Printers are known in IT to be a utter pain in the ass. Most brands are also using a lot of proprietary stuff and it limits interoperability. Drivers for example.
Well known example is about ink cartridges. HP added identification chips on them, so if you want to use an other brand, not HP, to fill your printer, you can’t because if no chip is detected despite a cartridge being inserted, the machine will tell you it is not genuine.
Another example with Rycoh. I don’t know if their printers still use this method, so take it as an example of capitalist greed more than a current situation.
Laser printers are using a sealed container to process waste created during printing. Rycoh had placed a led detector inside to know when it was full and trigger an alert, stopping the machine and request for a change.
Good idea in theory but in practice the detector was placed very oddly or on purpose near or in front of dust intake. So it was bathed very quickly in electrostatic dust and thus triggered the alarm very quickly, even if your container was not fully filled.
The only way to solve this was to shake your waste storage, hoping it would clean the led enough to keep going for a few days or change it.
Lastly, I have a Brother printer, bought to a neighbor sale. The oven inside, which is in charge of heating the ink, had a failure. It had melted. For the price, it was a deal. I only needed to buy a new part, unplug it, replace and I had a laser printer with colours. Well, Brother had lightly soldered pins linking the connector to PCB. When I unplugged it, soldering came with it. I contacted a repair store near me telling me they don’t do it and I should ask for a repair to a certified Brother technician. Which is overpriced. I also can’t open it fully as it is placed to be impossible to repair without disassembling half of the machine.
No printer is the same, some brands are better than others. Some are well accepted on Linux with CUPS, some other not. But so far, not one brand impressed me well enough by their design to keep it open, easily fixable and long lasting.
Printers are known in IT to be a utter pain in the ass. Most brands are also using a lot of proprietary stuff and it limits interoperability. Drivers for example.
Well known example is about ink cartridges. HP added identification chips on them, so if you want to use an other brand, not HP, to fill your printer, you can’t because if no chip is detected despite a cartridge being inserted, the machine will tell you it is not genuine.
Another example with Rycoh. I don’t know if their printers still use this method, so take it as an example of capitalist greed more than a current situation. Laser printers are using a sealed container to process waste created during printing. Rycoh had placed a led detector inside to know when it was full and trigger an alert, stopping the machine and request for a change. Good idea in theory but in practice the detector was placed very oddly or on purpose near or in front of dust intake. So it was bathed very quickly in electrostatic dust and thus triggered the alarm very quickly, even if your container was not fully filled. The only way to solve this was to shake your waste storage, hoping it would clean the led enough to keep going for a few days or change it.
Lastly, I have a Brother printer, bought to a neighbor sale. The oven inside, which is in charge of heating the ink, had a failure. It had melted. For the price, it was a deal. I only needed to buy a new part, unplug it, replace and I had a laser printer with colours. Well, Brother had lightly soldered pins linking the connector to PCB. When I unplugged it, soldering came with it. I contacted a repair store near me telling me they don’t do it and I should ask for a repair to a certified Brother technician. Which is overpriced. I also can’t open it fully as it is placed to be impossible to repair without disassembling half of the machine.
No printer is the same, some brands are better than others. Some are well accepted on Linux with CUPS, some other not. But so far, not one brand impressed me well enough by their design to keep it open, easily fixable and long lasting.