Comment on Has HP printers always been this bad?
SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net 11 months ago
IT person here. Avoiding HP is a good idea. But a better idea is don’t buy shitty cheap consumer level inkjet printers from any brand. Most of them have this sort of bullshit, although not usually as bad as HP does. Instead I suggest buy it for life. Get a nice color laser machine, spend a few hundred bucks, and you will have a printer that lasts until you die. I like the Canon MF743CDw, it’s a little on the pricier side but it scans both sides of the paper in one pass. Also does color duplex printing.
If you don’t want the extra size or weight of a color laser, get a black and white laser. How often do you really need color? And if you must get something cheaper, get one of the newer inkjet printers that use refillable ink bottles rather than cartridges, like there is an actual ink tank on the printer and you refill it with a squeeze bottle rather than replacing the cartridge.
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
My problem is I only need a printer maybe once or twice a year so it’s a bit difficult to justify spending hundreds of dollars for a device that will probably only pay for itself back in about a decade.
It may honestly just be worth the hassle I’m going to the library when I want to print something. Not they they don’t have crap printers as well.
tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk 11 months ago
Get a Laser then… Inkjets dry out if not regularly used, which on the cheaper printer often means ‘throw it away and buy a new one’ because they don’t have replaceable heads. A laser will happily sit for months idle then spring into life.
hydrospanner@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’ll pay for itself the first time your shitty inkjet has one cartridge dry up from not being used in a while, so then the software won’t let you print anything at all until you replace all 4 of them with proprietary OEM replacement cartridges.
That’s one of the main reasons I decided to bite the bullet and spend a few hundred bucks on a color laser. I print so rarely that I wanted a system that wouldn’t dry out from infrequent use.
SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net 11 months ago
Then get yourself a basic black & white laser printer. Brother is usually pretty good for that. The cartridges don’t expire and it’ll be ready instantly when you need it, whether that’s tomorrow or next year.