HP misreads room, awkwardly brags about its “less hated” printers

I am always reminded of this tweet from ProZD when printers come up:

i’ve got a billion dollar idea, imagine a computer printer but like, it actually fucking works, it prints every time like it’s fucking supposed to without issue, it just does that no fucking problem, companies, feel free to take this idea, this one’s on me

This type of printer exists. It’s called a Brother laser printer.

I have a brother laser printer for years, can confirm.

My friend has one that’s like ten years old, works fine too.

The software is a bit janky and all that but it works.

My monochrome Brother Laser is around 15 years old. Works great on Linux, as it should on any cups system. It’s still the same printer or was 15 years ago, drivers shouldn’t change.

I think I’m on the 3rd drum for that thing. Lord knows how many pages. Just keeps trucking.

I’ve got one new enough to have networking, that’s still pretty old. It needs zero configuration using ethernet and just works on mobile devices (iOS & Android) without issue.

I have a Brother laser printer. It regularly goes into such a deep sleep that no force on this Earth can wake it up when it’s time to print, because it’s too deeply unconscious to respond to “wake up” signals from computers. It cannot print without first being brought out of its coma by a troubleshooting software.

So I’m not going to put that in the category of printers that just prints every time like it’s supposed to without issue.

Huh, that’s strange. Does pressing the power button not work? Are you using wifi or Ethernet?

I think there’s a way to disable the deep sleep mode.

I recommended Brother laser printers to some older relatives and this happened. The printers required a power reset every few days.

It’s good relative to what we have now, but it can’t hold a candle to some of the warhorses we had in the past.

Brother still can’t do inkjet right? I read somewhere there’s a big patent that lets only a select few companies be able to sell inkjet printers.

I used to have a laser printer, and they’re great for documents, but now what I print most are photos, and for that pigment-based inks rock.

I have an Epson printer but even if they’re nowhere near as bad as HP, Epson also has some weird shit from time to time.

I own a brother inkjet and it works fine, although it complained when I put the wrong brand of ink in it.

Ooo fun, a printer that never goes out of sleep mode… Nah fuck that brand, it shouldn’t have taken an hour for my brother laser printer to start up. Soo stupid man. Whenever I need something printed I just put it on a USB stick and get it printed at my local library. It’s faster anyways, and I don’t have to deal with my stupid hibernating brothers printer

Printer companies are probably the reason most people no longer own a pinter.

The main issue with a lot of “printers” nowadays is that they’re usually not just printers anymore - it’s a printer/copier/scanner with faxing capabilities. The more complicated shit you cram into a single machine, the more likely something else completely unrelated will break.

I have a HP laser printer that is literally just a printer with the Wi-Fi turned off and it’s been working well on the odd occasion I needed to use it. Only reason I got it was because the Bother printer I wanted wasn’t on sale and this HP was going for under $100, so I went for it since I needed it at the moment and figured I could use it until it either dies or HP decides to not offer the toner anymore, whichever happens first.

Nah the main issue is they’re designed to be shit, to force you to spend more money.

Firstly there’s no reason the loss of say a scanner should result in failure of the printer functionality, that’s poor design. Secondly, why are so many of these extra features failing when so many people rarely if ever use them? Sounds very much like planned obsolescence. Printers are a total scam.

My $300 Brother laser printer that does everything works just fine because it wasn’t designed to be a money-siphoning piece of shit.

I had one of those printers in the 90s.

I laugh at this every time I see it, but I also like to point out that Rage was, in fact, extremely explicit about what machine they were raging against.

I don’t know. It’s commonly accepted that their lyrics have a bit of an anti-estabishment sentiment, but statements such as “believin’ all the lies that they’re tellin’ ya / buyin’ all the products that they’re sellin’ ya”, or even “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” (stated by the machine) can just as easily applied to most situations where a printer is involved. Maybe there’s somehing to it?

You know the printing industry is messed up when “Our printers are less hated” is not satire.

WTF, I thought HP had the MOST hated printers?

Epson is getting away with its ecotank models, and Brother lasers have been the go to for a lot of people.

Brother is the go to because their stuff is basic and functional.

All the other companies have “innovated” to the point where their shit is unusable for daily use.

Yep, Brother rocks.

Too lazy for my usual lengthy monologue about Brother when this comes up, but works well with Linux, far more reasonable ink cost than any other brand I’ve tried, and the even low end ‘inkvestment’ model we have has really lived up to its claims regarding ink longevity. It doesn’t even hassle you when you use off brand ink, but I only tried hat once since I had so little complaint about the Brother ink. You do lose ink level indication, which is annoying, but that’s it, and manually checking level is also easy with this style of printer.

You do lose ink level indication

If you’re talking about the laser printers, the toner level is available in the printer’s web UI and via the network. I have mine integrated into Home Assistant.

My kids started school and I had a need to print lots of medical forms and other paperwork, I bought a brother laser printer. Because it was basic and functional and didn’t try to force me into an ink subscription that gave them permission to disable my hardware.

I have a cheap Canon Pixma inkjet that doesn’t seem to be enshitified. Probably about 3 years old at this point though.

Shoot ink on paper. That’s all you need to do. Don’t give me a built in screen, or onerous firmware, or any of that nonsense.

I got my ecotank two years ago and haven’t had a reason to buy ink since. I still have plenty of the ink that came with it. The most frustrating thing has been that I have to let it run through a cleaning cycle when I haven’t printed in a while. Well, that and the fact it took me a second to realize it doesn’t support WPA3.

The cleaning cycle thing is pretty common with any inkjet. My old HPs all do it when I havent used them in a while.

I want to love my ecotank Epson. The software is butt ugly, but works. The printer itself isn’t the nicest looking, but works.

But man, the print quality. No matter how many times I run a cleaning cycle, it’s still a smeary mess within two pages and the deep clean doesn’t work. Neither the instructions in the manual nor found online work.

I think that’s just how epsons are. My first two printers were Epson and they both started smearing ink after a few years.

I have a Epson L1300 ecotank, and never managed to get that poop work on Linux and the software is annoying on Windows… And every time printing, I need to start with cleaning the nozzle multiple times before the print quality is even half decent

They must be going for the mainstream audience that just knows printers suck. That, and anybody who knows enough to see how funny that sentence is, has already sworn off HP forever.

Absolutely the most hated. The marketing chuds are gaslighting by claiming to be less hated. Nah, nah brah. Seriously the most hated. By FAR.

I hate HP’s so called smart apps.

HP’s website wouldn’t let me download a driver, but insisted on using their app to detect the printer model (which I already know) and then try to open the corresponding download page for that model (which I already vsited).

Off course the app open the wrong URL and lead to a 404 error. I had to download drivers from another source.

We have HP workstations. Last week HP auto installed its smart printer app and then popped open. We don’t have HP printers, just Canon. So I uninstalled it, and all the HP diagnostic / support account apps. They sent a feedback form, so I explained that on principle I’ll never buy HP printers because of the ink subscription. Hopefully enough people send the same message.

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HP misreads room, awkwardly brags about its “less hated” printers(arstechnica.com)

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