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Old printers on ebay are going to be the new game, until we start seeing kickstarter flooded with new printer companies.
I want to agree, but has there ever been a case of the free market saving itself?
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enshitification of technological things continues..
The last bid I reviewed for a new office recommended Brother printers (woot) but the color laser had toner lock-in. I recommended an alternative and the owner agreed.
Too bad these companies won't know about the products they don't sell because of this crap.
Glad I've got an Brother laser that has no network connectivity.
Strictly-speaking, in this case, it's not the ability to be network-connected that's at issue, but rather the ability to push updates to firmware.
I don't know what type of computer you have it connected to, but Linux has a system that will automatically update firmware on USB-attached devices if the attached Linux computer is Internet-connected.
$ sudo fwupdtool get-devices
Will show you a list of managed devices.
I'm sure that Windows and MacOS have comparable schemes.
On Linux, I'm sure that you can blacklist a device for updates.
I'd guess that it's possible to get one of those dedicated USB print servers. Those probably don't support updating firmware on an attached printer. I might have some questions as to how much I'd trust a no-name one of those on my network itself, but...
Shit. I didn't even think of that. I'm using fedora. Tomorrow I'll be blocking firmware updates for the printer. Thank you for pointing that out.
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Welp, I guess that pen plotter I built last year is going to be my full time printer
Not sure if I got the update yet, but I'm banning my printer from accessing the internet right now.
I have a Brother MFC-9340CDW that I salvaged from work last year; we replaced it because it kept getting a ghost "paper jam" every time you tried to print something. Turns out the cause is an $18 board that's known to fail. Scanner still works fine though, strangely.
I also have a Kyocera FS-3900DN b&w laser printer from 2006...or somewhere around there. It does the thing, and can even be managed with a CUPS server since it has 10/100 networking.
Now to figure out how to disable automatic firmware updates on the Brother 🤔
Are there actually any good printers? I would pay more for the printer itself if you just don't try and scam me afterwards. It feels like a hopeless space.
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Can't watch right now, but is there a list of affected devices?
I've always promoted commercial inktank printers for people who do a lot of printing, and people always mentioned Brother as a response, but tbh I've never really hopped on the bandwagon to shill for any particular company.
Just a good commercial inktank printer. A regular printer with all the bells and whistles is going to cost you like $100 and $45 for each ink pack you buy, you might as well just spend $450 on a printer, write it off as home office expense, and call it good.
I didn't even know he had a brother.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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