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by MostlyStable 876 days ago
Even though it is now more than a year since Brother did this, the vast majority of the comments about them are overwhelmingly positive, despite cartridge antics being the majority of the reason why people hate HP printers and others. I wonder how long it will take for their current status to fully penetrate the good will they built up from years of being the not-shitty option.
1 comments
resoluteteeth 876 days ago
I think it will take a while for people to notice because Brother printers last so long, so most of the people praising them are using still printers they bought many years ago.
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happymellon 876 days ago
My Brother laser must be approaching 10 years, and so from my experience I would completely recommend them.

However if they are really turning HP I could never recommend with a good conscious.

This is conflicting.

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kibibu 876 days ago
I bought a brother laser printer last year, and it bricked itself when using third party ink. I have a printer shaped paperweight.

Solutions offered online are to use a knife to extract the chip from a genuine cartridge to stick on the new one.

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MostlyStable 876 days ago
I did this. It was actually pretty easy as long as you still have the starter cartridge that came with the printer (to be the chip donor).

Here's a youtube video showing the process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdj-yxfHh4I

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MostlyStable 876 days ago
Yeah, I have an extremely sour taste in my mouth about them because their firmware update (which I didn't approve), disabled my non-OEM cartidge when it was only partway through.

Unfortunately, from an objective standpoint, I'm not sure there is anyone better to recommend. At least we can say that Brothers hardware is good and that, for the most part, it just works when trying to print. I've vertainly never had any issues with it _other_ than them forcing me to swap the DRM chip from my empty starter cartridge into my replacement non-OEM one (and, the fact that this is possible is a sort of half-mark in their favor? I guess?)

It's a shitty situation where I'd rather buy from a company that didn't do this but the entire product segment is so bad that I don't think it exists.

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