Do you hate printers as much as I do?

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

They are the bane of my existence.

I exaggerate slightly, but come on. No matter if it cost $100, $1000, $10000, or $100000 dollars, they screw up.....frequently.

I am wrestling with an AMT Datasouth Fastmark M10XPd. Stupid thing is giving crazy high ping out of the blue. Even hooked straight up to my laptop. No config changes of any kind. Hoping i can just get a replacement internal nic for it....shouldn't be that hard to swap out.

I have a pretty good track record with printers, and have had the chance to use a little bit of every kind (they were even my first intro to Solaris)......but dang, my heart still drops a bit every time the email or text says "the printer isn't working."

 

[eidairaman1]

They are the bane of my existence.

I exaggerate slightly, but come on. No matter if it cost $100, $1000, $10000, or $100000 dollars, they screw up.....frequently.

I am wrestling with an AMT Datasouth Fastmark M10XPd. Stupid thing is giving crazy high ping out of the blue. Even hooked straight up to my laptop. No config changes of any kind. Hoping i can just get a replacement internal nic for it....shouldn't be that hard to swap out.

I have a pretty good track record with printers, and have had the chance to use a little bit of every kind (they were even my first intro to Solaris)......but dang, my heart still drops a bit every time the email or text says "the printer isn't working."

Even with a different ethernet cable? What about the driver?

I just found this spec sheet

https://www.identisys.com/docs/shared/product-sell-sheets/fastmark-m10xpd-data-sheet-0121i.pdf?sfvrsn=7ad1a44b_0

Apparently you must go through them for parts.

Supplies and Parts | AMT Datasouth | Camarillo | Charlotte

AMT Datasouth has been providing printer solutions to our customers since 1983. We pride ourselves in working with our resellers and their clients to come up with the right hardware, application dependent firmware, stocking and after sale support needed to solve problems and keep clients happy.

www.amtdatasouth.com

 

[Frick]

They are the bane of my existence.

I exaggerate slightly, but come on. No matter if it cost $100, $1000, $10000, or $100000 dollars, they screw up.....frequently.

I am wrestling with an AMT Datasouth Fastmark M10XPd. Stupid thing is giving crazy high ping out of the blue. Even hooked straight up to my laptop. No config changes of any kind. Hoping i can just get a replacement internal nic for it....shouldn't be that hard to swap out.

I have a pretty good track record with printers, and have had the chance to use a little bit of every kind (they were even my first intro to Solaris)......but dang, my heart still drops a bit every time the email or text says "the printer isn't working."

FWIW the Xerox C60 with a bunch of accessories we have at work have been quite solid for quite some time now. But yeah they all suck in some way, if nothing else the software/drivers will be problematic.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

We have a Konica C258 which is a beast of a machine. It rarely has troubles. Once in a while replace a cartridge. It's also located in a diesel shop environment, in the office.

At home, every single cheap printer lasted through the first set of ink. Then spend a bunch of money on ink cartridges just for the machine to fuck up. Gave up years ago, print what I need at the shop instead.

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

Even with a different ethernet cable? What about the driver?

Yep. Driver and cable were first things i tried. It isn't un-usable exactly........but averaging 500ms ping, so it drops jobs pretty frequently. Just started out of the blue. No issues on rest of network, or even on the 5 other identical label printers. It happens, even on these amt datasouths. Their impact printers are better than their thermal printers in my opinion.

 

[Onasi]

I fucking despise printers. Like, burning hatred. Especially when perfectly functional older ones stop getting drivers for new OS releases and then I have to employ esoteric methods with .cab files and generic Windows vendor drivers in order to force the OS to recognize them properly and get them to actually print. It’s mental just how “difficult” the printer industry makes a simple act of printing out some words on a sheet of A4 paper.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Printers are the devil and HP printers are his ballsack. I dont know how HP gets away with making printers that straight up do not work, but they do, frequently, especially when you are in the weeds. Client bought a HP standalone (against my advice) and wanted it to scan to his email. HOURS spent configuring the firmware, led to the conclusion that email authentication straight up doesnt work on this thing. I hav eno answers as to why, it just doesnt. No error codes, it just doesnt do anything.

Or lexmark. God help you if you need to fix one of those. Their maintenance guides used to be great, written by engineers I swear came from IBM. Exact same style of writing. Well, that was "too hard" for people to follow, so they hired some new guys. Now, half the steps either dont tell you what to do (remove the flatbed, OK, how do I do that/ Where are the fasteners? How many screws are there? Doesnt say) or are straight up wrong (remove these screws and the tray comes out. OOPS, we didnt tell you you need to disconnect this other part first and remove 4 more screws, now you need to replace more parts!).

 

[jak_2456]

I personally hate inkjet printers because the cartridges dry out. Laser printers are the only ones I have seriously used and they print fine. My main problem with printers is the fact that networked ones like to change their IP address on you sometimes and that will confuse Windows because it's assigned a specific IP. Setting the printer to a static IP will fix the problem, but that can be easier said than done on some models.

 

[GerKNG]

i had some old HP Printer for over 10 years and bought another dirt cheap one last year. It just worked even with cheap chinese ink.

 

[Crazybc]

I hate printers so badly I have refused to buy another one. Normally I'm a pretty calm guy but a printer can piss me off in .3 seconds because I've had such bad luck with them.

 

[stahlhart]

I don't hate printers; I hate HP, Epson and Brother.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I don't hate printers; I hate HP, Epson and Brother.

So im curious, what DO you use then?

 

[kapone32]

Remember when Printers were cheaper than ink. The best form of printing which is color laser is still too expensive as printing is only necessary if you use it for money or have Children in school.

 

[Shrek]

First thing I would try is a firmware update.

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

First thing I would try is a firmware update.

On the latest.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Printers are the devil and HP printers are his ballsack.

Lies and slander against the devil's very own balls, they are far more desirable than HP printers

I like my Xerox 3020, they don't even bother making genuine toner cartridges for it anymore and the aftermarket counterfeits that print for 1500 pages are literally 5 dollars. That's what a printer should be about

 

[cal5582]

we contract ours out. xerox. i hardly get breaks, its more of a problem with getting their supply side to send me ink on time.

 

[bonehead123]

Well, from 2011 thru 2015, I was using a high-end Epson inkjet and an LJ-1100, both of which I scarfed up during an office relocation, and after a thorough cleaning and new carts, they worked flawlessly for over 6 years. But that was before the era of the 6-12 month throwaway models with chipped carts started.

Then I found myself working from home but needing an color printer/scanner/fax combo.

I researched everything available at that time and chose a large Brother MFC, which has been flawless since 2021....including regular software/firmware updates and long-life toner carts, so I will NEVER go back to inkjets for any reason...

 

[PLAfiller]

I got a black&white laser Canon mf212w, which I bought many years ago and it runs just fine. Only thing is, in order to use use it's full functionality like scanning it needs to be as a Wi-fi printer. The moment I connect the LAN cable, I cannot scan, but only print. Kind of annoys me as I wanted to use the cable connection, but hey wi-fi it is.

 

[Shihab]

Asking people if they hate printers is like asking people if they like air.

But no, I don't hate them as much as you do. I hate them more.

 

[Bill_Bright]

They are the bane of my existence.

No matter if it cost $100, $1000, $10000, or $100000 dollars, they screw up.....frequently.

I seem to have a different experience. I've had pretty good luck with them throughout the years, from big corporate models, to small SOHO printers.

Sure, none have had a perfect track record, but frequent screw ups? Nope. I do avoid the super cheap (almost disposable) printing devices. Those are asking for trouble.

My current AiO device is a HP Photosmart 7525 Inkjet that is coming up on 11 years old. It has 11,512 total pages printed and still looks great. And surprising to me, this last weekend I actually had to use its fax feature to fax my new insurance number to a medical lab - and it worked perfectly too. That said, since the copy function works properly, I guess I should not have been surprised the fax function worked fine too.

I learned long ago to use "reserved" or static IP addresses for networked printers. Reserved is easier but some routers prefer static. Anyway, using a "fixed" IP address for networked printing devices (and NAS drives) prevents IP address assignment "shifting" after long power outages. This ensures none of the computing devices on the network grab the printer's IP address should they come back on line before the printer. That, in turn, ensures all the computing devices remain properly configured to print to the printer instead of me having to "add a new device" when power is restored.

The second thing I learned long ago is to never, as in NEVER EVER install the printer maker's software suite that come with most of these devices. Typically, and hopefully, Windows will recognize and already have the necessary drivers to print to the device. But if not, most, if not all printer makers maintain the drivers (without all the bloated software) on the device's webpage. Use that instead. This is something to investigate BEFORE purchase when researching new devices.

The third thing is to ensure any device you are buying has a built in web-server or similar feature that allows you to access the device's internal menu system with your browser. In this way, you can fax, scan, check ink levels, check printer status, and more with your browser WITHOUT using the makers bloated software. Something else to look for in your researching.

I have two recurring problems with this HP 7525 that have developed over the last couple years. (1) Yellow ink cartridges occasionally fail to be recognized by the cartridge carriage assembly. Simply reseating the cartridge and pressing OK gets it going again. And (2) the rubber rollers for the copier's automatic document feeder have hardened and become smooth over time. This results in the feeder failing to grab the next sheet in a multipage document I am copying. Since I cannot remember the last time I had to copy a multipage document, no big deal for me. But should that need occur, it really is not hard to simply copy a page one at a time from the flatbed. Fortunately, the printer feature is able to grab new sheets into the printer, flip the sheet to print on side 2, then spit the printout without a problem.

So I like my HP AiO. I do NOT like HP, the company however. I do NOT like their bloated spyware... err... software so I don't use it. I do NOT like their aggressive (at time, illegal) policy for using genuine inks. I understand it, but I don't like it. And for sure, HP is not alone there.

One new trend I do not like is it appears most new devices from all the makers are white. I don't like white printers, white computer cases, white monitors, etc. All the electronic devices in my office are black. A white printer would look out of place. While white devices do look nice - for the first couple years, after that they tend to yellow and look dingy. That said, I am more into practicality than aesthetics so if white is the best option when I am ready to buy again, so be it.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I don't hate printers; I hate HP, Epson and Brother.

We had an Epson printer that was pretty good. Never had issues with it, but the ink cartridges where hella expensive. So we scrapped the idea having a printer at home, almost everything can be accomplished without needing a printer at home, at least for my wife and I luckily.

But we do have one of those pocket printers that does photos, pretty neat little toy actually. My wife enjoys it at least, still relatively new, couple months old only.

 

[Macro Device]

I was an acting CEO of a print shop and yes, it's not just you. These printers are most likely built to cause all sorts of inconvenience. I can't even imagine how can you ACCIDENTALLY engineer it that poorly. Must be a part of their ripping off strategy so the end user replaces stuff more frequently.

 

[stahlhart]

We had an Epson printer that was pretty good. Never had issues with it, but the ink cartridges where hella expensive. So we scrapped the idea having a printer at home, almost everything can be accomplished without needing a printer at home, at least for my wife and I luckily.

But we do have one of those pocket printers that does photos, pretty neat little toy actually. My wife enjoys it at least, still relatively new, couple months old only.

The business model of extorting every last nickel they can out of consumers via horrifically overpriced consumables for dirt cheap hardware is at the root of my ire.

We have a Samsung laser printer we got at Micro Center that accepts third party supplies without issue, and it has been holding up well for a few years now. We don't print all that often, just for financial and tax documents mainly.

 

[Shrek]

So im curious, what DO you use then?

Lexmark is an alternative