I had to buy a printer recently. I intentionally went through all the information i could to find out which manufacturers pull this trick and bought their competitor instead.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Can you share what competitor you bought and some of your findings?
I didn’t have a wide array of choices, as I had a selection of printers in front of me at a brick and mortar store, but I went with the Brother HL-L2325DW. They offer a subscription (I don’t mind an optional convenience and monetization method) but they don’t disable your printer or force you to buy it.
It came with a full sized toner cartridge at about 3,000 pages compared to the “demo cartridge” most printers will give you with the unit, and it worked out of the Box with CUPS and Linux, and was supported by Brother for Windows and Mac.
Wildly enough there was a Linux utility too from Brother, but I didn’t need it.
Brother is the only non-evil company when it comes to printers. Every other printer company would literally stomp on your puppy given the chance.
+1 for Brother HL printers. 2 toner bars got me through 3 years of nursing school.
If I need something printed in color, I'll just let a professional do it.
I'm wondering if there's a open source firmware for printers like openwrt for routers
Edit: typo
I have a 12 year old laser printer that I got for $3 from a garage sale and I'm riding this baby into the ground. Every year or two I get some generic toner for about $15.
This shouldn't be allowed. I hate products in 2023.
Can't believe this is legal.. is there seriously a subscription model even if you've bought a printer? Does this happen with all hp printers?