After being an idiot for 15 years, and repurchasing inkjet printers with their insanely expensive inks and guaranteed to dry out, gunk up, and quit working, I went ahead and bought a Pantum laser from Amazon, it came with a full cartridge good for 1600 B&W prints, and there was a special on for another 1600 B&W cartridge for free, the whole thing printer, two cartridges $99 bucks out the door. Steal. Works like a charm. I have, and have had, no real reason to print in color, I'm not handing out presentations, and mostly the only things I actually print are Amazon return labels sometimes, but whenever I've needed to print I no longer worry about the print head clogging up, and it's like freedom from bondage.
Lol again, everyone in this community loves to call The Verge corporate shills but then has no problem upvoting and commenting on posts like these. Like if the Verge were truly biased by corporate interests, wouldn’t an article like this be the place most ripe for that bias to show through and be a problem?
I get that the community is not a hive mind and is made up of many different people, but on posts where people are criticizing the Verge because they don’t like the way they show the corporate viewpoint you’d be drowned out completely if you were to argue anything otherwise. The irony just kills me.
I mean it is but it isn’t. I think Nilay wanted to get the Verge back at the top of the search engine results but also wanted to make a point about why he had to do it. It’s funny because it’s really 2 paragraphs about it and then the rest of it is a normal article about the best printer lol. And the fun Gemini thing thrown in.
I have a similar printer but with duplex printing, which I bought because it fits under my sofa. It does everything I wanted it to do; namely, to print double-sided black and white documents and fit under my sofa.
BTW I also recommend the Brother ADS-2xxx series of document scanners, which I bought to scan multi-page double-sided documents automatically. I put the stack of papers in the top, press Go, and it scans to PDF in a few seconds.
Brother laser printers are great. I get new toner for my laser jet twice each decade. Never had a problem. I press print, it prints. Only issue is pretty high current draw when it kicks on with my old house wiring. That’s about it.
I’ve long heard arguments in favor of laser printers, but after finding out that every laser printer is printing yellow tracking dots on every page it prints, it’s made me question if I actually want one. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation that inkjet printers have tracking dots. It’s very possible some do, but in comparison it sounds like every laser printer does.
I currently have an Epson ecotank, to refill it I just pour ink in from a bottle. The ink is super cheap (at least compared to regular inkjets, and there’s no way for them to restrict what brand of liquid ink I use. Honestly it’s a very decent printing experience, and I’m not sure I’d be better off with a Brother Laser.
I don’t want to be that guy, but if they really want to be tracking prints, black and white printing does not need to make it impossible. There’s other ways to code information.
There is, but since color printers are the ones that were used in counterfeiting most black and white printers don't do that sort of thing. Plus I don't know how you'd encode that much information in black and white without making it visible on the paper.
You could encode information as slight “mistakes” in the print. An extra dot here, a missing dot there, some slight “printing error” in some place.
There could be ways, but as you said, it’s to combat money counterfeiting. Like the Euro constellation detection in scanners, PhotoShop, and printer drivers. (fun fact: it’s quite easy to bypass, not sure why they even bothered… it only stops people who put 0 thought into counterfeiting anyway)
People are still printing? I love it, proppa old skool that is. I thought the only person who printed stuff anymore was my mum who prints out her daily crossword.
Don’t forget to boycott HP because, not only are they shit printers, they provide computer hardware for the IDF, Israel’s police, and their Immigration and Population Authority. bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp
There are still a need for document printing at home. Granted it’s just smaller in scale these days. Mine is mostly used for the kids. Like printing out things to color on, or something educational. On rare occasions I’ll need to print some kinda form, for work or some kinda government form, even event tickets.
That said, I really don’t know anyone that’s looking to photo print at home anymore. It’s just cheaper to have it done somewhere like Walgreens or Walmart.
Yes, we do print. Many industries still need printed material.
That being said, call me old school all you want, but I prefer the feel of newspaper over any screen. Data, especially online data, is so easily lost. Print remains.
Lots of great reasons to print. Paper can’t run out of power. Can be stored for hundreds of years without concern for corruption. It’s a lot cheaper than another screen. Etc. etc.
Not to mention the scanner so I can scan all the garbage people, companies, and government send me in the mail.
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