Hey there,
I’m considering switching to an Epsom “inktank” printer, because HP keep jacking up their prices for the instant ink. It was a great deal to begin with, because HP have fantastic linux support, but I knew inevitably the instant ink subscription plan they have was eventually going to get me, and I feel that day has come.
I like the idea of switching to an “inktank” printer, where one just buys refill pots of ink and has “control” rather than buying vendor cartridges, or having a “plan” that HP have, who brick your printer if you cancel the subscription.
However, I just want to know if anyone here in the community has used Epsom printers with Linux, as they appear to have no official support whatsoever:
Has anyone got experience of using such printers with Linux (I’m on Xubuntu 22.04), and whether they work well, or you only get basic functionality (e.g. scan doesnt work etc).
If there is another brand of printer that has great linux support and is not subscription-based please let me know. It would be great if there was a “Framework” of printers.
HP is like the mafia, they will squeeze everything out of you.
No refill kits for your HP? I do this with my cheap HP, the quality is a bit worse than the original but the price is much lower.
HP wants something around $29 for both of my cartridges (black 4ml/colors 2ml).
The refill kit with delivery cost me about $13 per kit
100ml - BLACK
60ml - BLUE
60ml - RED
60ml - YELLOW
50ml - liquid to unclog the head
It’s worth checking to see if there’s a refill or replacement available for your HP.
I haven’t touched any hp program for ink, I keep the printer offline, yes, the printer screams that the cartridges are not original, but it still prints. What model do you have?
Gonna be that guy in every printer thread, but a Brother Laser is great. I found a used DCP-9020CDW presumably from an office for an amazing price and it “just works”. You can use it wired but just out of the box I can see it on the network and select it, click print and it’s done (Fedora 37). See if there’s any going cheap nearby.
Another +1 for Brother. It has RPM and DEB drivers last I used them.
HP printer works too, out of the box. See if you can get a tank model where you refill the ink.
Take note that most printer companies could do shenigans with their printers. I seem to recall the cheapest Epson printer (L110 model, IIRC) had this “waste ink pad” issue that periodically fills up and eventually had to be sent to the store for “maintenance”. First of all, why are you wasting ink? We’ve had that ancient printers that relied on cartridges that had no “waste ink pad” because it doesn’t waste ink at all. Why even use a stupid pad that could soak up? Spray on waste/scratch paper maybe? Anyway, a program floats around that could be used to reset the “waste ink pad” counter. If you dont put a tissue paper mod of sorts, the waste ink pad fills up and eventually spills.
We need a no-nonsense open source and open hardware printer.
When I did a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04 on my desktop, after some fraught drama, I clean forgot about the printer, a Brother all in one. A month later, after printing for a while, I realized that the OS had found the printer on the LAN and it just worked.
Hey all,
Thanks for all of the replies. Judging by the responses, it sounds like Brother make printers that Linux can make use of easily. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing any Brother “inktank” printers on amazon uk. I am so tired of trying to find off-brand ink cartridges that go in these things that you always have to end up fighting your printer in various ways, or the third party supplier ends up disappearing, that I was really hoping this inktank style would resolve (it can’t tell where you got the ink from, just that you filled the tank again.
Because someone asked, I don’t do photo printing, its really just a case of printing off copies of bank statements and invoices/purchases for making my end-of-year tax accounts easy for my accountant. That and the occasional word-processing/pdf document for this or that.
A lot of people swear by laser printers, but I used to buy replacement toners for an HP laser printer and they would cost an arm and a leg at the time. I also remember that the office laser printer would stink up the office when it ran, but maybe that was due to the paper that was fed through it. I don’t really need “speed” and am happy with the slow nature of inkjet as it tends to be cheap and easy.
how is it 2023 and a printer is still a normal part of an office?
how is the entire medical industry reliant on fax machines?
yes, a crappy laser MIGHT be more expensive to use compared to a high end ink printer. but barely, and a some what reputable laser should be MUCH cheaper to run compared to ANY ink based POS (and no i do not mean Point of Sale).
honestly i have banned inkjets at work. and if a department asks for ANY new printer they have to justify it. and no (we have always had a printer there) does not count.
A laser printer intended for business is usually better than ink. The more you print, the better the laser is financially and the less time you have to deal with the device.
Home is a matter of needs, nowadays lasers are not as expensive as they used to be, but in the past the difference in price made an important point when choosing.
I, for example, do not feel the need for a laser because I print very little, I prefer electronic form wherever I can.
In 2018 I bought a new HP for 32 Euro (good old days when prices were normal, color inkjet printer and scanner for 32 euros… beautiful times those were, eh. ) and once a year I spend $13-14 on ink, the laser here doesn’t have much to offer. But it’s all about OP’s needs, not mine.
Not everything can be done only in electronic form, so printers will not disappear from offices any time soon.
As for the fax, well, we haven’t used it since 2002, actually around 2001 the fax was only backwards compatible for us. As early as 1998, we started pushing harder and harder on e-mail. It was a long and brutal war…
Conversely the less you print the fewer prints you get out of ink cartridges with an inkjet, at least in my experience.
This seemed like a bigger problem with HP than the Canon I had before (though Canon inkjet quality has plummeted since then, from what I hear)
In my experience a laser handles being used irregularly much better than an inkjet.
It’s the way many inkjets are designed: they use a sponge to collect excess ink (at least HP does this), which will eventually fill up. Many inkjets seem to also “leak” a tiny bit when not in use, both emptying the cartridges faster as well as filling up the sponge sooner.
Once the sponge is full the likelihood of the heads clogging beyond what the head cleaning can handle (or getting damaged when parked, if the ink manages to dry up in the sponge) gets pretty big, which will total the printer since most printers aren’t designed with easily replaceable heads (and if they are, they tend to be expensive)
In the end I’d argue it’s a choice between a device that will last, and one that is cheap to replace.
I’d call a HP inkjet that lasts that long a bleedin’ miracle. Have you considered playing Euromillions?
