Fogbow

The entire concept of a printer actually fucking printing when you hit "Print" is a bad joke. My computer has never been able to find a fucking printer EVEN when the bloody thing plugged straight into it! My current POS is an HP Desk Jet 2722 I bought it to plug into my computer so I didn't have to send documents to Pluto and back to get them from my desk to the printer in the next room that at least occasionally will print.

Is there such a thing ANYWHERE that just fucking prints without sending a person's blood pressure through the roof?

After bad experiences with HP and Epson, I switched to Brother printers (at office and at home) and they work well. For me, anyway.

FYI, I'm using Macs. But my small Apple devices can also find them both and send stuff to them to print without fail.

I'll put in another plug for Brother and add Canon to the mix if you do a lot of photo printing. I gave up on HP years ago after having constant software issues and a string of cheaply made, but not cheap, printers experienced very short life cycles. The current printer is a Brother large format multi that's close to 4 years old and just works.

I bought an HP color laser printer on sale at Costco about 2 years ago for $200. It has built in networking. It prints fine on the network but I had problems using the WiFi and I would have to keep setting it up on the network repeatedly. I bought a 5 port Ethernet switch to give me an extra port to plug it in hard wired to the network. All my connectivity issues went away. I could have plugged it in to my PC on a USB port and shared it but I like having it as a standalone network device.

I have also shared an old Konica Minolta black and white laser on the network using a Raspberry Pi micro PC as a print server. That takes a little more computer skill than most people probably have.

We have Macs too maybe I'll try looking at Brother printers, I don't remember ever having one of those. I can tell you that every other printer I've ever had is a POS!

I have had good results printing to Brother printers from Macs and iOS devices.

Good results with Brother here, too, over many years.

AndyinPA wrote: ↑Thu Apr 21, 2022 12:16 pm Good results with Brother here, too, over many years.

Same here with my Brother ink jet. I used it for engineering work. After I quit it sat w/o much use and the head all dried up. I was not able to get the jets unclogged again.

We have had really good luck with our Brother for many years. It just prints and can take generic ink so it doesn't break the bank. From both Windows and Mac, it doesn't want to talk to the Chromebook though for some reason.

Also a Brother household for 20 years.

It's the price of ink that enrages me. I bought a printer about 3 years ago; it was almost cheaper than buying replacement cartridges for my older printer.

Heh heh heh

I just checked our Amazon.com orders. We've had our Brother printer since October 2011. It works fine. It started getting black specks on pages a few years ago, so I finally got a new drum unit a couple of months ago, cost $90. Now it prints like new. It is wireless, so my wife and I can easily print from our macbooks in bed.

They no longer make the model we bought in 2011 for $115. This one seems to be the newer version of essentially the same wireless printer:

Brother Premium L-2325DW Series Compact Monochrome Laser Printer I Wireless

My favorite bad experience:

“I’m out of yellow ink so I can’t print in black… even though you desperately need to print a few business-critical pages right now. Sucks to be you.”

[sound of pump action shotgun offstage right]

I love my Samsung laser printer. It occasionally loses its wi-fi connection, but I've gotten good at getting it reconnected.

I hated, with a passion, the Epson printer my husband had. I got rid of it soon after my sweetie passed away and set up an HP printer that we had bought when we had issues with the Epson printer, but had never set up. It works fine, but I still don't care much for its photo printing.

My brother is an excellent amateur photographer and so has a wonderful photo printer. If I want a photo printed, I just ask him to do it. I'm pretty sure its a top of the line Epson. I would love to have a similar printer, but I don't print enough photos to make it worth the money spent.

Brother owner as well. No issues so far, had it for 3 years. Don’t know if they still do this, but when the ink gets low it sends a message to Amazon and a new cartridge shows up, just like that!

I have had mixed luck with all the major brands.

My current HP monochrome laser all-in-one is working great. I went with that because of the lower cost per page versus inkjet.

Partner had a 15 year old Brother photo inkjet that recently gave up the ghost, and for the last two years has been eating cartridges ($80/set) about every 50 pages. I researched and pointed her to an Epson EcoTank, which has big bottles of ink instead of cartridges. The business model is different (printer is about $300, ink cartridge refills after 5,000 alleged pages is $50 versus ink-jet $100 printer and $80 cartridge set every 250-500 pages) but I think it's better. Even if there isn't enough lifetime cost saving on cartridges to beat the higher initial cost, our net aggravation is lower because we aren't feeling violated and abused every time we buy another set of cartridges on Amazon.

So I was wondering why would one get an inkjet printer these days. We had an inkjet printer twenty years ago or more. But cartridges were quite expensive so I refilled them with a kit. Laser printers produce better quality black-and-white prints, I think.

Are inkjets significantly cheaper?
Are the prints better?
Is color capability the issue?

Just wondering...

The color is vital for me. I color-code stuff on my drawings and cutting bills for clarity.

We print a low volume, the color was important for kid homework assignments, and lasers were big for a NYC apartment.

I think my first laser printer was the HP LaserJet IIIP in 1991 for, if I remember right, about $1,100. I loved it! As a former accountant, numbers are a big deal for me and so I've always preferred laser printers.

My husband, on the other hand, did a lot of PowerPoint presentations and so gravitated to inkjet printers with their color capabilities. We've owned some very good color printers over the years. My current HP? Just so-so. But it is handy to have color capability for some things and it's nice to have a backup printer, just in case.

It's nice to not have to spend $1,100 on a laser printer nowadays!

We have a laser printer my daughter is using (she's been living in our basement apartment for the last year) that we probably bought 12 years ago as a closeout floor model at Staples for $90. The floor model didn't work so Staples shipped us a brand new one to replace it. It's a Dell 1320c 3-color (plus black) laser that normally sold for around $300. It's nothing special and doesn't have all the features of a modern multi but it's more than adequate for printing general graphics. 3rd party toner for it is dirt cheap and easily lasts a couple of thousand pages before it runs out. I can't remember for sure but I think it was actually made by either Samsung or Xerox.

I really loved my okidata laser printer, got something like 12 years out of it before I.. ahm.... tried to clean it and failed. Sadly they have pulled out of the NA market.

I replaced with a 'small business' HP laser and already hate the thing. Clearing a paper jam requires rebooting my PC. I am thinking of just saving my pannies and importing an okidata from AU or UK or somewhere.

I have a Brother all-in-one laser black toner. Works great -- I don't now why I mucked with those stupid inkjets for years when those cartridges are $$$ (razors and razor blades) and dry out pretty quick if not used often.

Does anyone here have a color laser printer? Is it something you would recommend?