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Oha ,
@Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

Been using an old HP Laser printer for like forever and it still works pretty well. Havent had a single problem with it

metaStatic ,

old

laser

That's the key

Brother just has the most recent ones, but if you can find an old laser the brand almost doesn't matter.

frezik ,

Most of those old HP lasers were also office behemoths that, inflation adjusted, cost over $5000. They caused all sorts of problems in an office environment--the printer in Office Space was basically about those--but they work great for small family use.

I only ditched my 5si because Windows stopped shipping drivers. Could have hacked it, but I figured if there weren't drivers, people would slowly get rid of them, and the replacement toner market would disappear.

shalafi ,

Same. Mine's 11+ years old, flawless. Even if it finally shits the bed, I can probably get a refurb kit for a few bucks.

Talaraine ,

If any representative from Brother is reading this, hear me.

DON'T ENSHITTIFY! You see this? You can own the market if you just LEAVE IT ALONE.

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

They have started chipping their toners, or so I've read. They're still the least shitty printer manufacturer, AFAIK, though.

DarkThoughts ,

Let's hope it's just for quality of life and not to bully their customers...

theUnlikely ,

Unfortunately, I don't think it is. I used to use knock-off toner, but after a firmware update, the printer would no longer recognize those cartridges. Luckily, I had bought them on Amazon, so I just explained the problem to customer service and got a full refund. I still love the printer though.

daw_germany ,

Bruh

refurbishedrefurbisher ,

Brother

Zink ,

I’m sure even internally their message is that they want to ensure the best customer experience while also protecting their revenue.

Now if ensuring the best customer experience HURT revenue, things get interesting. And by interesting I mean enshittified.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Too late

prashanthvsdvn ,

Exactly. You can join the club of “Do Nothing and Win” club along with Gabe Newell

plantedworld ,

They already started. I think it's too late

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

DON’T ENSHITTIFY!

They kind of already did, at least they did in the past.

They fought pretty hard to make you only use their toners, and they would warn you to change your toner cartridges way earlier than it was necessary to do so, disabling the printer if you didn't. I remember having to put tape over the optical device in the printer that looks at the toner cartridge, just so I can keep using my toner cartridge.

Don't get me wrong, I love my brother mfc7840w printer, but it's so weird to hear so much praise for Brother, it's like there is group amnesia about how they used to be on some of this stuff themselves.

NABDad ,

I'm kind of fond of my okidata c332dn. It's my daily driver.

I have Brother multifunction printer. However, it's run out of toner, and I don't have the funds right now to purchase new cartridges.

andrew_bidlaw ,
@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

Maybe a regional market quality thing, but mine fucked up it's cartridge pretty soon and has a long procedure of changing them, not plug and print like in older models. Sometimes it happens. Jusging by youtube videos it seems some models are just rare unlucky picks.

Dagamant ,

I finally convinced my wife to get a brother laser printer after she went through like 5 HP printers. We have had the thing for almost 10 years and just had to change the toner. I can print from every computer, tablet, and phone in the house with no issues.

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

It's bliss, isn't it?

I rarely need to print, but when I do, it's always something important - typically something I have to physically print, sign, and send back. I just click "print" and never worry about it. Haven't been let down in the 11 years I've had this one (except that one time it was out of paper lol).

Bluefruit ,

Brother laser printers are good for everyone, not just Linux users.

Helped my gfs mom troubleshoot her HP printer (I know, ew. She bought it before we met) and finally figured out from the stupid app that it was out of one color.

The app doesnt indicate this in words though, Oh no.
Just a stupid infographic that doesnt say ANYTHING. Just shows a nondescript bar at the top.

Only reason I downloaded it was i thought it would be a bit more user friendly.

Long story short I recommended a brother laser printer because the last time I replaced a cartridge in it was a couple years back and that was after printing things for god knows how long. And mine is old af.

DarkThoughts ,

Brother printers have been a recommendation under Windows users for a long time too already. Not that they're perfect either but pretty much everyone's fed up with the bullshit of the likes of HP.

pgetsos ,
@pgetsos@kbin.social avatar

Probably I'm the only Linux user that can't connect to my office printer over the net I guess... But I can't connect to our HP one either, so there's that

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Why? Linux has the best printer support by far

pgetsos ,
@pgetsos@kbin.social avatar

No idea, I have tried a ton of solution, the HP doesn't ever work, the Brother works for a day and then stops...

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

You didn't install anything did you? Most printers these days support driverless printing which should work out of the box over the network

pgetsos ,
@pgetsos@kbin.social avatar

Nope, nothing

jg1i ,

I mean, I'm pretty happy with mine! 10/10 would recommend!

SexualPolytope , (edited )
@SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Brother printers are great. Probably the only decent printer brand for home usage. My university has free printing, and those are Canon printers. They seem to work fine, so I guess the commercial market is a little different.

Weirdly, my parents have this Samsung M2020W printer, and I gotta say, it's pretty neat. Takes any off-brand toner cartridge. They only need a cartridge every year or so. It's been 3+ years, but no problem so far. That might be an exceptional case, though.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Not all are created equal

XTL ,

I used to have a Samsung laser for quite a few years. Went through maybe three toner cartridges. Eventually it started slipping and I didn't bother finding out if there's a repair available and bought a brother laser instead. Worked pretty great otherwise.

Haven't tried toner transfer on this, but regular printouts are fine and it's much faster.

ChunkMcHorkle ,
@ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world avatar

Eventually it started slipping

If you still have the printer (you may not but I'm going to put this out there for others too) that sounds like a simple roller replacement, and rollers/pickup pads are usually considered "consumables" instead of "parts" because they all wear out over time. This is true for most if not all consumer printers, ink and laser alike.

Replacements should be pretty easy to find for even old printers, and the installation is usually pretty straightforward. Last year I was still able to buy a roller replacement set for a 19 year old HP, and it took me ten minutes and one Phillips head screwdriver to replace them all.

You can also just take out and clean the hell out of anything rubber with isopropyl alcohol, letting it dry thoroughly and then putting it back in, or if possible rotate the rubber on it to present an unused side, I've done all that a few times too.

For pretty much any model printer, search on the printer model number and "maintenance kit" to find available roller/pickup pad replacements for sale, and printer model number plus "service manual" to get replacement instructions if you need them.

qupada ,

Sharp also make great commerical-grade printers that are 100% Linux compatible, we're using these at work: http://global.sharp/products/copier/products/bp_70c65/index.html

They don't really make anything small enough to be a "home" model, this looks like their smallest printer: https://global.sharp/products/copier/products/mx_c358f/index.html (and that's around $1000, if you could even find someone to sell you one).

Eeyore_Syndrome ,
@Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works avatar

I do love my Brother:https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/f5d405b0-dda2-41a5-8b0e-a629e93444a3.png

And miss the ~2020 pricing!
(But it should last a long time)

R.I.P. to my real brother though. Forever 29 because heroin.

As of this post, still happily using the initial starter toner ✅

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

RIP to your brother as well, I have a forever 36 brother due to meth.

Glad we can bond over these printers though!

ThirdWorldOrder ,
@ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee avatar

I have a forever 29 brother due to someone lacing shit with fentanyl. My brother printer will probably live longer

pip1 ,

I don't know, my Brother printed definitely has DRM/lock-in toner cartridges. And if only one of them gets too low the whole thing stops working. Still can't get double sided to work reliably

So I call bs on their fandom

OsaErisXero ,

It stops working until you walk over to it and reset the toner state to full, then it works fine.

At least, that's how mine manufactured 2 years ago works.

pip1 ,

No luck for me, what is your model out of interest?

Only success I've had with using non Brother toner is swapping the small chip at the end of the 'fake' cartridge with an old 'genuine' one

OsaErisXero , (edited )

MFC-L3770CDW

If you're using 3rd party toner, yeah, you gotta swap the little chip, but you can run the toner well past when the printer thinks it's empty by following the reset process: https://www.tonerparts.com/blogs/brother-1/how-to-reset-the-toner-cartridge-for-your-brother-mfc-l3710-3730-3750-and-3770 . It is very fiddly getting to that menu the first few times, but once you've got the hang of it it's pretty straight forward and lets you just keep rerunning the same toner (or 'toner' if you're swapping the chip) indefinitely. For what it's worth, given the longevity of the drums, I've found it easiest to just buy the Brother toner (it's only like 2-3 dollars more expensive than the 3rd party where I am, and is available in stores locally vs having to order from Amazon) and just run them until they're dry by resetting them 2-3 times before replacement.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention: print quality does start to degrade significantly after the reset about 1/3rd through the second 'tank' each drum provides. We use the printer primarily to print off sewing patterns, so this doesn't matter until it's illegible for us, but depending on what you're using it for that may be worth keeping in mind when you're resetting them instead of getting new ones.

pip1 ,

Hey that's really helpful, thanks for sharing! Brother toner is about 3x more expensive for me.

I have HL- version of same model. Doesn't have exactly the same toner options as in the link, but I've spotted a 'Reset' button hidden up the 'Toner->Calibrate' menu. Strongly suspect that'll do the job!

The chip transfer thing has caused me issues in the past though, with the printer refusing to accept the toner even after switching them.

LordCrom ,

I would take any laser printer with a scanner/copier that doesn't have a subscription model that has Linux drivers for all features .

Brother is the only one I've found to check all the boxes

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

My only gripe with it was the scan drivers were not easy to configure to enable network scanning.

Once I figured that out, I made a SANE scan server that has the drivers, and I just point all my devices to that (SANE to SANE) and don't even need to install the actual scanner drivers. It's damn amazing.

Dultas ,

Maybe it depends on the model? I just set it up on one a laptop a couple weeks ago and it only took like 10 minutes.

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

I guess it was easy, just not well documented (at the time, anyway).

droans ,

Oh, the software is actually called SANE. I thought you were just making clear how bad Brother's drivers were.

ptz OP , (edited )
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

Oh, yeah. lol. It's the Linux scanner framework. It has a network protocol that will talk to other SANE services and allow scanners to be shared.

My scan programs all go through SANE, so you don't need the Brother drivers on each PC you want to scan from (just the machine that is interfacing with the scanner; in my case, it's a Docker container on my server).

Learning I could do that was pretty life changing. lol

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Once I figured that out, I made a SANE scan server that has the drivers, and I just point all my devices to that (SANE to SANE) and don’t even need to install the actual scanner drivers. It’s damn amazing.

Could you point me towards instructions on how to do that?

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

Pretty sure I just followed this:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SaneDaemonTutorial

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you!

Opisek ,

Did the same thing for mine. I've got one with ADF scanning, but it's only one-sided. So I simply wrote some script on my scan server that merges the current scan with the last scan if they have the same amount of pages and now I can easily scan stacks of paper with both sides. After that it goes through some compression and off to my NAS. Ah, love my pipeline, so glad how simple the printer's Linux drivers made it.

ptz OP ,
@ptz@dubvee.org avatar

That's awesome! I'd love to expand mine to do more like that, but the model I have doesn't have the ADF so it's kind of pointless.

kinther ,
@kinther@lemmy.world avatar

Looked down at my printer and realized it was a Brother. Didn't have to do anything special, it just worked.

lseif ,

can you recommend a good printer ?

Get a brother laser. 👨

can you tell me how to kill a High Ganzonian ?

Get a laser, brother. 👽

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