[Linux-aus] printer advice

[Russell Stuart]

On 30/5/23 21:44, David Lloyd via linux-aus wrote:
> I'd have to agree:
> 
> * Try to find one which cannot be bricked remotely by the company 
> (because you're not using their over priced ink, for example);

There are two models of making money from printers.  You can make money
from selling the printer in which case the printer is expensive, or you
can make money from selling the ink/toner.  In the latter case the
ink/toner is expensive, and they will try to prevent you from using
third party supplies.

I got heartily sick of going paying through the nose for ink/toner.  You
have to pay for the DRM chip included with it that prevents you from
using cheap third party ink for Pete's sake. So I took a punt on buying
an "expensive" printer.  My choice was a Epson EcoTank, with
postscipt/pcl. Having postscipt/pcl used to be the only way to be 100%
sure you could get Linux to print to it.  (Brother and the other
manufacturers do publish their own drivers, but their
quality/reliability is iffy at best.)  Nowadays ensuring compatibility
with mobile phones has gifted us "driverless printing", which Linux also
supports.  In fact the format originated with CUPS (although is slightly
modified form the "CUPS Raster Format" it is derived from).

I've had the printer for a while now.  I can't recommend going the
expensive printer / cheap ink highly enough.  Because the printer is
expensive it works well - they don't they to shave pennies on
components.  Mine has *never* jammed, and we have double sided printing
on by default.  It comes with weird features like it's own
@print.epsonconnect.com email address.  If you send an email to that
address it gets printer, or so I'm told.  Postscript / PCL comes only on
the more expensive printers - but these are expensive so they tend to
come with it.

Inkjets rule now.  In these expensive printers they've solved the heads
clogging after long periods of sitting idle problem (but it relies on
them always being powered).  They are always colour, and they've always
done colour better than lasers.  Refilling with ink is now a totally
painless affair - easier even than changing a toner cartridge.  The
printer came with 12,000 pages of tone in the box, and a 6000 page black
refill costs $30 from Office Works.  I doubt Epson gives a rats on
whether you use their ink or someone else's, because they aren't making
much money on the ink.  In fact with 12k pages coming in the printer box
I doubt they sell much of it.  Needless to say you aren't paying for no
stinking DRM chips embedded in the refill bottles.

All manufacturers sell this style of printer now.  I think the generic
term is "continuous ink printer".  I know people with Canon and Brother
variants and the story is always the same.  The love the things.
Although I'm used the word "expensive", they are expensive compared to
the $100 printer that costs $100 to refill.  They cost less than most
phones.

The scanners on the MFP's are a different story.  Mine scans (it's a
ET-5170).  But getting scanners to work has always been a struggle for
me.  The ET-5170 does scan from my laptop (and phone) using the Epson
supplied close source binary.  It's GUI looked very pretty on start up
but isn't particularly ergonomic, and it segfaults on occasion.  In my
experience that's par for the course for vendor supplied software.  If
you can find a scanner supported by SANE you can use open source
software, which will be more reliable.  I couldn't.