I was just reading about this somewhere in my pool of open tabs and someone raised the point that it's a lot better to 'rent' a printer by paying five cents to print something off at the newsagent than to buy a printer to do your own printing... here! https://calpaterson.com/printers.html

Good thread, I've been wondering the same for a while and never thought to ask Kissu.
I think to have learned in the past that even those laser printers - or whatever the other type was that doesn't use traditional printer ink - use company-specific cartridges and that's when I completely gave up on getting one myself. Not having one though does complicate things for me a lot.

The HP laser printer I have advertises wireless printing and Linux support. The wireless printing doesn't work on Linux. The built-in scanner is very useful, though.

I bought a dot matix printer on Ebay. If you only need black and white (most people do) it's the best way to go.

>>4780
Actually I should specify. If you print _often_ as in everyday dot matrix is the way to go. Provided you can live with the noise. If you need a printer that you only use now and again then get a used laser printer. Check price of replacement toner first. Some models have expensive replacements others are really cheap. Laser is king of being able to leave it alone for 10+ years and it still working fine when you come back. Since there isn't a ribbon or inkjet head to dry out.

Everything else is a pain. Anything new is a pain. Don't buy printers manufactured after about 2001. My laser is from 1992. My dot matrix is from 1980-something.

I used an old brother laser printer and I never changed the toner. Just buy the black powder it uses and directly refill the toner by opening a cap on the side. The toner never complained about reaching "end of life".

>>4781
Are dot matrix printers the ones that always assault your ears in doctor offices?
This all sounds great to me, for reliability I always try to get things pre-2000 hardware myself, but I wonder about the toner. Is it possible to refill the toner for a laser printer from the 90s, do those not use model-specific stuff that has already gotten discontinued? Maybe they do but it's so common that it would be hard to run of it? Or would you only be able to use such an older printer until it's empty and then you gotta get another model?

I know that I have an Epson Printer I've been meaning to scan some stuff on but because I use linux I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do because I try to install epson scan and it just won't connect to the printer when I try to, even though the application can find it just fine. I'll figure it out eventually though, but for now it's a bit annoying.

I print something maybe twice a month so I just go to the local library to do it.

>>4783
Are dot matrix printers the ones that always assault your ears in doctor offices?

Yep, also known as "impact" printers.

>>4810
>detect this picture as an attempted counterfeit and refuse to print
Do printers actually do that...?

>>4811
￥deleted
I was too fast for anonymous.

>>4811
Yes they do.

>>4784
This is why I suggest buying old hardware with either ethernet or serial port (ideally both) inputs. The older ones followed standards so all you have to do is sent raw text or postscript. No drivers required at all. Works the same on every OS.

>>4783
>Are dot matrix printers the ones that always assault your ears in doctor offices?
Yes they're the loud ones. For some of us they're soothing and remind us of our youth.
> I wonder about the toner. Is it possible to refill the toner for a laser printer from the 90s, do those not use model-specific stuff that has already gotten discontinued?
This depends on the model. Again shop around before buying a used printer to make sure toner replacements are cheap. There are several with dirt cheap toner replacement options. Toner does not have to be replaced that often. So go ahead and stock up when you do buy them. They don't dry out like inkjets.

For dot matrix printers the situation is the same with the ribbons. The common ones all have dirt cheap replacement options because they're still so widely used in Government offices and places like doctor offices. Ribbons will dry out but not nearly as fast as inkjet cartridges.

Same advice as above with input options: Avoid anything advertising wireless support. Massive security hole into your LAN. You want something with serial and/or ethernet port. You can still print "wirelessly" over the network from any device as long as it's on the LAN. You want a laser printer with IPP and postscript support. Dot matrixs from back in the day aren't really an issue because they pre-date all the funky driver stuff. They all expect raw text and/or .bmp. Depending on what you're using to send text you might need to tick an option to use "only printer fonts" in MS office to get faster print times.

This is all assuming you don't care about doing color+images. I suggest you stay far away from attempting to do that. The only good printers for that are very high end and a pain to setup, use and expensive to buy ink for.

IF you do need to buy something new the Brother printers are generally decent. But they suffer from some of the same issues as all modern printers. With the funky drivers and what-not.

If your PC doesn't have serial port it's no big deal. USB->Serial port adapters are really cheap and work well.

>>4811
get that delete freak

Laser is simply the way to go unless you have environmental concerns about toner and how its quite literally ultrafine microplastics being melted into paper. The idea of a toner cartridge exploding and contaminating everything in a room kind of worries me... Inkjet, and dot matrix are far superior in that regard.

>>4780
I had been thinking about getting a dot matrix printer for a while. Ultimately, I determined that the DPI would be too low for general usage. Dot matrix printers can either run in text mode (fast; uses a built in character ROM), or in image mode (slow; required for non-supported fonts and non-standard formatting), and unfortunately most of the things I would need to print would require image mode.

this laser just lased me

>>4784
>scan
A while ago I found one of these portable scanners. I very rarely need to scan more than a few documents, so a big printer with combined auto document feeder is kind of wasted on me --- but also, bed scanners are always kind of fiddly with getting things aligned, cropping the image afterwards, and so forth. This little guy takes up barely any desk space and scans are limited to the height of the document. Very convenient. I highly recommend getting one if you can justify the expense. Mine is a Brother DS640. It seems you can find them used in the $50-60 range. It's just a USB peripheral so I doubt drivers would be an issue, but it seems Brother has drivers available for Linux in .deb and .rpm.

>>4784
https://apps.gnome.org/SimpleScan/
Try simple-scan. Maybe it'll magically work, like it did for my relatively modern HP printer.

>>4776
is there a printer jailbreak?? i live in a third world country with an ink jet printer so i think ink is cheaper over here
i regret having it here though canon sucks

>>5010
There was a guy I was following over a decade ago that had hacked around the limits of one particular brand/model. He was publishing information about a chip built into it that would artificially break the printer after reaching a certain number of pages and developing a replacement chip for them. But before he could bring it to market the company shut him down and yanked his published papers off the internet. I think he was also the same one that showed many models were designed to dump excess ink into a pad at the bottom of the printer. Which would disable the entire printer once it was fully soaked.

I may be remembering wrong but he might have been the same one that came up missing and/or murdered. Might have been another guy.

>>5010
>>5012
For what it's worth if you're interested in tracking this guy down I'm pretty sure he was Russian. I can't follow Russian stuff as closely now due to political situation and the fact that the younger ones don't publish on places like fidonet.

>>4776
there are two angles, getting something that doesn't use proprietary ink and the other is IPP support.
epson has an open standard that allows you to put your ink in a 'bucket' which means you can use third party ink.
and ipp is an open standard printing protocol which can be used with cups and guarentees that it will work with any computer under the sun.
I personally also have the requirement that it has no wifi/bluetooth or touch screen, and if you are autistic like me kissu the one i got is
EPSON_ET-3830_Series

so yah, happy hunting.

I'm really thinking about using a laser engraver instead of any dedicated printer from here on out
Retarded? Yes. But I despise printers.

>>5395
Really useful info, thank you for sharing. What's the ink you typically use, is there an "ultimate" choice for that as well?

Any modern domestic printer is a scam to milk you with ink refills, so I freeload on the office printer whenever I can. Or I simply write the stuff on a notebook.