If you can afford it, cough up the money for a laser printer. I’ve had mine for years and only changed the ink once. So much better than ink jet printers, which are a total scam
Tried to fire up an older HP monochrome laser printer that is still working perfectly.
The problem? Windows 11 has no drivers, and it literally cannot be used at all. Not through Wi-Fi (old drivers, too), not through the USB port, or my shared through my router.
I mean, seriously, this stuff should work on a generic print driver until the end of time, but nope.
Hot news, linux is incredibly compatible with printers. CUPS is very well designed. With relatively little technical knowledge you could probably plug a raspberry pi into virtually any old printer and get it running with the Pi as a print server sharing it with the network.
we’ve done this with our router at home. Plug the printer into the router’s USB (has to be direct tho, doesn’t like a hub) and then install the drivers on my mac and it works. Even though this printer is an ancient brother.
It’s actually been the case for 20 years now. Same with lots of other devices.
Around 2008-ish I saw a Tesco-branded webcam for something like 5€. I was just in need of one, so I looked up if it’s not, by any chance Linux compatible. It was, right out of the box.
Same thing with Sony Ericsson phones of that era. Capable of lots of things, like Ethernet over USB or Mass Storage, but with Windows it all needed a massive and annoying driver package. Linux - plug and go.
I think the earlier ones were great, too. Jokes aside: people have been saying how much better Brother printers are (used to be?). I only heard positive comments about them, but even my HP laser printer is just a reliable workhorse. Or at least it has been in the last 2 years. I’ve been trying to convert people ever since (to laser printers, not HP).
Old HP laser printers (20 years ago) were tanks, unstoppable workhorses. I had a 4000N that was virtually unbreakable. But they’ve been coasting on that rep for a long time while they changed to inferior hardware and predatory subscription practices. Nowadays they are so enshittified I can’t imagine anyone will even be buying HP printers 20 years from now. I went to Brother for my last two printer purchases and they just work. Look through this thread or any other printer thread for “brother” and “just work”. It’s not an accident.
First I read 4000N as four thousand Newtons and it even felt appropriate, considering its supposed weight (Mass? Force?). Yeah, you can read everywhere how shitty HP is with printers nowadays. I just wonder what other owners of relatively new HP laser printers think, because in my 2 years I haven’t seen anything dodgy yet. I hope it stays that way crosses fingers.
Their hardware is mostly brilliant but the software (drivers, DRM) should make it a stop-sale for most people. It is such a shame that what used to be an incredible engineering company has turned to such shit because of executive incompetence and greed.
I’m so glad my old HP printer still works. It has none of that bs and I can use MUCH MUCH cheaper refills, which are somehow even filled more than HP’s xl ink cartridges? I want HP to know that I will continue using this printer and they won’t ever see another cent of mine.
HP Smart is complete ass lmao. I have an HP laser printer that prints well, but it’s always a headache to start printing anything wirelessly from my laptop. Can only ever rely on the ol’ USB cable.
I am really confused, becuase HP Smart Scanner takes like 2-3 min to Scan a page, GNOMs build in Scanner takes 3-5 seconds with the same printer. Like how is your software this bad.
HP Smart does suck, although the cheap HP printer/scanner we picked up in 2020 for home schooling has been pretty reliable. A couple of the colour nozzles clogged after an extend period without use, but it’s on the £1 a month cartridge rental so I just kept re-running the cleaning cycle until it worked again.
Hmmm, maybe I’ve been on the internet too long but the handwriting doesn’t look like it was written on a vertical pole. It looks like it was easy to write
We had an HP Inkjet printer for over 5 years, one of the older ones. Ink was expensive, but tbh everything else worked great.
Then we got our new HP Inkjet. Genuinely the worst machine I have ever owned. I can’t fucking scan anything without an HP account, and even then it hardly works. I’m going to buy a Brother laser printer soon, as soon as I bring it home that HP printer is going to be smashed to bits in my driveway.
I have to second this one: we had HP printers at work which just sucked, so we threw them out. After changing to brother printers everything is so easy now. They just work!
I second the Brother recommendation! We’ve had our printer for almost a decade, and it’s still going strong. I worked from home during the pandemic and we only had to buy ink twice. Iirc the black is like $25 and the color set is like $40. Sometimes it tries to not let you print if one of the colors runs out. But when that happens we just take out the cartridge and use sharpie to cover the transparent ink reservoir. The computer thinks it’s full, so you can literally print until they all run dry.
I believe some of their models use a printing method similar to xerox machines that’s even cheaper than ink, long term.
The only downside I’ve had is that the phone app is finicky and sometimes glitchy. For example, if I want to attach a document to an email I have to open the Brother app first, scan the document, share it to my email, save the draft it generates, exit the app, and then open my email back up and load the draft. I can’t attach straight from Gmail. However, I think this might just be a phone compatibility issue. I have terrible luck with phones. But either way, it’s still better than having to boot up the computer every time you need to print.
Eventually I’d like to find a model that can print from usb or be hardwired in addition to being wifi, so I don’t have to rely on the app or my phone. But there’s just no reason to upgrade yet, our printer still works great!
If you do a lot of printing, the Epson Ecotank printer is really good. My wife goes through 2-3 boxes of paper per year. I refill the tanks 2 times per year. A full set of bottles is $45-50.
It’s nice that the are going directly opposite that HP.
I use the HP 110, a small laser jet printer by HP. I mostly use it for return labels and random crap once a month. Does the job fine. We also use HP at work, they’re as good as any other. All the HP hate I think comes from folks who don’t buy a laser jet.
Yes please. HP printers are the dystopia we were warned of. You can’t print with the dumb thing even if ink is in it if you don’t keep paying for the ink subscription.
The latest update to the printing press: adding a 3d printer to print new plates, and a recycler to reuse that plastic once you’ve printed your page.
Uses 10x the energy, recycled plastic gets junked because of ink contamination, but still 25% cheaper than running an hp inkjet because you can use bulk ink and don’t have to keep replacing your dried up CMY inks to stop it from refusing to print your black and white document.
Which is kinda funny if it’s easier to make a printer that can print objects vs a printer that can print on surfaces. Like it’s harder to draw a picture of an object than it is to create an instance of that object.
The idea is pretty ironic. If one was patient enough, they could design a CAD machine that would write out their prints. I believe I had seen them before. The problems with that machine are speed and efficiency.
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