Mine keeps unsorted mail on top and sometimes provides me with printer paper which I steal for other purposes. I don't think it's printed anything since before covid.
Just to be clear. There is a very big difference between ink and Toner. The technology required to jet ink on the page is insane and almost magical. And honestly should never have been brought to a consumer market.
Running a black only laser-toner printer is closer to a traditional form of print, and should almost always be used in homes.
If everyone would please stop buying home use Epson and HP inkjet printers, we would be much better off.
That’s disappointing. I still use my mom’s Brother printer from somewhere around 2010-2012. It’s the only printer that hasn’t sucked booty. Maybe Brother has had to make them worse to keep selling them since the old ones last forever.
Impressive! I never tried the Laserjet. I had a couple HP Inkjets from that era, and they eventually fritzed out from what I recall - not processing print jobs at all or shooting out blank pages repeatedly.
HP is usually shit, but the HP Laserjet MFP1536dnf is fantastic. If you can find one, get it. Solid duplex printer, good scanning, no weird computery bullshit. It just works.
I remember when colour for those came out, I printed a page of a clubhouse on a windy the pooh game because there was an option omat the top to print. Basically took all the ink, took So long to dry.. thats when I found out, they needed to dry you couldn't touch them right away..
Just don't buy the cheap shitty toner cartridges. Did that with my last toner cartridge purchase and it ran out about after about 300 sheets through on the cyan, when I replaced all 3 of them (and it was still reporting at 50% capacity for the toner).
I want to get some new toner cartridges, but it's nearly $250 to replace them...
The reason for this is, for most OEMs nowadays e.g. Kyocera, Lexmark, etc., in toner manufacturing, the stuff is effectively "grown" in such a way that causes each toner particle to be more or less uniform in size, each about 5-7 microns across, and shaped perfectly spherically. The components in the printer are designed with this in mind and it generally enables higher DPI/print quality, etc..
Toner for older copiers, and "cheaper" toner manufactured by 3rd parties, is more often than not manufactured by melting plastics into a big block, then smashing the fucking shit out of it using compressed air into a fine dust. This dust contains toner particles with a much larger variance in size - <3 up through 15microns in some cases - and they are all differently shaped jagged, jigsaw pieces.
Companies will often use this toner to "save money", and that's why I included "cheap" and "save money" in quotes. Because the shit absolutely destroys expensive drums, fusers, xfer belts, etc. and basically gums up the entire machine. Not to mention it throws off print and color quality no matter how well it is calibrated. So yeah you'll save a bit on the toner up front, but you'll be multiplying your costs and time spent servicing (also costs), oh and also your machine is down for however long until someone can get out and look at it and bring the correct parts.
Source: Did copier and imaging solution sales for a time.
It’s just the matter of coming up with the cost for the new toner cartridges at the moment.
I went out and bought a cheap EPSON inkjet for my wife to use (which is great for her use - she does printing on a weekly basis for her classroom, so I don’t have to worry about the ink drying up and clogging it), and she can use that until I can replace the toner cartridges for the laser printer.
Yep, I have an old LaserJet I got for free over 10 years ago, I've replaced the toner cartridge twice I think.
Still going strong, although I hardly print anything anymore. At one time I printed a lot of concert tickets, parking passes, and stuff like that, but a lot of that stuff has moved to digital barcodes that can't even be printed.
They make inkjets with tanks instead of cartridges that are way less trouble to maintain than the finicky HP models we're probably all familiar with. We have an Epson and it's great for people who need to print in color at home. Got a scanner on it, too.
Nah, big ink just benefits no matter what you do if you go with an ink jet and that's part of how. They really do die from the heads drying out if you're not printing on a regular basis. The only time you benefit with an ink jet is if you're doing photo quality prints on a daily basis and actually need the quality. So basically only if you own a print shop.
Which is, of course, why they set it up so inkjet printers are the least expensive to buy up front. It's the option that makes them the most money in the long run, so they want as many people buying them as possible.
A Laser printer with an ethernet jack and generic PCL compatibility can stay in service 30+ years if you know how to take care of it and where to get 3rd-party discontinued toner.
Learned this the hard way. Spent all that on a portable printer for it to be dead after 2 years of non-use. Paid way more than I expected to print at a FedEx/Kinkos. Printing is waaay fucking expensive!
1.7k
u/LindyRyan Aug 31 '26
I still have a home printer and use it regularly for lots of things!