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Comment by centizen | Hacker News Reader

Canon was actually on my short list of printer vendors I would have recommended people to use. Now it's just down to Brother and Kyocera I guess.

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Among all the printers in our household the Canon model broke in the least amount of time, only fixable with a spare part which was "coincidentally" the same price as the whole printer. And the official scanning tool was just named "ij utility", which meant it was impossible to find with related search terms.

It was entertaining, but not in a good way.

Honestly I've never been satisfied with any printer, inkjet or laser. I eagerly await the day I just don't need one.

Even Brother is dodgy, depending on the model. I have a low-midrange Brother B&W laser printer that worked great until one day it decided to stop accepting print jobs, both via network and USB… it just stalls at “processing” and never proceeds. Googling around it seems like people with various Brother models have seen this behavior.

Accidental failures are one thing, deliberately user hostile design is another.

Parent is insinuating this may be deliberate sabotage on Brother’s end, to convince users to buy a new model after a while

It may also be just random failure of some components that were simply costed to be less than bulletproof on their "low to midrange" model. Or a software issue as suggested by another poster. No evidence of any sabotage was presented.

I once had a similar problem with a CUPS/gutenprint driver. If you are using CUPS, load the ppd from brother.

It could also have to do with the detail/complexity of your document. Intricate PDFs or high-dpi graphics can overwhelm low-midrange printers. (I once had a print job that took the printer half an hour to process.) On some printers you can even install additional RAM.

We have a bunch of different Kyoceras at the office. The software is buggy as hell, yet they hide their security updates behind a super-expensive support contract with an “authorized” reseller.

Thats criminal in my opinion. Never buy again. Sharp does the same thing for their larger “enterprise” MFPs.

Indeed. I've alwaya found the Canon Pixma Inkjets pretty good because they are basic and print OK and don't muck you about with these kinds of shenanigans. Dispointed.

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