BTW, I’ve had my Brother laser MFP for 11 years and still on the original toner.
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.
Exactly. You can join the club of “Do Nothing and Win” club along with Gabe Newell
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.
They have started chipping their toners, or so I’ve read. They’re still the least shitty printer manufacturer, AFAIK, though.
Let’s hope it’s just for quality of life and not to bully their customers…
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.
Bruh
Brother
I honestly don’t remember my printer brand. And that’s a good sign. I bought it years ago, and it now lives under my basement stairs on a static IP via wifi, accepting the on average bimonthly print job that I need from it. Then I walk down, fetch the print, and close the door on it again. I should name it Harry Potter.
Harry Printer
Harry Plotter ?
You may not remember the brand, but sounds to me like you got yourself a Brother laser printer.
“Dude, you’re getting a
DellBrother!”
Give a lightning scar across the top
I hope it’s at least in standby mode, and not always on.
Nah, it’s been running since '11 and because of a critical network vulnerability that op never patched, it’s been a bitcoin slave since '15. But the paper is always nice and toasty.
Harry Plotter
My sister in law bought a plotter, I should suggest that name for it
It runs arch btw
And Doom
I inherited a Brother laser printer from a lab I was once in. Apparently the toner only says it’s almost out via an infrared sensor. I read you can tape over the part on the toner cartridge and it will keep printing until it actually runs out.
I’ve printed so many more things after I did that, it’s actually still going now.
You can also disable that in the menu. I bought a brother printer and it said that the toner was empty so I purchased a new toner cartridge but then I disabled the warning and I’m still on the original toner. And I printed so much stuff with it, it’s like it never runs out 😂
Good to know. Thanks for that.
I’ve used tons of dot matrix, inkjets and lasers since the 80s. I’ve used them in MSDOS, ProDOS, Linux, BSD, Windows, MacOS, OSX, and BeOS. I don’t know how many I’ve owned or how many different OS versions but I know I’ve had exactly 1 printer that wasn’t constantly a problem and its a Brother laser printer.
can you recommend a good printer ?
Get a brother laser. 👨
can you tell me how to kill a High Ganzonian ?
Get a laser, brother. 👽
My black and white Brother laser printer is 16 years old and still printing almost every day.
I’m a big proponent of buying government surplus office printers. I have this huge print center collater thing that came with more toner than I’ll ever use in my life. $55
Oh gods yes. Government surplus equipment is amazing when you can find it.
My state used to send all their decommissioned IT equipment to a warehouse where the public could buy it. It was a wonderland. My first few laptops all came from there (was poor and that was the only way I could afford one).
About 5 years ago, though, they stopped that and only send old furniture there. Anything electronic now goes to some 3rd party e-waste service where it probably ends up in a landfill in some poor country.
Brother gets recommended a lot by virtue of being the least shitty option in the hellish wasteland of consumer/office printers. They aren’t perfect, but Brother printers have been the only option in the entire office to reliably print from a Linux computer over the network. Honestly, any day I don’t have to interact with a printer is a good day.
My father had a Brother laser printer. It outlived him. (…Anyway. Have you ever had to do Windows tech support for family? Not always nice. Ever had to do Windows printer tech support? Hoo boy. Ever had to do Windows printer tech support when the printer is hooked through a Centronics-to-USB adapter? Uggh. …though I was kind of surprised that Windows 10 still had built in drivers for the damn thing.)
Me, I bought a Canon laser which technically has Linux drivers but damn me if I ever got it to print more than the CUPS test page. …actually I’d rather not talk about CUPS. I have too many bad memories about it. (You can’t escape the Printer Madness just by using Linux, oh no.)
My father had a Brother laser printer.
So it was an Uncle laser printer?
(I’m sorry I’ll see myself out)
Been using an old HP Laser printer for like forever and it still works pretty well. Havent had a single problem with it
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.
I do love my Brother:
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 ✅
I’ve had a brother laser printer for 8 years now. Recently my wife was asked “can we get a color printer” and I said but we have at least 5+ years of toner left in this thing!
Recently bought a Brother laser printer. We use Linux, macOS, Windows 11, Android and iOS in the house and it just works.
Brother on Windows can be problematic
run a mixed network - have never had a single problem with my brother color laser from any device - win10, 11, mac, a bunch of different distros of linux… android and ios phones.
what kind of problems have you had on windows?
One particular model won’t scan on Windows until remove some random file.
Obscure but it drove me crazy at work. I spent so much time on something that should of never happened
One particular model won’t scan on Windows
aaaah multifunction devices are the real satan.
I use a canon… so yeah… better get a brother
Incredibly I’ve had two printers I’ve never really had issues with.
- The brother laser my sister uses with Ubuntu without a hitch since forever
- The canon inkjet printer/scanner that is wifi connected in my flatshare
Interestingly a Lemmy user in another thread has a very negative view of Brother because he only uses Brother cutting machines (for craft projects) and it’s filled with DRM and HP style lock in.
We need to lobotomize our “smart” devices …
There need to be open source “smart” devices. Like, I’ve read and edited the source code running on my 3D printer. I was able to do that in my own home because it’s got an Arduino Mega for a motherboard.
its why i dont like buying by brand, but rather specific product.
buying by brand gives companies a pass when they push out a shit product.
