Are laser printers still a ‘thing’? I recall having one as a kid and it just wiped the floor against any InkJet printer I’d used - holy crap.
It was limited to black and white though.
It was limited to black and white though.
I picked up a Brother (L3510CDW) colour laser + scanner a few years ago. It was slightly more expensive than a bubblejet, but consumables and maintenance will mean TCO is way lower. Brother seem to have some of the better support for GNU/Linux & CUPS these days - this thing Just Worked (over the network, too) on Debian with I think one package from the standard repos.
Also, the printer from your childhood was limited to black and whatever colour paper you fed into it, not black and white.
I meant ‘are they being produced anymore’, ‘would you still recommend them’, etc.
>> Also, the printer from your childhood was limited to black and whatever colour paper you fed into it, not black and white.
I wouldn’t have known - it’s not exactly like I was the person purchasing the toner, and I was simply told by my Dad that it printed in black and white only.
At that age, I was just grateful to be able to print my Winnie-the-Pooh fan fiction. :P
It's a bit of a trope, people calling monochrome printers black & white -- they don't print the white areas, of course. Some light-yellow paper would have been appropriate for the fanfic. : )
For photo prints, you are far better off just paying per page for commercial products, though color lasers are pretty good for simple things like colored charts. A really good color printer costs a lot; it's far cheaper to rent the use of one when you need it.
I used an HP LaserJet 4+, upgraded to 4M+ by adding a PostScript board, and adding memory to get it into the 30-something MB range. That was 12 ppm printing speed. I replaced it with a much-lighter Brother HL-2140 (22 ppm) when I had owned it for about 10 years, during which I replaced the toner once. The Brother is now almost 10 years old, still working just fine, though I have replaced the toner twice.
I could replace it, but why? It still does what I bought it to do.
I've had zero cases where I needed to print color. If I want to print photos I just order them at Shutterfly and pick them up in less than an hour at the Walgreens around the corner.
The manufacturers generally don't fuck around with their laser lines.
If it's color and they don't have a machine identification code (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code) then you have a real gem. They actually respect you as a customer.
Lost soundscapes, like playing a computer cassette out loud or hearing a modem dial up have a really nostalgic power for me.
I wonder, what sound is current now that will disappear in the future?
Car engines for one I’d bet.