Never buy Epson printers - e-nouri http://e-nouri.com/epson-products-sucks/ <comment><AUTHOR> I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time.

During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box.

I've talked more than a few people out of buying inkjets.

<comment><USER2> I have an HP LaserJet 4L. It's noisy and has an inconvenient Centronics interface. This is because it's over 20 years old, but it has been similarly reliable _and repairable_ because it dates from the era when HP were a respected engineering company.

<comment><USER3> You should get rid of that old thing, and upgrade to a early/mid-2000s HP LaserJet 2300d. It's about the same size, but it's far faster at printing (especially graphics), has a USB interface, you can add a JetDirect 10/100 ethernet card, and is a true Postscript printer. It's also extremely reliable, and the ink cartridges are cheap on Ebay.

The 2400 series (which replaced the 2300 series) looks pretty good too, and has built-in ethernet (no extra card needed), but that's when they switched manufacturing to China, so I don't know how reliable it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Never buy any inkjet printer. I threw in the garbage a Canon multifunction that refused ton work as a SCANNER when its ink was empty.

If you have the space and print a lot of black and white, buy an eight year old used HP LaserJet with an Ethernet interface.

<comment><USER5> I don't know why people still bother with inkjets. It's like the companies are actively punishing you for buying these models of printers. If they are necessary for work, then MAYBE. But even then, if you're buying commercial hardware you're not dealing with this junk either.

It also used to be that laser was incredibly expensive in comparison, now they're about the same price if you compare color inkjet to black and white laser.

I bought a Brother black and white laser MFC 7 years ago. I've changed the toner three times and it is just ready to print when I am. I've never had it not print, my old inkjet required a prayer before every print job.

No nozzle jams, no problems with a color being used up, preventing a b+w print. It just works. I paid maybe $180 for the printer 7 years ago and I'm not going to replace this printer until it fully dies. It has fax and multi page scanning capabilities- the only thing that sucks is that it isn't networked by default and the Linux drivers are touchy.

I plugged it in to my TP-Link Archer C7 and their printer sharing drivers work fantastic on OS X. I will never buy another inkjet printer again.

<comment><USER6> You can't generalize all inkjet printers. I use a Canon Maxify Injket in my company (we print only ~200 pages / month) and it's amazing. There is no laserjet that could compete in price/print.

<comment><USER7> Sure you can. The difference is in usage pattern. If you use printer rarely, ink will dry out and you will have to clean the head (using lots of ink in process) or replace cartridge. On the other hand with the frequent usage laser printers become cheaper per page quickly. I once had Epson Stylus 800. Sucked big time. Replaced with HP 6L, never owned an inkjet again, never will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious.

1\. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon).

2\. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only.

3\. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge.

4\. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black and colours).

5\. They are buggy and noisy as hell.

<comment><USER9> The purpose behind the engineering of the printers is to drive the sales of as many ink cartridges as possible while being as cheap as possible to produce.

From this perspective, offering many additional features which turn off when the ink rent hasn't been paid makes much more sense.

<comment><USER10> Makes sense until people stop buying them for laser printers.

<comment><USER3> There's a problem with that theory: they're simply _not_ going to stop buying them and switch to lasers.

We've had this dynamic for at least 15 years now, and people still are buying cheap-o inkjets and getting ripped off on ink cartridges. If people haven't learned after a decade and a half, they're never going to learn. Just look at the other comments on this discussion (including the blog posting that started it all): even on "hacker news", which is full of technologists rather than regular people, tons of people here have fallen for the inkjet scam. If a bunch of nerds don't know any better, than you certainly can't expect the regular public to figure it out.

<comment><USER10> People don't really print anymore. If you do print, you're an office or business that runs laser printers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of:

"I am going to spend the rest of my career focusing on the hard problems of computer science: printers, projectors, and screen sharing."

[https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136](https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136)

<comment><USER12> Printers are my biggest IT nightmare. No piece of modern computer hardware fails so consistently, so ununderstandably or so frequently as a printer.

<comment><USER13> Not true at all. Buy a good management solution (we use PrinterLogic) and buy good printers.

By getting rid of crap devices, putting the good, self-service management system in solution in place, and proactively replacing consumables, we took something like 75k annual printing tickets down to around 300.

Those support interactions and dispatch cost like $1M/year, so eliminating them paid for 100% printer replacement in about 18 months.

Because we bought thousands of printers at once, we made the vendors quarter and were able to extract additional concessions re:reliability guarantees, etc. So if our estimation of the quality of the devices are wrong, we're shipping a lot of printers back.

<comment><USER12> The problem is that you can only afford to do that if you're a moderately large business. For home users or small schools (where I have worked), that's simply not an option moneywise...

<comment><USER13> Decent 3rd party print management solutions start around $25/printer. They are often free when tied to hardware.

Nobody can afford garbage equipment. You're better off doing without.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market?

I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects.

Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?

<comment><USER15> It's a race to bottom of costs, not some market teeming with innovation. Sure you could build the most amazing printer in the world but no consumer is going to spend $1000 for it vs. the $50 special at the big box store. Think of them like razors and razor blades--they'll throw an extra blade on to amp up the marketing but in the end it's all about selling some plastic and electrical bits for a few pennies less than the next guy.

<comment><USER16> I didn't get your razor analogy at first because you can have inexpensive and high quality with safety razors (eg - Feather blades).

The ones you reference are aptly called disposable razors and electric razors. Disposables are sham products through and through, but a large portion of the electrics market is high utility, fairly inexpensive basic function devices, like trimmers.

A Fill-ups(tm) that pre-warms the lotion it squirts on your face and starts your car for you on cold days for an extra $150 over the previous model is a bit of a gimmick, but there are plenty of standard models that are low cost, long lasting, and well priced if you know what you're shopping for, which was part of your point about cheap vs quality printers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Get a cheap consumer black and white laser printer and never look back. I can't think of any time I've needed or wanted to print color. For photos and such send them off to be printed with real photo printers.

<comment><USER17> I print my occasional shipping label et al. at work (shh!), but did the same for my parents. I don't like Samsung with anything creative, but their simple black and white laser printers seem great and even have official Linux support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't own a printer, and I feel like when I have to print something I usually employ one of the following strategies:

1) Going to an office supply store, library, or university with the PDF of what I need to print on a USB drive.

2) My workplace providing a printer for work-related printing.

I can imagine good reasons why someone would need to own a printer, but it seems almost like a car these days. If you don't want to deal with one, and you can live your life effectively without, it might be better to rely on services to print for you.

<comment> nommm-nommm That's a good strategy.

I own a printer, because I need to print shipping labels. I didn't own one until I started doing a lot of shipping. Even in college the CS lab let us print for free (the library charged) so I used that to print out assignments. I bought the cheapest black and white only laser printer in existence - $25.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I pretty much exclusively buy Epson XP-420's nowadays. What other all-in-one option is there that meets the following criteria?

1\. Complete and free Linux support

2\. Wireless

3\. Affordable - remember, we are competing with a printer that regularly retails for $40 and whose cartridges cost around $10 per set. "Just buy the $200 Brother with $40 a set toner" isn't satisfactory to the people I recommend printers to.

HP printers are known to be draconian with their cartridge DRM, and their Linux support is kind of a PITA with how they use their own protocol and suite of tools and every HP printer I have tried has never played nice with Cups management.

<comment><USER20> Since most folks only print black and white for occasional stuff (forms, taxes, resumes, etc), something like the Brother HL-L2320D mono laser printer is a good bet. Works with Linux (rpm and deb available from their site), wireless, affordable. It's under $90 and toner is $30 for 1200 pages (2.5 cents per page) or $49 for 2600 pages (1.9 cents per page). Compare that to $13 for 175 pages (7.4 cents per page) with the Epson.

If you don't need wireless, bump down to $68 for the HL-L2320D. For both printers, good 3rd party toner is about $10 for 1000+ pages to save even more. I listed only first-party numbers above.

If you really want to print pictures at home, you can on a "cheap" inkjet. But it'll cost you overall more per print (due to ink drying out, etc) and be worse quality than you can get from a local pharmacy, office store, or printer. A good quality inkjet for photos is another story, but quite a bit pricier.

<comment><USER19> This is not just for me though, I consult and regularly recommend printers to clients. If they are business scale we always go laser, but home users do not want to hear they should buy multiple printers for b/w + color printing, and they don't want to buy a scanner separately (the 2340D is perfect _except_ it lacks a scanner).

In many cases, it is hard enough to get them even remember what the print icon looks like, how to use ctrl-p, or that the word "Print" is in the file menu. Trying to get the tech illiterate to not only manage two printers, but also replace ink and toner for both of them, is crazy.

And the thing is nobody in this is printing often. Frequent printers should always buy laser, we know that, that is established. But we are talking about the once a week printers who just want everything for cheap. What better alternatives are there for that use case than an Epson 420?

<comment><USER20> I usually recommend lasers to very infrequent printers as well due to the likelihood of an inkjet cartridge drying out or clogging up between infrequent printings.

And you caught my copy pasta error. The first reference was indeed to the 2340D not the 2320D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is not unique to Epson, so if you go out an buy an HP thinking you'll be safe... do your research first.

I have an HP Officejet 6700 Premium right behind me that works the exact same way. If I run out of Magenta, it won't even print in black.

I've been thinking of trying to find a way to inject some water or something into the empty cartridges to trick it. The strange thing is - I almost never print in color, yet somehow, I run out of color ink. I don't get it. And it's costing me way more than I want to spend to print.

<comment><USER22> The simpler option is to buy a high quality laser printer. I'm on the same cartridge in my HP4200N for almost 10 years since it's good for 12,000+ pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has anyone tried Epson's Ink Tank series? They have a ridiculously low cost per page, with new inks costing as low as $5/bottle. I'm thinking of buying one to replace my aging Lexmark E-232 which has printed more than 70k pages without a hitch.

</comment><comment><USER24> How hard would it be to hack an open source printer hardware, say using some standard black toner cartriges (any brand), and make a Kickstarter out of it?

<comment><USER15> What are you going to offer that the big printer manufacturers don't offer today?

Cheaper prices? I doubt it, you're not going to be at the same scale as the big players and will pay a ton more for parts. Not to mention you're going to have major upfront costs for tooling, molds, etc. unless this thing is going to look like an erector set.

Higher quality? Again doubtful, unless you've been researching inkjet technology for years and have some incredible breakthough. If you're asking how hard it is to make a printer I doubt you have some special tech ready to revolutionize the industry (no offense).

Cheaper ink? If you want to cheap out you can already refill ink cartridges or even buy recycled / dirt cheap ink for most printers. There are plenty of knockoff cartridges and even brick and mortar stores (look at any mall) that sell those cheap cartridges. Or just go laser and never worry about stupid cartridges again.

Better support? Not on a Kickstarter project budget. Have fun dealing with crazy customers freaking out that their 15 year old Windows 2000 box won't use your printer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Epson recently found through customer research that anxiety about ink cartridges was one of their biggest problems and so they are launching printers with refillable ink tanks, currently available in the form of the Epson EcoTank L355. Given that the company has understood this problem and released products to address it it seems that never buying Epson printers might be an incorrect response.

<comment><USER26> The concept is nice but the EcoTank printers themselves look like junk, in the store at least. Given how expensive they are, you'd have thought they'd make the design more durable-looking or used better materials. That said, I haven't seen the ET14000 or two-tray workforce in person, and maybe they work better than they look :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 1) That's not just Epson. Many manufacturers do that. 2) That's a cheap consumer all-in-one. You're buying a subsidized product which pays for itself via expensive ink cartridges. Requiring all of them in order to print is called "leverage". It's at least ten years that such products exist - if you didn't know, it may be your fault as well. 3) Want a reliable printer with a decent cost per page? Aim at the SOHO market, at least. There you won't get a subsidized price, and printers would actually need to print more than 10 pages per month - hence the higher price tag.

Just an example: I've got an Epson Workforce Pro 5620. It's an inkjet, color all-in-one printer with double sided printing and scanning. It works great, the price-per-page using original Epson cartridges is on par with most non- heavy duty color laser printers (i.e. those in the $400-$600 range) but it's much cheaper ($280 on Amazon right now).

Don't cry for something we all know about.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hahah, you think the other vendors are better?

At least the Epson stuff I've owned is easy to install with Linux and doesn't break after a few months of use (contrary to various Canon and HP devices). If there exists a non-terrible printer manufacturer (in a consumer budget range) do tell me.

<comment><USER29> I bought an HP M252dw Color Laserjet supporting WiFi and AirPrint off Amazon for $230 last year. It replaced a Konica Minolta color laser I'd had for several years that ran out of toner (that one was $120 IIRC). I didn't have to replace it, but I really wanted an AirPrint printer. I also had to be a be choosy since I wanted something that would fit in the IKEA printer stand I've had for about 10 years.

Sure toner costs about double what ink does, but with the very occasional printing I do it's actually much cheaper since I don't have to replace the ink or print heads from disuse whenever I need to print something. The laser printer is always ready and will go years on the same toner cartridges.

Forget black & white. Having a color laser at home is one of the best computer purchases I've made. I had a cheap Canon USB Scanner in the closet for the once or twice a year I need that function.

</comment></comment><comment> e-nouri Epson printers still require you to have the 4 cartridge even if you want to just print in black !

<comment><USER30> I believe this is because the tracking dots[1] require yellow ink.

[1] [https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/index.php](https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/index.php)

<comment><USER31> Well, why can I print with just black ink on my canon and HP multifunction printers then?

(they also allow me to do high-res (4800dpi) scans of money without any issue, in hilarious contrast to photoshop, which refuses to open them)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not too long ago I bought a cheap printer (don't remember the brand), took it home, and returned it after seeing the horrible quality of the print. Then I brought home another cheap printer of a different brand, had the same experience, and returned that.

The reason I was buying cheap printers is that they were the only ones locally available, other than one very expensive model, the epson XP800. Apparently the market has been shrunk to only people that don't care about quality. They give the printer away and make a killing on the ink.

In the end I bought the expensive Epson and have been very happy with it. I'm not happy about the state of the market though.

<comment><USER33> Is there a name for the scenario where market forces push new products to be objectively inferior to older ones?

<comment><USER32> Maybe planned retrogression instead of planned obsolescence?

<comment><USER33> I don't think there's usually a plan to "retrogress" on product quality, though. It just sort of works out that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there room in the market for a 'prosumer' printer, something like the OnePlus of printers?

Along with non-apple laptops and notebooks, printers seem to be one of the things people complain about the most.

</comment><comment><USER35> To the author : It's 2016 if you still insist on buying original cartridges you seriously need to start to Google better options.

Injects can be refilled at home with a simple injection and syringe! All you need to buy is some good quality ink from eBay (or aliexpress)

If not that There are "compatible oem cartridges" at 1/4 the cost available EVERYWHERE!

or if you do the slightest bit of printing : Invest in a CISS (Continuous ink supply system).. Even Epson makes original CISS systems.

</comment><comment><USER24> How hard would that be to hack together some printer harware and make it a Kickstarter?

<comment><USER36> It's the business model that is the problem no the tech. This dude spent 5 hours trying to hack his printer. He is the problem! Just value your time and go out and buy a decent printer ffs. To get a printer this bad you have to spend next to nothing on it :-)

<comment><USER37> There are plenty of horrible printers though.

A decent printer? Sure, I'd like one. Just.. where do I find one? And how would I be sure it's not one of bad ones?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't currently have a printer. I think I'd want an economic laser printer. Probably going to print less than 50 pages per month.

Needs to work fine under Linux.

Any suggestions?

<comment><USER39> Brother HL-L2340D. Laser B/W, Duplex, Wifi, Linux support and only 80 EUR.

<comment><USER40> I just checked that type number online, to see whether that was possible (or a typo on your end): two-sided printing for that price. But you're right.

I'm (almost unfortunately) not in the market for a new laser printer. My current Brother HL-2150N still works like a (one-sided) charm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Having owned more printers than I can remember, including Epson, Brother, Ricoh, Tektronix, HP, using laser, inkjet, and even other technologies, I think there are a few conclusions to draw:

\+ For printing _documents_ laser printers are by far the best choice for reliability, economy and quality of output. Color lasers have become quite reasonably priced, so if color printing is needed, no need to get something less.

\+ For _photos_ , nothing beats a high-quality pigment inkjet printer, but they can be expensive, especially large-format models.

About 12 years ago I bought an Epson Pro 4000, with 17x22in capability, it was at the time used leading edge tech. It required 8 ink cartridges. I preferred the 220 ml size, but those cost ~$100 each. The main problem with the 4000 was the heads clogging easily, a big annoyance and costly too.

But the Pro 4000 made absolutely gorgeous prints. Now it needs to be replaced, though spending >$2000 is not a pleasant prospect. Newer machines no doubt have much better print heads, probably lower TCO.

AS many here point out, small desktop inkjets can be expensive to operate and document output quality is often poor vs. laser.

\+ It's been pretty consistent, printers and printer drivers cause 90% of system admin problems. Windows has always been by far the worst on this score. Amazingly, I had tremendous issues with a 6 year old Ricoh under Windows, but absolutely no driver problems with Linux. The customary Postscript-based printing in the Unix world is a predictable standard and usually easy to work with.

Many laser printers have built-in Postscript emulation, though a PS option for high-end printers or plotters can cost upward of $1000. Still might be worth it to avoid the Windows printer driver hell.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have one major use-case for (very cheap) inkjet printers: on the beach. I run a non-trivial number of beach volleyball tournaments[1], and the beach is not a terribly hospitable place for electronics.

So I carry with me a cheap printer that's light to carry. If it takes a fast- moving ball that breaks off a part, or it gets overloaded with sand, dust, destroyed by rain, whatever, it's no skin off my back, since it was just $30.

So far the same crappy printer has been serving me for about 4 years in this capacity.

Toting around a laser printer would be a huge pain in the ass.

Otherwise, I'm completely onboard with the overarching sentiment: there's not a lot of reason to own an inkjet printer.

[1] My flagship product ([http://bracketpal.com](http://bracketpal.com)) is a tournament management system, and beach volleyball is the niche I focus primarily on.

<comment><USER43> How do you power it? Are there battery powered printers these days?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This isn't just consumer grade printers. At work we have a number of large scale plotters and they all stink. Our main is a HP DesignJet T1300 44-inch wide plotter. Even it refuses to print if any of the 6 inks are too low or the heads are 'needing to be replaced'.

The software on it is absolutely brutal too, it has a resistive touch screen as it's primary input and it's incredibly slow to page through. On top of that, if you try to speed things along (for example, pre-opening the paper roll cover before manually paging through to the 'replace paper' menu link) it will complain and refuse to do what you ask until you start back at the beginning.

I have had nothing but trouble, and these are multi-thousand dollar printers.

</comment><comment><USER45> Printers (for consumers) need development. They still function like the old days with all the bad stuff comes with that.

I personally just have a B&W Dell laserprinter that cost almost nothing. It's fast, prints everytime, and one cartridge lasts very long time.

Before my Dell, I had a 3-in-1 HP printer. It was the worst printer I've ever had. Paper jammed all the time. And half of the time it wouldn't pick up the paper, and told that there was no paper in it even though the paper tray was completely full. And those problems started on day one.

I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers.

<comment><USER3> >Printers (for consumers) need development.

I don't see why. If you want a better printer, you just have to pay more money and get one aimed at the SOHO (small office) market, which isn't subsidized by ink cartridge prices as the guy above notes.

The home printer market is like this because it's highly profitable. What you're probably thinking is that these printers need to be more like SOHO printers: cartridges that last a long time, ability to print tens of thousands of pages without any reliability problems, etc. They already have these printers: they're sold to people who have small offices and small businesses or workgroups.

The problem is people who seem to think that they should be able to get a business-class printer for $39.99. There's a reason they're that cheap. This is one of those cases where you really get what you pay for.

>I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers.

We've had those for a long, long time now. My HP LaserJet 2300 is mostly like that, except maybe the silent bit (you're never going to get a printer that's totally silent; mechanical contraptions that move things around with motors are going to make noise), and I think it's about 13 years old now. But that printer probably cost around $600 when it was new. You're not going to get the "iPhone of printers" at feature-phone prices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I have an Apple Laserwriter 12/640 PS, bought in 1997 and still going strong.

I think the guts of it are actually Lexmark.

I have to hack the driver for it on new versions of OS X, but it runs fine without it.

It's just to control some of the optional print features.

</comment><comment><USER47> I only very lately learned that you could attempt some hackish head cleaning with warm purified water. By pouring it in place of colored ink, it's supposed to melt dried stuck ink clogging the head.

I had a Lexmark S605[1], unfortunately the black side of the head got clogged, making it almost useless, unless cheating by printing in blue.

[1] the best AIO wireless printer I had. Solid build, not noisy, consistent throughput. My mother had to buy a quick replacement, a HP envy4500, it's a cheap piece of crap. Even the motors sucks. Slow, noisy, random.

</comment><comment><USER48> I haven't owned a printer in probably 10 years and I'm not particularly young (32).

I get their usefulness in some aspects of business operations but I'm a bit at a loss as to why an individual would purchase one.

What are the use cases now? The only two I can think of are printing photos, which I get but it seems better handled either through a photo printer or an outside service or for printing 'offical' documents to fill out manually, but I've completed many such transactions by digitally filling out and signing a pdf.

<comment><USER36> There are a few.

Tickets. Boarding Passes. Government forms that cannot be filed electronically. Carrying information you need where you don't want to reply on a phone whose battery could run out.

To read something in a focused way, with no internet to distract you.

I printed out a plane ticket today to fly in a country where waving your phone with the same ticket is apparently not satisfactory.

<comment><USER48> It doesn't surprise me that there are edge cases where you need paper. It surprises me that those edge cases are numerous enough that you would own a printer and deal with it.

All of my boarding passes are covered via phone but on the occasion that I need a pass for an airline that doesn't have that option I would just spend 5 minutes at a kiosk to get it.

On the occasion I have to file a gov form that isn't available digitally or I can't fax (via email), I'll just get it printed at whatever local place can do so.

Point is that home printing really isn't a necessity anymore, and depending on circumstance it's debatable if it's a time/cost savings. As a result I would expect the home printing market to get more and more expensive.

<comment><USER3> I got my printer for something like $100 on Ebay, and it's ridiculously reliable and the cost per page is dirt cheap. Why would I want to waste my time driving somewhere and paying to print stuff when I can do it in a few seconds at home?

The home printing market is only going to get more and more expensive if consumers are so stupid they can't go buy small business printers on Ebay that are a few years old and off-lease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Well, the printer manual probably says, like mine does: "Install all ink cartridges; otherwise, you cannot print".

But in my Epson XP-200, if my black cartidge runs out, it tells me that I can use a 'composite black' mode where it blends the ink from the colour cartridges to form black. And vice versa - when the colour ink runs out and black ink still remains, you can continue printing temporarily with black ink only.

So there are always those options if you need to get something printed.

</comment><comment><USER50> Epson - If its not chipped ink cartridges its vacuum tubes on their print- heads.

Canon, the print head or logic board dies and unless you replace one and it works or fails you don't know which - sorry.

HP - built like a tank - ink priced like mil-spec.

Dell/Lexmark shiny logo in place of compatibility.

Never buy a network printer without an LCD display to read error messages/input IP addresses.

Beware of printers that can't use card stock - at all (Yeah, Canon, you and your latest inkjets).

Might try Brother next.

</comment><comment><USER51> I use printers so infrequently, it's usually easier to use the work or public library printer when I need to rather than maintain ink cartridges. They usually go dry before I use them, I typically print less than 10 pages a year.

For the record, it's always government paperwork. Always. If you work for government, I have this super-neat thing called Flask to tell you about, you're gonna lose your shit when you find out!

</comment><comment><USER52> I hate printers in general. After all these years, manufacturers still haven't come up with a standard communication interface that would allow me to just plug in the printer and have my OS detect and use it without issue. Instead, especially with Epson printers, I have to download some awful crap-ware driver, which supports all OS versions up to the one right before the one I'm currently running.

<comment><USER3> If you use Linux (with CUPS) and a business-grade printer with Postscript or PDF support, you won't have this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> My HP LaserJet 1020 has been chugging away for 10+ years on $11 refilled cartridges that yield around 2k monochrome pages. It just might last ten more!

<comment><USER54> I pulled a LaserJet 1160 out of storage today because my wife's inkjet stopped working. It printed ~75 pages without a hiccup, and I don't even know how old the cartridge in it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if 3d printers will go the same way. You're 24 carat gold reel is a little low so I am not going to let you print plastic. Muwhhaahaa!

</comment><comment><USER55> With all of the hype and excitement for 3d printers, I always have the many failings of 2d printers itching at the back of my brain...

</comment><comment><USER56> This isn't really a new thing, it's been like this for over a decade. It's why Epson printers are so cheap; they make their money on the cartridges. I've had better luck with HP in general (Officejet), though I don't know how good each particular model is so some may be worse.

</comment><comment><USER57> I purchased a Xerox Phaser 6100 Color Laser Printer for $30 on Craigslist. Only problem is there are no drivers for OS X... Course it had %70 toner still and I don't look forward to having to replace the toner but at least are all separate colors and can be replaced separately!

<comment><USER58> Just register it as a standard postscript printer and it will most likely work.

<comment><USER59> I used to have one of these. It didn't understand Postscript, but after installing Splix it appeared in Cups printer model list and worked absolutely fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Hardware startup - non-shity printers, use any cartridge you want. PRO-FEATURE use a balled point pen.

</comment><comment><USER61> I had an Epson 3800 photo printer. It once ran out of ink in the middle of a print and stopped mid-stream. I replaced the cartridge and it started back as if not missing a beat.

Paying more upfront for a printer saves you in the long run. Avoid cheap multi-function printers like the plague.

</comment><comment><USER62> We're all getting trolled by the printer companies. Look at this thread.

</comment><comment><USER63> And you know that some high-paid exec decided it was a good idea to refuse to print when low on ink... "to ensure quality" and uphold the brand name. Haha - it had the opposite effect.

</comment><comment><USER64> The same goes for HP OfficeJets (or at least mine ... 8600 Pro)

<comment><USER65> Considering my wife just bought a 8620 this bodes well for my future.. oh joy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> In general, I agree with all the ant-inkjet comments.

That being said, I've yet to see a laser printer with grayscale rendering approaching that of a garden variety inkjet.

</comment><comment><USER67> Lasers only. It's really the only way to go, especially if you only print occasionally. They last forever compared to ink jets.

</comment><comment><USER68> Well don't buy inkjet printers.

Although manufacturers might pick up on that and start doing the same for laser printers...

<comment><USER3> They're not going to do it for business-class printers, because businesses aren't going to put up with it. They do it with consumer-class printers because consumers are dumb and want the cheapest thing they can find and don't print a lot, but businesses need printers that can print a _lot_ of pages without maintenance. There's plenty of competition in the business printer market, so it'd be pretty stupid for mfgrs to pull too many shenanigans there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Can't this be hacked in the drivers?

I remember loving Gutenprint (née Gimp-Print) back when I printed

<comment><USER70> Usually it's implemented on the firmware level.</comment></comment>


"Won't programmers starve?" Do something else - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for reposting. This is the first time I've read it since the great transition from software to internet-accessible services. It reads differently now.

I suppose rms isn't very happy about services, even if the source code that runs those services is often largely open. I mean, if you don't like what a particular service does, builtwith.com will tell you whether it's based on rails, django or whatever, and from there finding the open source that does the heavy lifting is simple.

So in a way, the modern combination of open source and SaaS does enable what rms wrote: Get a github account, write code, send PRs, you _can_ contribute and _can_ get your preferred changes deployed as services upgrade. But I feel that rms doesn't see this particular glass as half full.</comment>


Progress Software to Acquire Telerik for $263M - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/progress-software-to-acquire-telerik-for-263-million-1413983315 <comment><USER2> Telerik makes awful .Net components. I have used them in past. I was frustrated with their breaking changes, they had the worst release management. Every year they used to release new version and used to outright removed the methods or replace the signatures. No Deprecation!

<comment><USER3> I have to strongly disagree. I have used their Sliverlight components in every SL project I have been involved with for the last four years and I could`t live without them. They are professional components for enterprise which does something that a open-source project could seldom( maybe never) do, support all the odd-cases needed. These are all the weird cases that no one would bother to implement in an OS-project, since it`s very seldom needed, but since they know that their customers might need this functionally they have already implemented it. Just look at the feature list for their GridView component for SL and try to match that with an OS-project. Combining this with good support and you got a winner.

As a result the good experiences I had with their components in a SL context I am know adopting their KendoUI components together with ReactJs. So far all the points made above for SL still stands for KendoUI.

<comment><USER2> Try Infragistics, you will never look back.

<comment> rational-future Both Telerik and Infragistics have their main development offices in Sofia, Bulgaria. From what I've heard most of Infragististics developers/testers/managers have worked for Telerik in the past and there is a considerable current in the other direction as well. I wouldn't expect a massive difference in the quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is one of the most successful Bulgarian companies being acquired. Telerik has been a center piece in the Bulgarian IT sector. There is hardly an IT company here in Sofia that doesn't have at least one employee that has been employed with Telerik or gone through their training programmes.

</comment><comment><USER5> The rumors in Sofia were that the company was going downhill. This seems to confirm it.

I really tried to like their products. Didn't managed. And they flooded the market with half trained "developers" from their academy.

<comment><USER6> And how exactly is 263M for 10 years "going downhill"?

<comment><USER7> Every large number sounds impressive, don't get yourself caught in that mind- trap. Divide the number by their employees, check earnings/winnings, subtract investments, compare to other companies and draw your conclusions again.

If I make $1000000/year, that's great. But if it takes me 1000 people to do it, that's less than $100 per person per month.

<comment> rational-future It was bootstrapped, from what I know the original 4 founders used to own 80% of the company a year or so ago.

<comment><USER7> What you know is false, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For non-subscribers: [https://www.google.com/search?q=Progress+Software+to+Acquire...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Progress+Software+to+Acquire+Telerik+for+%24263+Million)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing the kind of crap you can produce in the enterprise space and get away with it to the tune of multi hundred million dollar acquisitions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmmmm, apparently I'm the only one here with a positive experience. I've used their Windows Phone and Windows 8 components and I really really like them. They are much, much faster than their opensource counterparts, they are very flexible and advanced and Telerik's support is great. I always get answers within 24 hours, and they often provide a complete solution/project with samples.

<comment><USER6> You are not the only one. People tend to share the negative stuff first though. No company like Telerik can reach this state without a value given to their customers.

<comment> rational-future HN has become very negative in the recent years. Only stuff build by Apple and Google gets mostly positive comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I did not realize that Telerik was of Bulgarian origin. That is a pretty sizable exit.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a fascinating move for Progress Software, who seem to have managed decades of survival through the onslaught of SQL and MySQL/Postgres cutting into their market .. and so to see them acquiring Telerik now is really interesting. Progress were, once, one of the major players in the database space (and still are in many vertical markets) so it could really be an interesting development to see them rise again. Could be with this acquisition they are gearing up for a new era in database development...

<comment><USER13> They survive because of vendor lockin, too many companies have years or decades of work in to using that system and it would be far too costly to move.

If your starting a project from scratch today you are not using progress, Legacy is their only business.

They know it, which is why they are buying up companies like this.

<comment><USER14> Bingo! I came across Progress first time this week in a different context (Indian startup scene) - they portray themselves as incubators here ([https://www.progress.com/incubator](https://www.progress.com/incubator)). Have a fancy application system et al.. even stress how they don't take any equity.

Turns out in lieu of essentially a deskspace and maybe wifi they mandate the incubated startups to use their Cloud platform products - aha lockin! This is how shitty enterprises survive. When they can't find new customers, they come to India and tomtom around as evangelists & incubators and other $100 words in self-description.

<comment><USER12> Well, to be fair, Progress has had traction in India as an application environment for decades now, so it only makes sense that there be an iCloud'ification of their whole product line - all the cool kids are doing it..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Telerik wasn't half bad when I was the only .net developer for a hospital system with 3,000 employees. It made short work for me since building AJAX-y controls meant less time building business rules.

The controls are really bad, they produce a lot of awful JS. Also, with newer frameworks such as angular, knockout, ember, et al...building reusable JS components got simpler. I haven't yet used KendoUI but haven't had a need too, building my own was far more fun (and with OData, not that much time either).

I did use their reporting product a lot but even that was too heavy and cumbersome.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just hope Carl and Richard at the .NET Rocks podcast can find a new sponsor or figure out some other option to keep their great show going. Seems like Telerik has been their main sponsor forever.

<comment><USER17> Richard is (was?) on the board of Telerik also. I've contacted DNR to try and organise sponsorship and never heard back from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Progresses' database is an interesting and very powerful product, but, I'm not sure that this will be beneficial to anyone who isn't really familiar with the verticals and integrations that Progress owns. I know that I've seen progress used by running MFP/ERP suites that are used by automotive and manufacturing companies.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good for them. The Telerik .NET controls are an overall a positive experience.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just got their email to the devs:

Today, we're excited to announce that Telerik has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Progress Software (progress.com <[http://info.telerik.com/UoQy00P0TG0TOJ003C000AR>](http://info.telerik.com/UoQy00P0TG0TOJ003C000AR>)), a U.S.-based public company that specializes in the development, deployment, integration and management of a deep suite of business applications. They've been in business since 1981 and their technology is used by nearly 140,000 organizations in more than 180 countries, including 90% of the Fortune 500.

By becoming part of Progress, Telerik will have the support and resources to continue delivering on its grand ambitions to change the way people develop applications for the modern world. Telerik will preserve its identity and its brand name.

As we chase our ambition with more energy than ever before, we promise to stay true to the values that have guided us since our humble beginnings, including taking care of our customers and employees; evolving together with you as the world changes; going the extra mile; reinventing ourselves; innovating; creating great products; and continuing to "deliver more than expected" every day in our quest to create a better digital world.

We're committed to keeping our promises as we will be joining a company that shares a similar philosophy, bold vision and is driven to reinvent itself. Telerik and Progress have very complementary product portfolios, business models and expertise. This will make both of us stronger and more capable to deliver on our shared vision: to help individual developers and enterprises build modern applications across platforms and devices.

Please know that your relationship with Telerik is not changing as a result of this transaction. You should continue contacting us in the same ways you always have. Connect with the same Telerik staff members you're used to. Read our thought leadership content on TDN. Submit your issues and product features requests.

Telerik remains fully committed to continuing to empower every one of you with our industry-leading UI tools, platform, and cloud services. We will continue to innovate and improve all of our products. Our 1.4 million developers and 130,000 companies depend on Telerik day in and day out to get their jobs done as effectively as possible and we treat your investment and trust very seriously. You can expect the same level of relentless focus and passion we have always delivered. We are here to stay and will continue to be your trusted partner and enable you to develop the greatest experiences possible for your customers.

Last, but not least – a VERY BIG THANK YOU! Without the trust of every one of you, our customers, Telerik would have never become what it is today. We are very excited about being able to serve you well in the future.

Telerik founders and senior leadership will continue to drive the Telerik vision and strategy as part of Progress Software and we'd love to hear from you! You can reach us at: firstname.lastname@example.com.

Yours truly, Svetozar Georgiev and Vassil Terziev Co-Founders and Co-CEOS, Telerik

</comment><comment><USER21> Having HN as the only source of information is not a good thing. I didn't know who Progress Corp were, and I would not know Telerik if my brother, who works in big corporate, had not told me sometime ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> What does telerik actually do/sell out of interest?

<comment><USER23> Although I'm sure they do other things, they sell .Net components, kind of a "create grids/reporting/tables" with no code or UI development toolkit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have several friends there. I've never used their products (neither .Net or .js) but can't be happier for them :)

</comment><comment><USER25> I hope Fiddler remains free...

</comment><comment><USER26> Telerik makes awful

<comment><USER27> Did you just create an account to say a half of a negative sentence? o_O</comment></comment>


Apple will host WWDC virtually, beginning June 22 - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/05/apple-to-host-virtual-worldwide-developers-conference-beginning-june-22/ <comment><USER2> For many of us, this could be better than ever since instead of being a conference focused on attendees and shared with the rest of us, it'll be designed for sharing on the web. Be really curious to see how it pans out.

<comment><USER3> I go to academic conferences, not industry ones, but I find the big annual meetings to be exhausting, unproductive, and incredibly wasteful. I for one will be happy to see them go, if that's what ends up happening.

<comment><USER4> WWDC is exhausting and incredibly wasteful, but it's very productive. Especially if you make use of the labs where they'll actually help you with your code.

I've also found that I learned a LOT more about new operating system features when I was attending the conference vs picking and choosing the videos to watch from home.

It's also a great way to network and meet up with old friends. I've had a lot of fun the couple times I went to WWDC. I would be sad to see it go, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

<comment><USER5> Yeah the labs were the only benefit any more, otherwise its lots of standing in lines. I went to the "first" WWDC (not called it yet) back in 1986; no mobile devices, so everyone was forced to, gasp, talk with each other. It was tons of fun to hear what other devs were doing, you could learn while standing in line! Plus Apple served us real food, and took us out on trips (in 1986 the whole conference went out on a boat in SF harbor). Last time I went (right before the switch back to San Jose) everyone was looking at their phones or MacBooks and working. It was much harder to engage people in talking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the most 'Apple' statement I've ever read in a press release from Apple: _WWDC20 will be our biggest yet, bringing together our global developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented way for a week in June to learn about the future of Apple platforms_

<comment><USER7> To be fair, 2010 had the word 'innovation' as the buzzword. For 2020, it is now 'unprecedented' which is quite accurate since the yearly pilgrimage to the Apple Park is cancelled this year.

<comment><USER8> Only scholarship winners have been able to visit Apple Park, and even that only recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the event being online, networking (in the meatspace sense) and socializing is more or less out. The only other real benefit of WWDC is the workshops, so that's the big question - how do you set up a workshop, with actual back-and-forth with Apple engineers, when you have 23 million people?

<comment><USER10> >The only other real benefit of WWDC is the workshops

I get tons of mileage out of WWDC session videos to this day. Oftentimes poorly documented framework apis are only ever explained in any level of detail in the WWDC videos and examples from whatever particular year it was introduced in.

<comment><USER9> I wasn't clear - I meant the real benefit of attending WWDC in real time, as opposed to just watching the session videos online later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Curious if there will be any headline announcements. Anyone wants to guesses from that one image in the release what's Apple key updates might be? Outside of iOS, macOS?

There were a lot of speculations with iPhone 11 about Apple's new U1 chip and what it planned to do with UWB technology. The Apple "tile" was never released. Then there is the new lidar in iPad.

I'm curious if we'll see some new AR update that combines all these into an integrated experience.

If there was a time to go big on AR or VR, this lockdown times would be the best time, at least to grab the imaginations of millions locked down in homes.

<comment><USER12> A credible leak has been that Xcode is coming to iPad (and iOS?). Not sure how I feel about it, I'd prefer more time be spent improving it for Mac use (where, in my opinion, 99% of developers will do their work anyway).

My guesses from the software side:

\- A new game framework, or a massive overhaul to SceneKit. It hasn't seen much love lately, and RealityComposer has a really nice API, but is only for AR. Something new is needed or SceneKit is dead IMO.

\- SwiftUI will probably see a massive amount of changes. For new controls I think we'll see a collection view and color picker. Hopefully a lot more - it's nice but has a lot of rough edges/hacks currently.

<comment><USER13> > A credible leak has been that Xcode is coming to iPad (and iOS?). Not sure > how I feel about it, I'd prefer more time be spend on improving it for Mac > use (where, in my opinion, 99% of developers will do their work anyway).

This would be a good step into making the iPad an actual productivity device.

<comment><USER14> If they also added a linux VM on the iPad, that would be the real game changer for being able to do programming on it IMO.

<comment><USER15> Anyone heard of a Hypervisor API being added to iOS?

<comment><USER8> Not sure of an API, but rumors point to a new ARM chip with EL2, although it's probably destined for Macs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft's Build is also free and online.

[https://mybuild.microsoft.com/](https://mybuild.microsoft.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to attend WWDC ever since the iPhone was announced. These past years, given all the content was available immediately online, I didn't see the point in attending in person (unless for some reason you needed office hours to figure something out). I've been seeing more like a badge of honor for fresh devs.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if they will keep doing it online in the future. Imagine the impact to all the workers who facilitate these conferences, local hotels, restaurants, etc.

<comment><USER19> Those jobs aren't coming back for awhile yet, regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So are these rumors about apple coming out with a PAAS/workload system that I've been hearing for 2-3 years starting to turn true? They've started hiring a lot of kubernetes engineers and afaik they were a mesosphere shop until evidently recently (judging by the hires I'm seeing).

Curious to see if they contribute upstream.

<comment><USER21> I have heard a number of people complain about the cross-compilation situation with the OS X/iOS ecosystem. The solution everyone wants is for Apple to support Windows or Linux (honestly that sounds like it would be a shorter put) as first class citizens in their tool chain.

But I could also see Apple providing hardware by the day or month in a data center. They would have to reintroduce the X server for that, though.

Rather than go full X Server, a little tweak to the Mac Pro would make it fit in a 6u rack slot on its side. It's millimeters too wide for that, and the cover is wrong. I wonder if a different skin could do it...

<comment><USER22> Scroll down here:

[https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/](https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/)

There's a rack mount option for the Mac Pro.

<comment><USER21> How did I miss _that_ news? Guess that explains the dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does this mean free virtual workshops, or is that just for people who bought tickets?

<comment><USER24> Apple hasn't put tickets up for sale, and they mention in the article that WWDC will be "free for all developers". I'm assuming there will be some answer to one-on-one reviews, though. Perhaps if you've got a paid Apple developer account, you might be able to put in a request to connect with someone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rumor has it Apple is launching MaskKit, the framework for customizing Animoji surgical masks.

</comment><comment><USER25> How much are they going to charge? :)

<comment><USER26> Free for "all developers". Its free, but you better have paid your annual 99 dollars.

<comment><USER27> You only pay $99 to publish on the App Store.

<comment><USER28> And you no longer have to send your registration in by fax! ;)

<comment><USER29> But you still have to be 18 :(

<comment><USER8> My mom still gets empty app sales reports to this day…</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Globalsign will revoke your code signing certificate no questions asked - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/globalsign-will-revoke-your-codesign-certificate-no-questions-asked-f6ac2bca02c5 <comment><USER2> Lesson learned: Last step of ci/cd, verify binary artifact on virus total api before shipping.</comment>


In Praise of Rust's Structopt for Command Line Parsing - <AUTHOR> http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/11/in-praise-of-rusts-structopt-for.html <comment><AUTHOR> What caught my attention about this post, and the reason I'm sharing it on HN, is that even though Rust's original selling point was its "ownership" feature, I'm starting to get the feeling that there are other things about the language and its that are driving its success.

In this case, it sounds like the killer feature is easy, powerful reflection. People also seem to really like Cargo. The standard library seems to be very nice. And the language's speed is excellent (ripgrep is written in Rust).

<comment><USER2> We had a community discussion on this topic a year ago: [https://brson.github.io/fireflowers/](https://brson.github.io/fireflowers/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting, thanks for posting that!</comment></comment></comment>


A Neat Quad N-Back Implementation on Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=phuc.entertainment.dualnback <comment><AUTHOR> There are controversies whether Dual N-Back improves fluid intelligence or not. But personally I've found the game satisfying and helping me greatly with (transferrable) focusness. Feels like active meditation to me.</comment>


ARM-Based Apple Silicon Changes Mac Forever - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/how-apple-silicon-changes-mac-forever-d2682a9722df <comment><USER2> Apple gave us literally no numbers on performance, or how this is going to alter pro apps. Hmmm...

<comment><USER3> They gave no numbers because the developer kit is not using the ARM CPU the first ARM Mac will ship with.

Just like the first Intel Macs shipped with Duo core while the developer kits had Pentium 4's.

<comment><USER4> Yeah--the article clearly mentions that too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> wow! this is really detailed.</comment>