[cookiengineer]

Honestly, seing printers like this over the years and everything getting worse and worse makes me feel good about having an old Brother laser printer.

It's monochrome, it's now 20 years old, but it's good enough for me.

It keeps running and running, and the toner is dirt-cheap on the market. No internet, no spyware and no IoT-secured (tm) app required.

Manufacturers like Epson and HP kind of force me into keeping this old thing alive when it eventually breaks down.

I'm so glad we got CUPS and SANE as libraries. Without them, I would have to buy a newer model with current Windows support.

The only thing that was missing in daily use is smartphone support, but an mDNS-SD service running on a little raspberry pi that shares the printer can fix that.

[andix]

This is mostly still valid for current brother printers. I bought one last year, and the web interface looks exactly the same on the one I bought 15 years earlier. The only difference: it can do wifi now.

[porbelm]

When my boss needed a printer (to print out my contract for signing lol) a year and a half ago, he asked me what to get. The answer was, like always, a cheap b/w Brother -- since the LaserJet IIp is not in production any more.

It's just like the workhorse in the old pub cellar that chugged out ream after ream of paper through the dust and moisture for years without breaking down.

But with AirPrint too!

[mangix]

AirPrint is also great.

[andix]

Funnily my old printer can already do air print. I think it came with an early firmware update.

[neilv]

I already stockpile particular old models of ThinkPad laptops, and now I should pick up 1-2 backup no-nonsense laser printers.

As for MS Windows, that's already giving people problems from software like we're talking about avoiding from hardware.

[nopenopenopeno]

Mine is about 4 years old but same experience. Cheap to refill and works every time, even with Linux.

[johnsea]

Epson EcoTank printers work well.