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submitted 6 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[-] Godort@lemm.ee 134 points 6 months ago

I am always reminded of this tweet from ProZD when printers come up:

i've got a billion dollar idea, imagine a computer printer but like, it actually fucking works, it prints every time like it's fucking supposed to without issue, it just does that no fucking problem, companies, feel free to take this idea, this one's on me

[-] dan@upvote.au 84 points 6 months ago

This type of printer exists. It's called a Brother laser printer.

[-] lobut@lemmy.ca 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I have a brother laser printer for years, can confirm.

My friend has one that's like ten years old, works fine too.

The software is a bit janky and all that but it works.

[-] Grimpen@lemmy.ca 15 points 6 months ago

My monochrome Brother Laser is around 15 years old. Works great on Linux, as it should on any cups system. It's still the same printer or was 15 years ago, drivers shouldn't change.

I think I'm on the 3rd drum for that thing. Lord knows how many pages. Just keeps trucking.

[-] frog@beehaw.org 13 points 6 months ago

I have a Brother laser printer. It regularly goes into such a deep sleep that no force on this Earth can wake it up when it's time to print, because it's too deeply unconscious to respond to "wake up" signals from computers. It cannot print without first being brought out of its coma by a troubleshooting software.

So I'm not going to put that in the category of printers that just prints every time like it's supposed to without issue.

[-] dan@upvote.au 6 points 6 months ago

Huh, that's strange. Does pressing the power button not work? Are you using wifi or Ethernet?

I think there's a way to disable the deep sleep mode.

[-] frog@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

Nope, pressing the power button doesn't work, and I've tried it on both wi-fi and ethernet, with the same problem either way. I am pretty much resigned to the fact that I do not get along with printers.

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[-] Banzai51@midwest.social 6 points 6 months ago

It's good relative to what we have now, but it can't hold a candle to some of the warhorses we had in the past.

[-] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 5 points 6 months ago

Brother still can't do inkjet right? I read somewhere there's a big patent that lets only a select few companies be able to sell inkjet printers.

I used to have a laser printer, and they're great for documents, but now what I print most are photos, and for that pigment-based inks rock.

I have an Epson printer but even if they're nowhere near as bad as HP, Epson also has some weird shit from time to time.

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 5 points 6 months ago

I own a brother inkjet and it works fine, although it complained when I put the wrong brand of ink in it.

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[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 43 points 6 months ago

Printer companies are probably the reason most people no longer own a pinter.

[-] Poggervania@kbin.social 12 points 6 months ago

The main issue with a lot of “printers” nowadays is that they’re usually not just printers anymore - it’s a printer/copier/scanner with faxing capabilities. The more complicated shit you cram into a single machine, the more likely something else completely unrelated will break.

I have a HP laser printer that is literally just a printer with the Wi-Fi turned off and it’s been working well on the odd occasion I needed to use it. Only reason I got it was because the Bother printer I wanted wasn’t on sale and this HP was going for under $100, so I went for it since I needed it at the moment and figured I could use it until it either dies or HP decides to not offer the toner anymore, whichever happens first.

[-] Deceptichum@kbin.social 26 points 6 months ago

Nah the main issue is they're designed to be shit, to force you to spend more money.

Firstly there's no reason the loss of say a scanner should result in failure of the printer functionality, that's poor design. Secondly, why are so many of these extra features failing when so many people rarely if ever use them? Sounds very much like planned obsolescence. Printers are a total scam.

[-] gk99@beehaw.org 13 points 6 months ago

My $300 Brother laser printer that does everything works just fine because it wasn't designed to be a money-siphoning piece of shit.

[-] anothermember@beehaw.org 6 points 6 months ago

I had one of those printers in the 90s.

[-] Radiant_sir_radiant@beehaw.org 75 points 6 months ago
[-] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 21 points 6 months ago

I laugh at this every time I see it, but I also like to point out that Rage was, in fact, extremely explicit about what machine they were raging against.

[-] Radiant_sir_radiant@beehaw.org 11 points 6 months ago

I don't know. It's commonly accepted that their lyrics have a bit of an anti-estabishment sentiment, but statements such as "believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya / buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya", or even "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" (stated by the machine) can just as easily applied to most situations where a printer is involved. Maybe there's somehing to it?

[-] Gamers_Mate@kbin.social 60 points 6 months ago

You know the printing industry is messed up when "Our printers are less hated" is not satire.

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 51 points 6 months ago

WTF, I thought HP had the MOST hated printers?

Epson is getting away with its ecotank models, and Brother lasers have been the go to for a lot of people.

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 43 points 6 months ago

Brother is the go to because their stuff is basic and functional.

All the other companies have "innovated" to the point where their shit is unusable for daily use.

Yep, Brother rocks.

Too lazy for my usual lengthy monologue about Brother when this comes up, but works well with Linux, far more reasonable ink cost than any other brand I've tried, and the even low end 'inkvestment' model we have has really lived up to its claims regarding ink longevity. It doesn't even hassle you when you use off brand ink, but I only tried hat once since I had so little complaint about the Brother ink. You do lose ink level indication, which is annoying, but that's it, and manually checking level is also easy with this style of printer.

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[-] NoStressyJessie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 6 months ago

My kids started school and I had a need to print lots of medical forms and other paperwork, I bought a brother laser printer. Because it was basic and functional and didn’t try to force me into an ink subscription that gave them permission to disable my hardware.

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[-] thebuoyancyofcitrus@beehaw.org 5 points 6 months ago

I got my ecotank two years ago and haven't had a reason to buy ink since. I still have plenty of the ink that came with it. The most frustrating thing has been that I have to let it run through a cleaning cycle when I haven't printed in a while. Well, that and the fact it took me a second to realize it doesn't support WPA3.

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 months ago

The cleaning cycle thing is pretty common with any inkjet. My old HPs all do it when I havent used them in a while.

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[-] Hirom@beehaw.org 33 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I hate HP's so called smart apps.

HP's website wouldn't let me download a driver, but insisted on using their app to detect the printer model (which I already know) and then try to open the corresponding download page for that model (which I already vsited).

Off course the app open the wrong URL and lead to a 404 error. I had to download drivers from another source.

[-] BCsven@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 months ago

We have HP workstations. Last week HP auto installed its smart printer app and then popped open. We don't have HP printers, just Canon. So I uninstalled it, and all the HP diagnostic / support account apps. They sent a feedback form, so I explained that on principle I'll never buy HP printers because of the ink subscription. Hopefully enough people send the same message.

[-] toothpicks@beehaw.org 30 points 6 months ago
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[-] youRFate@feddit.de 29 points 6 months ago

Bold coming from the top innovator of printer behavior that deserves hatred…

[-] verstra@programming.dev 25 points 6 months ago

After reading stories like this, I more and more convinced that if we want to have a free market, we need to limit the size of companies allowed to participate in it. Because if you have 2 companies controlling the whole market, they can and will produce "dynamic security"-type of garbage.

[-] millie@beehaw.org 18 points 6 months ago

This is honestly the realization we really, really need to have as a species. It kind of feels like the lesson a lot of what we've seen this year has driven home, and it's something I've started hearing echoed, so maybe we're starting to get there.

This whole obsession with everything needing to constantly expand is absolutely destroying us, our environment, and everything good that we make.

We've got to start going in the other direction.

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[-] alphapuggle@programming.dev 23 points 6 months ago

I'm not sure what's worse, that "less hated" would be a serious brag in the printer industry, or that it's not even true for the ones claiming it

[-] drwho@beehaw.org 22 points 6 months ago

I don't think they misread the room at all. HP is pretty much at the top of the heap due to its corporate hardware installs and support contracts (which aren't going away any time soon). Their lower end stuff is all over the home office and small office markets. Their older stuff is used by much of the open source community. The number of folks who're going to switch to another manufacturer in disgust because of the tone of this marketing campaign will barely put a dent in their revenue streams for the next fiscal year, perhaps a fraction of a percentage point.

Incidentally, "we suck less than our competitors" is not a new marketing technique. It's probably the second oldest marketing technique.

[-] Lemmyvisitor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 months ago
[-] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 10 points 6 months ago

Drawing people in with open questions.

[-] GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network 8 points 6 months ago

I would have guessed it was titties

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[-] frog@beehaw.org 16 points 6 months ago

I despise printers. I have never owned one that wasn't evil.

[-] zzzzz@beehaw.org 17 points 6 months ago

I was you once. In 2018, I bought a dumb, black-and-white laser printer (Brother HL-L2300D). It has done nothing but print whenever asked. I've only had to change the toner once (to be fair, I print infrequently). It doesn't require special software. It was cheap. I highly recommend going this route.

[-] frog@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

I have a Brother black-and-white laser printer, and it is, in fact, evil. I commented about it in this thread in fact: it never prints when it's asked to because its deep sleep is so deep that computers can't communicate with it without the use of troubleshooting software. So it doesn't fit the requirement of "prints without any problems".

[-] noddy@beehaw.org 5 points 6 months ago

If it is network connected, consider giving it a static IP in the router. I can imagine the computer being confused by the printer having a new IP since last time (can happen with automatic IP), when you try to print something.

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[-] drwho@beehaw.org 5 points 6 months ago

I think the only printer I had that wasn't evil was my Commodore MPS-1200.

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[-] ArugulaZ@kbin.social 10 points 6 months ago

Remember when Domino's Pizza admitted that their pizza was shit, and that they'd work really hard to make it less shit? How'd that work out for them?

[-] Swervish@lemmynsfw.com 27 points 6 months ago

Uhhhh, actually really well? I mean it's still shitty pizza, but they legitimately turned their entire company around, and prevented bankruptcy and going out of business lol

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[-] PaddleMaster@beehaw.org 8 points 6 months ago

That’s hilarious. I thought I for sure the article would be The Onion.

https://i.imgflip.com/q2q9q.jpg

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 6 points 6 months ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summaryThree short HP video ad campaigns detailed by Marketing Communication News include one with a customer supremely frustrated with his printer's low ink warning.

Despite this, HP has continued to roll out sudden disruptive firmware updates to add dynamic security to additional printer models.

That happened earlier this year, when users reported that their previously functioning third-party ink wouldn't work in their HP printer anymore.

HP didn't explain why dynamic security was suddenly necessary, nor did it warn users relying on their printers for work and other critical matters.

CFO Marie Myers highlighted the business value of constraining customer choice at the UBS Global Technology conference for investors this week.

The executive added that HP's "really proud" about raising "the range on our print margins" through "bold moves and shifting models."


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this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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