Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I had a LaserJet 4 too, and I think there's some rose-colored glasses effect going on here. I have a Brother DCPL2550DW that I got for $130 when the pandemic started and it's been better than the LaserJet 4 ever was in the following ways: more reliable (not a single jam), duplex printing out of the box, much cheaper, built-in networking (both Ethernet and WiFi), uses a modern interface (USB) that modern computers actually have ports for, built-in combo flatbed/feed tray scanner, better/more intuitive buttons on the printer, faster printer speed, and high enough data throughput to max out its print speed even for complicated pages. For a bit more money you can get a version of this that does duplex feed scanning as well (it wasn't worth it for me but it was for troydavis in one of the sibling comments).

The LaserJet 4 was fine for its time but it doesn't compare to decent modern printers. Substantial improvements have been made over the past few decades.

> I think there's some rose-colored glasses effect going on here

That may be anecdotal based on brand and model. I can agree with you in this case because I've got the Brother DCP-L2540DW. I got it on sale for $99 CAD (~$75 USD) when it was still the newest model available. I'm using the stock cartridge still, though I have a refill purchased and ready to go in case it's not possible to buy one when the original powder runs out.

This line of Brother printers is indeed good. It's impossible to say whether this applies generally to any laser printer, or to any Brother laser printer, or if we were simply lucky to have picked up these particular models.

My Brother hl 2340d is also working really well. Using the same 10€ cartridge for over 3 years now and not one hickup

Not sure of the exact model, but we had a brother laser printer at my old work. A few of them actually. They were fairly reliable most of the time. It would jam occasionally and figuring out errors with it was sometimes frustrating. But i never really hated them or have any ill feelings towards them the way i do with other printers.

I bought a Brother HLL2300D over 5 years ago. I only print about 10 pages a month but it has never jammed and I just put in my third toner cartridge.

It's monochrome but I almost never need to print in color. For photos I just upload to Walgreens and pick them up a mile away.

I went through 2 HP Inkjets and I don't print very much and the ink always went dry after a few months and I know there was still ink in them.

I think I got it on the same sale. It was at Staples, I think, right?

But mine didn’t have a good life. It still works, but has a super weird issue where if you sent it more than a few pages it’ll hang with an error message needing a restart. Sending many pages as individual jobs is fine though.

Yeah the LJ4s jammed a lot. And they were real ozone generators. And would hold up the queue every time someone specified the wrong paper type "INSERT LETTER"

But I loved them because you could send a message to their screen with a PCL command. Even many of the matter models can still do this. I had so much fun with that.

> The LaserJet 4 was fine for its time but it doesn't compare to decent modern printers. Substantial improvements have been made over the past few decades.

...which is why I wrote "considering the time in which it was created"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com