of getting an Apple account and backing my files up to their cloud. Glad I read this before I made that mistake.