I want to acquire a printer soon, mainly to print Communist propaganda (flyers, and zines principally). Would like to get something with a minimum of proprietary bullshit, that is relatively cheap to operate/ maintain and which ideally isn’t just complete spyware. Not sure such things exist, but would appreciate advice
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Go to any place that sells used electronics and look for a Brother laser printer from the last 10 years. You can probably find a high end one under $30 if you’re patient or live in/near a larger city.
Inkjet is better quality printing, but they fucking suck for nearly every other reason. Toner can be expensive, but it basically never goes bad or dries up. I’ve seen Brother last 20+ years of regular use.
Brother has started pulling the same bullshit as the other printer companies now.
Yeah, heavy emphasis on buying a used one. I guess at least a model from ~2023 or earlier. It’s difficult to escape this kind of nonsense with printers without spending a lot of money or time on hacking it
yeah laser is the way to go for printers… we’ve had the same toner for like 3 years now and it prints just fine
Thank for the advice
Black and white or color? Brother laser printers have tended to be the most reliable and least bullshitty offerings on the market for many years, but I believe they recently started up some subscription bullshit. Thanks, capitalism.
All modern printers have micro dots printed to identify the printer to help with tracing criminal activities. So buy used and pay cash. If you want to put out info that would likely be used to prosecute you, find an old dot matrix one.
modern meaning everything after dot-mateix printers… hell probably evensome dot matrix printers did shady shit
Thanks for the tip.
Color printing:
If you’ve got a Linux box and kind find a second hand HP Envy 5000 series inkjet, the tools to install to make it work seem to get around all of the HP company bullshit. Wired and wireless works on my ancient computers at home with the only “issues” that the ink level meter doesn’t work on and occassionally the IP address of the printer changes slightly after a power outtage which is fixed by manually editing the IP address on my computer.
Black and White:
Look around for refurbished business surplus Brother or HP printers. Toner will last quite a while and they are kinda tanky. House pets have gotten caught in the wires of the Brother printer I got second hand almost 10 years ago and drug it off the shelf… and it still mostly prints okay.
And yeah, tactical_trans_karen’s got something to keep in mind as well.
