Printer mfgs are at it again

[GreyGeek]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...rce=reddit.com

It's been years since Lexmark first decided to defeat the users who began to reuse spent bubble jet cartridges by injecting them with cheap ink using a hypodermic syringe. They did it by sensing when the cartridge was low on fluid and burning out a fuse in the cartridge itself, which prevented it from woking after being refilled for re-used. Unfortunately, their sensing algorithm made inoperable cartridges that had 25-30% of the fluid still in them. Lexmark's sales model was patterened after Rockerfella's lamp model: sell the lamp for practically nothing and charge a lot for the kerosene to fuel it. After that fiasco their sales plummeted. Cannon still tried that trick despite the bad press for Lexmark.

I owned a Cannon printer at the time and, as luck would have it, that printer failed. Did I consider Cannon printers when I went looking for a new printer? Nope. Epson followed Cannon's lead, as did many other inkjet printer makers, and that forced me to look at monotone laser printers. I bought a Samsung ML-1210 laser for around $200, IIRC, and replaced it with my current printer, the HP LaserJet P1606dn, an awesome duplex printer. The toner/drum for it costs $70 and gives around 3,000 pages of print. I bought this printer in 2010 for around $200, IIRC, and I am on my second toner drum.

IF I need to buy another printer it will be a color laser. Probably this one, or one of its children:
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Laserjet-W..._title_ce?th=1

[mbohets]

Exactly why I bought a color laser.
I choose Brother because you can easily refill the toner cartridges, and because they have good linux support
It came with starter toner cartridges, good for about 1500 pages,
When these were empty, I refilled them with toner powder from tonerrefillkits.com,
and filled my cartridges, good for 6000 pages.

[jglen490]

I don't remember a time when I didn't have an HP printer - at least an inkjet type printer. HP apparently just likes Linux, or maybe they like selling their printers to Linux users. In any case, it works for me. Never tried Brother, but it seems there was a time when Brother and Linux didn't get along, like most things and Linux back in the bad old days. But I could be wrong. Anyway, if Brother works, then that's a great choice, and it's great to have choices!

[woodsmoke]

I finally just broke down and purchased an HP Envy 4520 and it works fine does colour printing and all that.
What I would really like to purchase is the "Ecotank" which, according to the reviews, produces good printing and all that but also has a large "tank" which can be refilled more inexpensively in terms of pages per tank.
However, the OpenPrinting site does not specifically list whether there is a driver for the device.
So...kinda stuck.
I'm still cranking with my old HPLaserjet6P parallel but it is probably on it's last legs.
I do have a large HP printer all in one black and white but need the color capability, but if the 6P finally goes I'll shift to it.

HP screws with the device when it "updates" if you have something like a cartridge world cartridge in a printer and it screwed up my original color printer and another that I bought so I am now just heaving a big "sigh" and purchasing carts for he Envy at the cheapest store, usually OfficeMax around here.
woodsmoke

[kc1di]

I've been using HP's for a long time and never had a problem with refilled cartridges. I Get them at about half the price of H.P.'s and they seem to work well enough for my needs.
Had and Epsom for awhile and it was very hit and miss, would not work with any of the refills I tried in it. But the HP's have been steady preformers. Currently using a HP Envey 4500 series. We moved a couple years ago into a small apartment and it does not take up much space.

[jglen490]

Yeah, I go to my friendly neighborhood Cartridge World and get refills all the time. They work well and last long - for what I do!

[mbohets]

Lately, Brother made it even more easy to install the printer/scanner drivers.
In the past, I needed to download and install several .deb files, and make some changes in cups via a browser.
Now, after installing Neon 18.04, I looked if there was a new release of the drivers, and saw that they now have a single small installation script that takes care of everything.
The only thing I needed to do was to make the script executable and run it with sudo.
The script asks what type of printer it is, how it is connected to the PC, asks the IP@ after I told it is an IP printer, and then starts downloading and install the correct .deb files, and configures cups.