If you shop around you can find a Brother (B&W) laser printer for about $100.
Imagine this weird future: Printers that always just work no matter what type of computer you have or how long theyāve sat since you last used them. And the āinkā cartridges last forever. And you can buy 3rd party refills or even refill them yourself. Plus itās completely reliant on microplastics to do its job, whatās more futuristic than that?
Even better, if you scour your local thrift stores you can occasionally find them for as little as $10 and all they typically need is a cleanup and a new toner cartridge.
I bought mine for $7 4 years ago and itās still working on the toner cartridge that was in the printer when I bought it.
Admittedly, I only print about 40 or 50 pages a year but thatās a hell of a deal.
Imagine this weird future: Printers that always just work no matter what type of computer you have or how long theyāve sat since you last used them. And the āinkā cartridges last forever. And you can buy 3rd party refills or even refill them yourself. Plus itās completely reliant on microplastics to do its job, whatās more futuristic than that?
I lived in the 90ās, when office work was a tad more reliant on printers and late stage capitalism wasnāt as bad. My dad had a laser printer for his business. Very reliable, fast, never needed anything.
I remember that as the past, is my point.
I was thinking this too, but consider some improvements:
- wireless printing seems to ājust workā now. Besides having to painfully enter my wifi password with up and down arrows on my printer, it seems like my windows and Mac laptops are able to print to it wirelessly without any initial setup. (I use Linux on my desktop but havenāt tried printing from it yet). I think it even works from phones.
- cables: I donāt remember what type of cable printers used, but I remember the big keyboard cable, then the smaller purple and green PS/2 ones (I think keyboard and mouse were different?)ā¦ I vaguely remember multiple different peripheral cables, like FireWire? Giant parallel ports for things like scanners?
I hate that most printers donāt come with the USB (B?) cable that seemingly only printers need now, but Iām glad that itās standard and that everything supports <strikethrough>USB-A</strikethrough> I mean USB-C (except my PC) now. Such a utopia.
