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Have a Mac and a L3750, no issues with drivers, even on Apple Silicon, great AirPrint support too.
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Oct 26, 2021 01:44
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I need a home printer that's going to see fairly light use - the occasional couple of documents for work, but probably more often stuff for running tabletop RPGs - player handouts, scenario notes and character sheets, etc. Probably about 15-20 sheets per week one average, and very occasionally some bigger jobs if I want to print out sections of PDF rulebooks, etc, but that's a rare edge case. It doesn't necessarily need to be colour but that would be nice to have, 'cause I'm big on presentation with these things, so if it does do colour it needs to be good colour. I don't have a lot of room so I'd like it to be pretty compact, and I don't need a scanner because I can use the one at work or I guess my phone. Because the jobs will be pretty small, I'm not too fussed about ink economy, and I'm looking to stay on the cheaper side - could probably push it to about £150. What's my best option for this?
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Oct 27, 2021 01:37
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Faux Mulder posted:I need a home printer that's going to see fairly light use - the occasional couple of documents for work, but probably more often stuff for running tabletop RPGs - player handouts, scenario notes and character sheets, etc. Probably about 15-20 sheets per week one average, and very occasionally some bigger jobs if I want to print out sections of PDF rulebooks, etc, but that's a rare edge case. It doesn't necessarily need to be colour but that would be nice to have, 'cause I'm big on presentation with these things, so if it does do colour it needs to be good colour. I don't have a lot of room so I'd like it to be pretty compact, and I don't need a scanner because I can use the one at work or I guess my phone. Because the jobs will be pretty small, I'm not too fussed about ink economy, and I'm looking to stay on the cheaper side - could probably push it to about £150. What's my best option for this? B&W laser is almost certainly going to be your best bang for the buck, and fewest headaches down the road. The thread generally prefers Brother, but they aren't the only game in town.
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Oct 27, 2021 03:22
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The cost of the printer isn't too much of an issue but the cost of toner is quite brutal on a colour printer. I just use a colour A4 laser in my office and that is sufficient but I wouldn't be using colour if it wasn't a business expense.
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Oct 27, 2021 04:52
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I've been looking at small multi-function options and a lot of the features I want (duplex printing and scanning, non-poo poo user interface, good cloud storage options) seem to be exclusive to colour laser models, which then come with insane costs for the toner packs. Even looking at compatible supplies it's almost the price of the printer to put toners into it.
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Oct 27, 2021 10:22
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Thanks Ants posted:I've been looking at small multi-function options and a lot of the features I want (duplex printing and scanning, non-poo poo user interface, good cloud storage options) seem to be exclusive to colour laser models, which then come with insane costs for the toner packs. Even looking at compatible supplies it's almost the price of the printer to put toners into it. Have you investigated brother 27xx mfp models? They should cover all your requirements
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Oct 27, 2021 12:02
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Interesting, the 2750 would do the job. Not sure how I missed that, but it's on the shortlist now. Thanks.
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Oct 27, 2021 12:33
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Devian666 posted:The cost of the printer isn't too much of an issue but the cost of toner is quite brutal on a colour printer. I just use a colour A4 laser in my office and that is sufficient but I wouldn't be using colour if it wasn't a business expense. I'm only going to be using colour on occasion - do these things generally have separate cartridges for BW/colour, or would I have to buy the whole shebang each time I ran out of black? What's the cheapest I can get in on a reasonable colour laser for light use?
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Oct 27, 2021 13:06
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Faux Mulder posted:I'm only going to be using colour on occasion - do these things generally have separate cartridges for BW/colour, or would I have to buy the whole shebang each time I ran out of black? What's the cheapest I can get in on a reasonable colour laser for light use? The HP that I have has separate BW, and all 3 colours are separate and can be independently replaced. I would check the individual details of the printers you look at. For best prices you could look on newegg as they have quite a selection.
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Oct 27, 2021 19:09
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Devian666 posted:The cost of the printer isn't too much of an issue but the cost of toner is quite brutal on a colour printer. I just use a colour A4 laser in my office and that is sufficient but I wouldn't be using colour if it wasn't a business expense. Really? I find it pretty reasonable. I mean, photos are going to look like poo poo, I haven't really found regular color usage to be a significant cost, especially using knock-off Brother cartridges that work perfectly fine besides the toner level saying I am using a non-genuine supply.
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Oct 28, 2021 00:18
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Three Olives posted:Really? I find it pretty reasonable. I mean, photos are going to look like poo poo, I haven't really found regular color usage to be a significant cost, especially using knock-off Brother cartridges that work perfectly fine besides the toner level saying I am using a non-genuine supply. How often do people print photos anyway? Even then if you want a quality print you can just go somewhere with fancy commercial printers.
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Oct 28, 2021 05:03
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Devian666 posted:How often do people print photos anyway? Even then if you want a quality print you can just go somewhere with fancy commercial printers. If you're printing photos you want a dedicated photo printer, which is generally going to be an inkjet. For everything else a laser is superior.
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Oct 28, 2021 05:05
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CaptainSarcastic posted:If you're printing photos you want a dedicated photo printer, which is generally going to be an inkjet. For everything else a laser is superior. You can get amazing color photos from laser, but then you are in the 'my machine costs more than a car' territory. So I agree.
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Oct 28, 2021 06:23
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I've owned a couple photo printers over the years, first an old HP Photosmart that did pretty well on the right paper, and then a Canon that could do up to at least 11x17 and produced results indistinuishable from or better than the prints I had made at a dedicated photo printing shop (again, paper made a difference). I have a hard time picturing a non-inkjet printer capable of this kind of quality, but your statement about it "costs more than a car" probably explains my ignorance on the matter.
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Oct 28, 2021 08:31
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CaptainSarcastic posted:I've owned a couple photo printers over the years, first an old HP Photosmart that did pretty well on the right paper, and then a Canon that could do up to at least 11x17 and produced results indistinuishable from or better than the prints I had made at a dedicated photo printing shop (again, paper made a difference). I have a hard time picturing a non-inkjet printer capable of this kind of quality, but your statement about it "costs more than a car" probably explains my ignorance on the matter. Lets just say that when you enter the 6 digit range, laser printers can be the size of an RV and have more colors than CMYK. White toner is common at that level.
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Oct 28, 2021 19:41
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Peachfart posted:Lets just say that when you enter the 6 digit range, laser printers can be the size of an RV and have more colors than CMYK. White toner is common at that level. Not going to shill for a former employer but I thought the gold and silver toner in the Iridesse was pretty neat on a conceptual level. The fact that it's gold, silver, clear, and fluorescent pink toners that are required in addition to CMYK is wild to me. I get clear for more of a gloss that other toners can't do, but.....fluorescent pink? Cool! Oyster fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Oct 28, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2021 23:29
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I mean, if you have a frequent need to print photos at home RIGHT THIS MINUTE, get a dye-sublimation photo printer. I had a Sony one (Pretty sure I still do, somewhere), but the Walgreens a few blocks from my house will print out 4x6s for like pocket change, way less than 4x6 and while they quote like 1-2 hours to pick up, what that really means is they are ready to pick up, quality checked, enveloped with a checkout barcode on them, they will print them on demand almost instantly if you ask.
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Oct 29, 2021 00:54
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Oyster posted:Not going to shill for a former employer but I thought the gold and silver toner in the Iridesse was pretty neat on a conceptual level. The fact that it's gold, silver, clear, and fluorescent pink toners that are required in addition to CMYK is wild to me. I get clear for more of a gloss that other toners can't do, but.....fluorescent pink? Cool! That has to do with the limitations of the subtractive color process(CMY). It doesn't have much to do with the home environment, but in the higher end business world it becomes very important.
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Oct 31, 2021 03:57
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I have a Brother HL-L3290CDW that I really like BUT after I put in 4 new Brother toner carts, I get print outs like the attached. I looks like Toner is getting on some rollers. I have taken all the toner carts out, used that little wire cleaning slider gizmo on each of them, taken a cotton ball with isopropyl to them as well. I am a bit of an idiot with printer maintenance, but I'm not sure what else I should be doing. Any ideas on where I should be specifically looking/cleaning and how?
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Oct 31, 2021 20:34
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That's either a drum or imaging belt issue. What happens if you run a blank page through, does the crap still get dropped onto the paper? If so I'd be inclined to say it's the belt.
Thanks Ants fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Oct 31, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2021 20:54
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Yes, it's the same if there is no text/image. Any idea how I would go about cleaning that? e: Nevermind! I think I found it and I see stuff on it. Thanks ! slidebite fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Oct 31, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2021 21:04
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Well, I think I see how the toner got on that belt. Here is where I laid them down when I pulled it out. Prints MUCH better, but still not great. There is still that background "haze" on it. Not white. Although to be fair I can't be sure it's not from re-inserting the toner cartridge. Genuine brother toner cartridge  There was a smaller roller underneath it, seemed kind of soft/foamy and it also had toner on it. I guess I should clean that now too? It has # WT223CL e: gently caress, that black one poo poo all over the belt again ffs
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Oct 31, 2021 21:34
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The cause of those ugly prints is overtoning, or too high a ratio of toner to developer. Or possibly a damaged over-exposed drum. Your black drum is garbage.
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Oct 31, 2021 22:50
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Yeah, I'm calling brother tomorrow. It's brand new. I don't have the receipt any more (bought months ago, but just installed). Hoping they can help.  Appreciate it guys
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Oct 31, 2021 22:54
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Brother surprisingly said they'll send me a new toner cartridge so hopefully that'll cure my issues.
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Nov 2, 2021 14:33
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Received the new toner yesterday from Brother. Gave the machine a good last clean out, installed the new toner on the black drum and works like a charm. Was a pity just throwing the full one into the trash but 
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Nov 9, 2021 16:11
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https://www.brother-usa.com/supplies/toner-ink-recycling
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Nov 9, 2021 16:49
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I'm trying to replace a large office printer-- a Konica Minolta C554e that is a true piece of poo poo to us daily. Does anyone have any experience with large office-scale printers?
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Nov 10, 2021 19:13
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Get something on a lease so that when the "yes it definitely supports TLS and v4 drivers" turns out to be a lie you can phone the company up and tell them to come and collect it
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Nov 10, 2021 20:02
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Thanks Ants posted:Get something on a lease so that when the "yes it definitely supports TLS and v4 drivers" turns out to be a lie you can phone the company up and tell them to come and collect it Having spent 7 years servicing large office printers, do this. I don't service those office printers anymore, now I service the servers. Every company is lying about v4 drivers working.
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Nov 11, 2021 01:12
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V4 drivers are garbage, I push all my customers away from them. And you have to be very specific about TLS support, for example some of our old machines from about 7 years ago supported TLS 1.1 but not 1.2, meaning you could(at the time) scan to Gmail but not Office 365. I have also had requests for TLS 1.3, which is a whole other thing.
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Nov 11, 2021 16:18
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sexual Norm posted:I'm trying to replace a large office printer-- a Konica Minolta C554e that is a true piece of poo poo to us daily. Does anyone have any experience with large office-scale printers? Oh, don't get another Konica(they suck). Ask a few reps of major companies that lease machines(Canon, Ricoh, Xerox, etc). I personally suggest going with a dealer that specializes in a single vendor, because small dealers love to support everything and their techs will have zero training or parts. But the real info you need is: How many copies do we make a month? What features do we need? What are the available dimensions/power? What am I willing to spend? And give all those except the last one to those dealers.
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Nov 11, 2021 16:27
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As a poor idiot that used to repair these things and now have a comfy desk job, when you're estimating how many copies you do a month, always over-estimate. It's better to get a machine in with a higher usage threshold so you have a nice buffer if you print and copy more, than get a machine with the the top output limit being what you do in a month and you're constantly pushing it past that, because that machine will constantly break down. I had one machine I used to go to which was the only colour copier on this particular site, and even brought up the model type on our web page, showed the max page volume to the user who was complaining at how often it was jamming and the volume he was running it at, which was comfortably at the "this is the absolute max pages you can do in a month, please don't do this every month" and had been for about eighteen months.
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Nov 12, 2021 22:21
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They just replaced our work machines under our contract, as they were decommissioning them they had some sort of close out service menu print out attached on them, our main printer I believe had something like a million pages. I actually want to say it was closer to 1.2M. I mean, I know we print A LOT but I was absolutely shocked that was the duty life a largely problem free machine got chunked at. Are these fuckers just decommissioned, trashed and written off or is some small business thinking they are getting an incredible deal on a very, very fancy copy machine that has been completely run into the ground? Or do these things have a useful life after an operation that is just printing shitloads a month with high reliability needs gets a factory fresh machine. edit: Just looked up our new copy machines, 50,000 page monthly volume and we have multiple identical ones. 1.2M pages checks out. Three Olives fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Nov 14, 2021 |
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Nov 14, 2021 00:32
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Three Olives posted:They just replaced our work machines under our contract, as they were decommissioning them they had some sort of close out service menu print out attached on them, our main printer I believe had something like a million pages. I actually want to say it was closer to 1.2M. I mean, I know we print A LOT but I was absolutely shocked that was the duty life a largely problem free machine got chunked at. It depends. If the machine is low usage and in good shape, it will likely get refurbished with new consumables and resold, either locally or in an 'emerging' market. If the machine isn't selected for refurbishing, but is still within 5 or so years old, it may be broken down for parts such as boards and other parts that have no expected short lifespan. If it is an old pos that is otherwise useless, most companies will strip it and send what parts can be recycled to be recycled, rest is trashed.
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Nov 14, 2021 02:55
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I used to refurb machines for concessionaires, and the motors and boards were generally fine to leave in. Usually the process would be: power up the machine and check the volume; check the error history; delete the previous customer's data; remove all of the xerographic parts and feed rollers; clean out the print engine; replace all the xerographic parts and feed rollers; full calibration of the entire print engine & scanner; full software update including a wipe of the device's HDD If there were any stand out faults on the device, I'd usually order in parts and fix that while doing the refurb
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Nov 15, 2021 10:41
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ugh, I still am thinking about printers. I keep talking myself in circles. The L2750DW seems obviously worth it considering the cost of a standalone duplex document scanner. The L8900CDW vs the MF743Cdw, I don't know. It looks like Canon's linux driver situation is alright although not as great as Brother. It'll probably cover my needs for the occasions when I use Linux, and it'll scan to a network share. Not as nice as having full CUPS support for ARM/etc but it'll be OK. If worse comes to worst, I can leave it plugged into a NUC or something as a print server and it'll be ok. The Canon seems to have much better graphical/photo print quality - I'm not looking to do serious photo printing but on the other hand if I print something graphical I don't want it to look crappy either, then the extra money would just have been a waste. The Canon also seems to have a much more limited situation with non-OEM toner and the one brand I can find there's a fair number of people complaining about cartridges breaking and dumping toner in the printer and ruining it. realistic answer is buy the L2750DW, that covers almost everything I really need, but I kinda want color laser for those rare occasions color would enhance my enjoyment of something I'm printing (a guide with graphics or something, etc). I guess on those occasions I'd be happy with the brother anyway, but if I'm gonna get it why not get the one that's better at actual color printing? But then that locks me into a much more limited set of aftermarket toners, etc.
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Dec 7, 2021 02:29
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Paul MaudDib posted:ugh, I still am thinking about printers. I keep talking myself in circles. The L2750DW seems obviously worth it considering the cost of a standalone duplex document scanner. Dehumanize yourself and face to HP.
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Dec 7, 2021 03:14
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Paul MaudDib posted:ugh, I still am thinking about printers. I keep talking myself in circles. The L2750DW seems obviously worth it considering the cost of a standalone duplex document scanner. I'm not a printer guy, I'm a cranky person who hates complication, so here's my take: Some folks got room in their budget and living space for 'kinda want.' So if that's you, go for it. I've dealt with a big color multifunction machine that uses aftermarket toner at work. I don't want that poo poo in my home, you can inhale toner particles. At home it's the Brother Honda Civic b+w and it only gets fed OEM toner. If I ever need to print in color, I'll just get gouged at my local print shop or somehow survive in black and white. I'll have my photos printed (on a six figure machine that I never need to maintain) at the drugstore for a nice low price.
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Dec 7, 2021 03:30
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Don't use aftermarket toners. Toner is specifically made for a model, it can have differences in color, electrical resistance(this matters), the temperature at which it fuses, and density. You don't want to throw any random crap in your machine, because that can cause a very expensive fix. Also the above poster is 100% correct.
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Dec 7, 2021 08:20
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