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Comment by robswc | Hacker News Reader

I actually have no idea how printers (things that have been around for ever) are _still_ just so bad. I do get cheap printers tbf... but sometimes they just flat out do not work or can't connect or get jobs stuck in the queue, etc. I never experience this when buying other "cheap" peripherals, yet, printers just seem to consistently suck in almost every way.

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I thought this too! Then I saw the light. Get the cheap Brother laser printer "that everybody has" in the article that is linked from the linked article (the linked linked article?)

https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...

Seriously. It's so stupid simple. It rules. It juuuuuust prints. No DRM, no nothing. No apps to install. (I think it has apps, but you don't need them. I certainly didn't install any) It costs like $120. I actually bought one model up for $150 that also does duplex printing.

This is the printer that you are wishing for. It certainly is the one I was wishing for. Can't believe it existed. Wasted so much time and frustration on inkjets.

I have the wired version of this - the HL-L2300D - and it has been fine too. The one issue with the wired version is that there are no good Linux drivers, brlaser [0] kind of works - but fails with certain documents.

[0] - https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser

I've run around 5500 pages thru the HL-L2300D's using brlaser with no issues - I'm wondering what documents fail?

Yup I've been using mine for years and years.

But honestly, I don't understand it in the context of capitalism.

Why does just this one good printer exist? Why doesn't it have competitors? Or if competitors aren't economical to exist, why does this one still exist?

I'm thankful it's here. But I can't think of any other product category at all where there's only one really good one and then everything else is overpriced crap.

Wait, I'm not sure that's true at all but I do think there's an interesting question there.

Brother has a whole bunch of monochrome laser printers from $120 up to $250ish depending on if you want duplex printing, wireless, document scanning, multiple paper trays, etc. From what I can gather they're all well-regarded? HP, Canon seem to also have decent offerings in that price range though based on a totally unscientific review of scanning Amazon ratings it seems like people like the Brothers best.

I think it's just an issue of inkjets versus lasers.

Inkjets are just horrible. Every single freaking one. Why are they so bad? The ink cartridges always dry out and stop working unless you print on a regular basis, and they all have some weird predatory business model based on selling you a bunch of ink that you don't need. It feels like they lose money on the printer and bank on you buying a bunch of ink later on.

So how did monochrome laser printers in the same price range avoid that weirdo predatory business model? That's my question. I can't really imagine that a laser printer is any cheaper to manufacture than an inkjet printer.

They are required by law to do certain things. You can't print black if yellow is out because the tracking microdots won't print. The region is extremely important not to be changed because different regions have different requirements.

You can't even create a printer startup and fix the issues because it's all basically regulatory.

Am fascinated by the consumer regulatory angle here. Got any examples/text to read over?

You can read more about how the eff has determined that 'all major printer manufacturers have a secret agreement with governments to implement tracking'. There's no link to the specific agreements though since they are secret. It's just known that printers add colored docs to track documents and it's also known that this is required by various governments throughout the world.

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

That doesn't make sense - obviously black-only laser printers exist and manage to be compliant just fine

Regulation is "color printers need telltales", not "color prints need telltales"

I do not believe that a colour laser printed can't switch to whatever tracking dots mono laser printers use when out of yellow ink. I'd believe laziness over compliance issues.

Citation needed about tracking dots on B&W lasers. I don't see why they're necessary: the main reason is for anti-counterfeiting. B&W lasers can't be used for printing counterfeit money, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

I don't know if they have them - but the same argument still applies. If you're printing in mono then no tracking dots are necessary, therefore stop complaining about missing yellow ink.

That's exactly why the black only printers are so good though. They escape regulation to print yellow dots since they can't print subtle yellow dots.

They still have tracking dots. But at least you can print when yellow is out.

[citation needed]

Printers are mechanical devices. Putting ink on the page in a way that actually looks good requires quite a lot of precision. It may take a lot of resources to get a marketable product, so it’s not something startups tend to do.

From what I can see, there are no such laws or regulations.

Can you provide any citations for this claim?

At the university helpdesk, I worked next to a grizzled Unix veteran who had worked on their network since the 70’s. He said basically what you said: printers were always the worst component of the school’s network.

From the typewriter-like things with all their their mechanical moving parts up the the Canon color laser printers we had just deployed, they all took inordinate amounts of time to keep running.

It really blows my mind and will frustrate me like no other device. Usually because its last minute and I have to print something out quickly. I could plug in a 10 year old USB camera, monitor, mouse, etc. and have no problems. Plugging in a 1 year old printer is really rolling the dice.

Obligatory Oatmeal reference https://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

Using the cheapest possible hardware and investing the bare minimum in software, and good engineers aren't choosing to work on HP Inkjet DRM software.

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