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Any time a relative asks me which printer they should buy, I tell them to get the cheapest Brother laser printer they can find without wifi. I mostly do this to

Any time a relative asks me which printer they should buy, I tell them to get the cheapest Brother laser printer they can find without wifi. I mostly do this to save myself support calls, but it's also the printer I use in my own house.

infinityplus1 4y ago
Brother printers have regressed as well. See this post: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
oblio 4y ago
I bought a wireless HP printer. Besides the fact that I never printed anything from my phone. It literally required reinstallation (not restart!) to print again, every time, on Windows. It needed an HP account to be able to scan. Locally. I just chucked it out and got a USB Brother.
- Koshkin 4y ago
  > It needed an HP account to be able to scan. You can use Windows apps to do the scanning without creating an HP account.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Yeah my mom has HP wireless printers and I always uninstalled the HP software and it works every time without having to install anything else. Maybe because I’m used to the MacOS world but that should be the default first thing you try is do nothing and let the OS handle it.
  - jonathantf2 4y ago
    Some new HP printers lock scanning on the printer side unless you sign in with an account, any printer with an e at the end of the model number won't even let you print to 9100 without an account.
- specialist 4y ago
  A (very) recent HP inkjet firmware update just broke all inkjet cartridges older than about 18 months. Including cartridges from HP. Neither the on-device or OS mediated error messages explained this. I only figured it out from other angry users on reddit. How was my mom supposed to have figured this out? She didn't know that her printer had updated itself a few days earlier. She doesn't even know what a firmware update is. In a world of class action suites over batteries, chargers, keyboards, etc., why isn't HP being sued?
noisy_boy 4y ago
I have the wifi laser printer from Brother - works fine wirelessly with Ubuntu.
wingworks 4y ago
A few years ago this is what I did. Got the cheapest Brother laser printer. Happened to have wifi, but managed to disable it. It's been working solid via cables for years.
wikfwikf 4y ago
I bought the cheapest Brother laser printer in the early 2010s because someone on a forum gave me this same advice. It has worked without issue ever since. A few years ago I plugged it into a Raspberry Pi so that I could share it via CUPS to all the family's PCs. This has also worked almost without problems (the exception being it had to be reconfigured a few times on my wife's Apple laptop). A year or so later I realised that while connected to wifi I can print from my Android phone. The phone found the CUPS server and the printer without me doing anything at all and it has never gone wrong.
rootusrootus 4y ago
I kinda did this. Cheapest Brother printer, but with WiFi. Which is exclusively how we use it. Been flawless, printing from windows laptops, macbooks, iphones...
m463 4y ago
I have one and connected via USB. Works well.
bergenty 4y ago
That’s too much trouble. I like being able to print from any laptop, my phones or iPad.

infinityplus1 4y ago

Brother printers have regressed as well. See this post: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

oblio 4y ago

I bought a wireless HP printer. Besides the fact that I never printed anything from my phone. It literally required reinstallation (not restart!) to print again, every time, on Windows. It needed an HP account to be able to scan. Locally. I just chucked it out and got a USB Brother.

Koshkin 4y ago
> It needed an HP account to be able to scan. You can use Windows apps to do the scanning without creating an HP account.
- dmix 4y ago
  Yeah my mom has HP wireless printers and I always uninstalled the HP software and it works every time without having to install anything else. Maybe because I’m used to the MacOS world but that should be the default first thing you try is do nothing and let the OS handle it.
- jonathantf2 4y ago
  Some new HP printers lock scanning on the printer side unless you sign in with an account, any printer with an e at the end of the model number won't even let you print to 9100 without an account.
specialist 4y ago
A (very) recent HP inkjet firmware update just broke all inkjet cartridges older than about 18 months. Including cartridges from HP. Neither the on-device or OS mediated error messages explained this. I only figured it out from other angry users on reddit. How was my mom supposed to have figured this out? She didn't know that her printer had updated itself a few days earlier. She doesn't even know what a firmware update is. In a world of class action suites over batteries, chargers, keyboards, etc., why isn't HP being sued?

noisy_boy 4y ago

I have the wifi laser printer from Brother - works fine wirelessly with Ubuntu.

wingworks 4y ago

A few years ago this is what I did. Got the cheapest Brother laser printer. Happened to have wifi, but managed to disable it. It's been working solid via cables for years.

wikfwikf 4y ago

I bought the cheapest Brother laser printer in the early 2010s because someone on a forum gave me this same advice. It has worked without issue ever since. A few years ago I plugged it into a Raspberry Pi so that I could share it via CUPS to all the family's PCs. This has also worked almost without problems (the exception being it had to be reconfigured a few times on my wife's Apple laptop). A year or so later I realised that while connected to wifi I can print from my Android phone. The phone found the CUPS server and the printer without me doing anything at all and it has never gone wrong.

rootusrootus 4y ago

I kinda did this. Cheapest Brother printer, but with WiFi. Which is exclusively how we use it. Been flawless, printing from windows laptops, macbooks, iphones...

m463 4y ago

I have one and connected via USB. Works well.

bergenty 4y ago

That’s too much trouble. I like being able to print from any laptop, my phones or iPad.