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Comment by SanchoPanda | Hacker News Reader

And also install their spyware/crapware, deal with terrible performance, watch it fail every update, etc.

Vuscan is a gem for making computers just work the way people assume they should. I used to have deal with printer/scanner problems regularly for a particular family member; now I sometimes proactively ask to see if any issues have arisen - nope. It has just been working across two printers and a major OS upgrade.

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> And also install their spyware/crapware, deal with terrible performance, watch it fail every update, etc.

Just to clarify: you mean the software that comes with new scanners, not Vuescan, right?

For sure he meant that.

Not necessarily true. I have one mono laser printer and one color MFP for almost 7 years now, both were dirt cheap and now both are still going strong, nothing to complain really.

My Brother printer becomes 20 years next year. It's still working as new, have changed drum once and the support page on Brother even says it supports windows 10 and yes it does, it just worked. No extra installation needed. My Brother MFP (scanner, printer) I found in a second hand store for 10 euro, also just works but is a bit newer.

Interesting. I had a Brother duplex wi-fi laser printer die on me last year. It was about 10 years old but had led a very sheltered life - only on its 2nd or 3rd toner.

Didn’t seem to be anything mechanically wrong with it, but one day it just stopped printing or receiving commands properly. Still booted up ok and menus were responsive, but would freeze up on any attempt to print, even a test page. Sad day, but I’ve learned to live without a printer now.

We have used lots of Brother printers at work. All of them worked just fine except one that we exchanged before the 2 year warranty ran out. They are rated at a certain number of pages per drum and that has kept pretty well so far, after two drum changes the paper jams starts to get higher and after a while they will be pensioned. My much older one has outlived them all though. At work we don't use printers the same way any more so not much need for them thankfully.

Nothing surprising IMO as it's about 10 years old. Since you did not use it much, I would say the mechanical structures would be still very sound but it's the electronics were the culprits. If you kept it turned on, current would have aged the components and if any of the critical ones failed, it's done. But it might have failed even sooner if you rarely turned it on as moisture accumulated in the components and when it should get to some threshold, it got busted as soon as it turned on.

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