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The old printer questions thread is archived so I thought I'd start a new one. All printers are poo poo, but some are less poo poo than others. In fact, some say there are non-poo poo printers out there somewhere, which don't have toner cartridge costs over 50% of the cost of printer units themselves... Anyhow, it seems to be general opinion (& old thread wisdom) that if you're looking for a bog-standard, reliable mono laser printer then Brother's HL-L2340DW model is a good'un. But they've now updated to the L2350 - does anyone have experience with this sparkling new wonder machine? Have they replaced all important internal parts with similar parts made only of balsa wood and reprocessed post-it notes?? And another more answerable question (the reason I'm posting this thread): is there any reason at all I should use OEM toner cartridges and drums, vs. nice cheap replacements from https://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/? I use cartridgesave cartridges on my Canon inkjet at home, and they seem to last forever as well as being cheap as gently caress. But my office is looking for a cheaper source of toner which I've never tried to get from cheapo third party sellers. What's the deal? e: I think the thread title typo was freudian
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Jul 6, 2018 11:29
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| # ? Apr 17, 2024 00:06 |
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Always ALWAYS buy OEM toner. 3rd party toner\refurb are for VPs or procurers for your organization to get kickbacks from the vendor. Any sane person in charge of printers and want to save money will actively fight to get rid of them and failing that implement software such as Papercut to strangle the correct behavior out of end users.
incoherent fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jul 8, 2018 |
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Jul 6, 2018 22:19
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I've had third party toner that worked OK but I've also had damaged cartridges that were bought as a spare half a year ago and now the place won't take them back without a fight. Then I found out our office supply place gives 3.5% back through ebates.com so now I get OEM only because I pocket more money.
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Jul 7, 2018 00:03
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incoherent posted:Always ALWAYS buy OEM toner. 3rd party toner\refurb is are for VPs or procurers for your organization to get kickbacks from the vendor. Any sane person in charge of printers and want to save money will actively fight to get rid of them and failing that implement software such as Papercut to strangle the correct behavior out of end users.
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Jul 8, 2018 00:11
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So, I own a Black and White Brother Laser, it's a good printer, it works like a reliable tank. My wife is doing crafty stuff and would need a COLOR INKJET as she is doing things that she cannot have mashed together to apply toner in a Laser. What printer will hold me and my family hostage and rape us the *least* on ink? The worst things I've heard on Inkjets so far is HP, anyone not hate their color inkjet to death?
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Jul 9, 2018 15:52
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We don't even bother with 3rd party toners anymore. They all suck, every single one of them. Yeah they may be half the price, but they last half as long and have a high failure rate and/or poo poo print quality. Even "premium" ones that are 75% the cost of OEM toner are just as bad. For HP toners, the image drum is built into the toner cartridge.. the refillers always seem to re-use these way more often than they should, resulting in poo poo print quality well before the toner in the cartridge runs out. And refilled Brother cartridges seem to leak toner on a consistent basis everywhere inside the printer. Also had 2 of the HP PageWide inkjet printers destroyed by generic ink cartridges. This poo poo they filled the cartridges with gummed up and clogged the print mech so bad never could get it to work again.
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Jul 9, 2018 16:29
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Any suggestions for a black and white laser all-in-one? I've mostly used random brothers in the past.
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Jul 25, 2018 02:32
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The cheapest hp
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Jul 25, 2018 03:39
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CDW posted:So, I own a Black and White Brother Laser, it's a good printer, it works like a reliable tank. Consider the comparative cost of going to Kinkos.
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Jul 25, 2018 06:25
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CDW posted:So, I own a Black and White Brother Laser, it's a good printer, it works like a reliable tank.
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Jul 25, 2018 10:41
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Printers are the devil. gently caress all printers.
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Jul 26, 2018 00:19
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Mr. Clark2 posted:Printers are the devil. gently caress all printers. This simply cannot be repeated enough times.
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Jul 26, 2018 00:31
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Hey its the thread for me. I "work with" a variety of printer models, mfp copiers, etc. All lasers because its for various business use. Actually I loving hate printers. I hate rollers, I hate maintenance kits, I hate toner, I hate moving them, I hate shipping them, I hate trying to fix one of 9000 little coil springs that shoot off into the ether when you sneeze at them wrong, I hate the wheels on copiers, I hate Lexmark, I hate Brother, I hate HP. I have 33 copiers and probably 100 regular lasers sitting in my office right now I want to go office space on. Please load paper into tray 4 to print from tray 3 please load paper into tray 4 to print from tray 3 please load paper into tray 4 to print from tray 3 please load paper into tray 4 to print from tray 3 please load paper into tray 4 to print from tray 3 Therefore - I hate this thread, but please OP understand this is due to my hatred of printers and not you  If you want a tough consumer B&W laser then in my years and years of experience I recommend a Brother 5470DW or 6200DW. TN750's, 720's, 850s last forever. If its low you can shake that baby for months and it'll still put out. Dont buy an inkjet without a very specific purpose otherwise it will dry out and you will be stuck with a useless piece of consumer plastic garbage stuck on a shelf for the next 2 years until you just throw it away. Thats all I got never get into printers. Someone needs to wipe the floor clean with printer and copier design and come out with something elegant. There are way too many rollers and springs and doors and catches and weak plastic bullshit in a printer, its like someone is getting paid to fit as many spinning things into an object that presses a piece of paper to a fuser as humanly possible. CODE: 154 PURCHASE WASTE TONER BOTTLE (literally a plastic bottle thats permanently sealed so you can pay $80 for another empty plastic water bottle)
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Jul 26, 2018 22:38
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^^This is a great post. I feel like this could profitably be renamed the printer ptsd group therapy thread. Also thanks for the further Brother recommendations. I couldn't believe that poo poo about waste toner bottles when I recently started my new job. I haven't worked a lot with office photocopiers in the past few years, has that always been a thing? Is there any way to empty the fuckers yourself?? I assume not, without destroying the bottle fitting in any case.
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Jul 27, 2018 18:31
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El Grillo posted:^^This is a great post. I feel like this could profitably be renamed the printer ptsd group therapy thread. Also thanks for the further Brother recommendations. Depending on the model. Some are just an open hole with a cap to screw on when they're full. Some can be cracked open, vacuumed out, and taped back together. Those are the waste containers that are $5.60 Some newer (albeit larger floor) models recycle the waste toner, remixing it back into the toner bottle and using it. Only black and whites do it right now, but I'm longing for the day a color process for that is devised.
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Jul 27, 2018 19:50
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Mr. Clark2 posted:Printers are the devil. gently caress all printers. My greatest wrath is saved for document scanners.
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Jul 27, 2018 21:16
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Regarding third-party toner: I buy third-party toner for the printers where I work. The stuff we get from regular vendors and not fly-by-night Amazon sellers usually works pretty well, and is way cheaper than getting reamed by OEMs. I think you're probably better off if you can find an outfit that will have a business relationship of some sort with you and wants to (pretend to) try to keep you happy. That said: if you can swing it, you're way better off convincing everyone to consolidate onto a central copier and then leasing the copier from a company that will take your money in exchange for keeping it supplied and serviced.
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Jul 27, 2018 21:22
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Toner is super bad for lungs when inhaled, and is light enough to be blown around with the slightest movement of air. Maybe that's why the bottles are sealed?
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Jul 27, 2018 21:27
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:...convincing everyone to consolidate onto a central copier... Yeah, good luck with that. At the last job where I actually was responsible for printers, I had three people within 10 feet of a huge copier who all insisted on (and made enough noise for management to give them) personal laser printers at their desks.
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Jul 27, 2018 21:29
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I'm a lead technician for a company that produces and services large copier/printers, and they while they do suck, they are far better than garbage tiny printers. Mostly because they cost between 10k-100k so actual engineering went into them. The best advice I can give anyone is if you need a low volume machine, buy a laser Brother and throw it away when it breaks. If you need occasional color, go to Kinkos. If you need high volume, go lease a machine from a company and let the tech handle things. Edit: There is nothing that is more wasteful and dumb than every person in the office having their own small printer.
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Jul 27, 2018 21:56
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I have been so much happier since I got my Brother MFC-L2740DW. I was up late at night trying to print out homework for grad school a few years ago and was infuriated at my useless inkjet lacking drivers for Windows 10, and my "tank" Laserjet 4000 that I got off Craigslist a decade ago randomly jamming and unable to find the right drivers for it. Now, I have a printer that just sits there quietly all day, sips power and outputs paper with letters on it when I need it. It's awesome. My only complaint is that their switching power supply circuitry inside outputs an audible whine. Question for thread though: what should I do with my old printers? My inkjet, a Canon Pixma MP680, I still have in its original box but my Brother can scan as well, so I assume I should take this to an electronics recycler? The LaserJet on the other hand, I have kitted out with a shitload of RAM, a JetDirect card and a duplexer. I could recycle it, but it still "mostly" works and might be worth it to a shop that specializes in maintaining the things for companies. I don't want to deal with shipping the thing either because it's loving massive, and Craigslist here is full of econo-inkjets. Ideas?
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Sep 9, 2018 21:18
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Give the laserjet to a friend.
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Sep 10, 2018 11:08
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Any recommendations for a home light-duty laser printer with a feed scanner and wireless support? I'd rather not have a bed scanner since I'm doing legal size stuff and the footprint for those tends to be huge. Thinking about the Samsung M2070FW to replace my current dumb-as-rocks Samsung B/W laser but the paper feed on that one has been iffy the whole time. BangersInMyKnickers fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Sep 12, 2018 |
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Sep 12, 2018 18:29
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I'm just a guy who scans and prints the occasional family photo for relatives. Looking to replace my old hp photosmart 2610, which has been limping along for years now and I'm tired of fixing it.
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Sep 13, 2018 05:39
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Personally I am of the opinion that all multifunction printers, I.e. those who scan and copy too, are shite. Jack of all trades, master of none. So, yes, if I were you, I'd get a full size flat bed scanner and do it right.
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Sep 13, 2018 21:59
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And a new stand alone laser printer as well.
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Sep 13, 2018 22:00
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I've got a Brother MFC-L2700DW series and it works fine for scanning. It was less expensive than a standalone scanner and also has a duplex laser printer attached as a bonus. The difference is that it didn't come with extra software (e.g. OCR, document management) that the standalone scanners typically do. I set it up to dump PDFs directly to an FTP share on one of my computers so I can initiate the scan directly from the printer. It can also output JPEGs at pretty decent resolution.
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Sep 14, 2018 00:37
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Freakazoid_ posted:I'm just a guy who scans and prints the occasional family photo for relatives. Looking to replace my old hp photosmart 2610, which has been limping along for years now and I'm tired of fixing it.
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Sep 15, 2018 05:52
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Aunt Beth posted:How frequently? Is it occasional enough that it would be cheaper to just use the Kodak kiosk at Target or a drugstore instead of replacing your hardware? I don't know exactly. It's hard to tell what value I got out of an all-in-one when I made it last over a decade. If I can do that again, whatever break point seems moot given such a time span.
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Sep 15, 2018 10:03
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My folks own a small business that is unfortunately fairly paper intensive. They have a pair of Brother MFCs they run way beyond their intended duty cycles. When they die roughly every 5 years they replace them with another pair of MFCs. For regular home use they'd probably last over 10 years.
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Sep 16, 2018 20:16
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Anyone have experience with Lexmark support vs Xerox support vs Brother support?
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Sep 19, 2018 21:07
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Anyone have experience with Lexmark support vs Xerox support vs Brother support? Lexmark’s tech support seems pretty capable. Never had to deal with account management. My extent of Brother support has been buying a printer for my house at Staples. Also look into Toshiba. Service is excellent all around and we are leaving Xerox for them because of the aforementioned account nightmare.
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Sep 19, 2018 22:57
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I keep seeing good talk about brother printers here. I got an AOW Brother inkjet some time ago and despite barely using it, when I need to make a copy or run a print job it just works. I did use some off-brand ink at my own peril and it seems to run okay, but it's still a big risk because of all the shady ink sellers everywhere. I browsed some Best Buy ads and saw that they're trying new ways of trying to sucker you into getting their printers and therefore their ink, from stupidly large '1 year' ink cart/tanks and printers that automatically send notices to hp so they can ship you more ink when the printer runs low at a 'discount' rate. Frankly I haven't needed the things so much lately but I agree that you'd think by now someone would have invented a simpler, better way to put words onto paper but nope. I guess if nothing else it makes for a real great incentive to go paperless.
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Sep 23, 2018 08:00
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I ended up grabbing DCPL2550DW because it has automatic duplexing in addition to the feed scanner. I like it very much. If you are tight on space and using legal-sized paper, be aware that you have to open up the back of the tray so it protrudes out the back and takes up a couple extra inches that aren't in the standard dimensions.
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Sep 24, 2018 15:30
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Stupid question since I haven't had to touch a printer in years: is there some equivalent to VueScan to act as a generic print driver for Brother printers on Windows? A friend is pestering me about trying to set up a quick way to default to "fast print with low ink" for his business and apparently the print profiles in the stock Brother driver aren't working for him.
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Sep 28, 2018 00:07
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I'm looking for printer/scanner reccomendations with a few very specific traits. I need to print probably less than once per week on average, probably 75% black and white but the 25% color will be important. I need to scan in color probably once a month. I would like these two things to be in one compact unit, but I'm really going to prefer whatever combination of standalone/combination machine(s) are cheapest (in the long run). My house gets warm during the day, the printer will likely be staying in 90f during the summer/spring months Low cost to entry & low maintenance costs are highly desirable. I'm not sure what im going to need to spend? It would be nice not to spend more than like a hundred or two? Wireless isn't strictly needed, but it will be sitting directly next to my router anyway Thanks all. Shopping for printers is surprisingly terrible.
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Oct 3, 2018 06:55
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El Grillo posted:^^This is a great post. I feel like this could profitably be renamed the printer ptsd group therapy thread. Anyone else here have to deal with a Xerox Phaser as their office printer? 
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Oct 3, 2018 14:26
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Phraggah posted:I'm looking for printer/scanner reccomendations with a few very specific traits. do you really require your own printer at this point? I'm not sure if you have somewhere like a kinkos nearby but that's going to cause way less headache in the long run.
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Oct 3, 2018 16:59
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Basticle posted:Anyone else here have to deal with a Xerox Phaser as their office printer? Which model is your bane? The 6180 and 8860 should've never been invented, but the 3635 has been solid in my experience.
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Oct 3, 2018 17:05
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Oyster posted:Which model is your bane? The 6180 and 8860 should've never been invented, but the 3635 has been solid in my experience. My company used the 8860 and similar models for 10 years and I want to throw it off a highway overpass.
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Oct 3, 2018 19:26
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