Posted on 03/16/2019 10:58:47 PM PDT by fireman15
Brother has over-delivered for me on printers for decades!
Incredibly reliable. Few paper jams. Third-party supplies generally work fine and very cheap.
I bought my first all in one machine, an Epson Workforce 600 on sale at Sam's Club for what at the time seemed like an outrageously inexpensive price. I didn't really feel that I needed one. I already had scanners, printers, and even an old FAX machine, but in my little office area I quickly realized that it was very convenient to have just have one machine set up to keep my desk and counter space as clear as possible. It was also the first printer that I had that worked wirelessly which is also very convenient and cuts down on clutter.
Most of the major printer manufacturers support Linux, but I am sure that there are major differences in the quality and completeness of the drivers. It is one of those issues that you almost have to fiddle with for a while to find out how good that they are.
The issue with drivers goes back to the MSDOS and home computer days. In the pre-Windows days programs that you were using like Lotus 123 and Word Perfect actually had their own printer drivers. I still have an old daisy wheel printer and a Star Micronics dot matrix that have drivers for MSDOS based programs and will even work with programs on Atari, Commodore MSX and other “home computers” from the era if you have a parallel port adapter. There were even some non-Apple printers that were able to work with an Apple computer if you had the correct adapters, but Apple had a proprietary scheme at that time that was intended to force users to purchase Apple's over priced printers.
Another thing I like about my Brother printer is it can operate in a B&W Print Only (black and white) mode when one or more color ink cartridges are empty.
That is good. I just have a b&w all-in-1.
I totally agree that there is no way anybody should get a rider on a $60 printer but for several thousands of dollars of camera gear it makes sense. I used to spend a few weeks a year at a friend’s cabin in Ontario and none of the extended warranties I looked at covered dropping my camera in the lake or smashing it against a rock or most any other way of destroying my gear in the wild.
As far as making a claim in a homeowner’s policy for a $60 printer, my same friend filed a claim for around $1000 when he took out a propeller on his boat. The insurance agent said “You’d better hope the boat burns to the waterline next time because after the second claim your rates will go up big-time and after a third claim you will be cancelled.
Your suggestion is very good... in most cases the extended warranties are a total rip-off by the retailers. I purchase them only under special circumstances.
The camera and lenses that I bought the drop and spill coverage for were heavily discounted refurbs so I was a little nervous about why they had been returned, and the events that I used them to film required multiple cameras that I wasn’t always near while taking video. So I felt that the setup was at risk more than a typical item. And someone did eventually knock my tripod over at an event.
Another item I purchased that worked in my favor was a 60” HD Projection TV that was marked down to half price because it had been a floor sample at Sam’s Club. Since the TV was marked down to half price the warranty was also half the price and by joining the Sam’s Club “executive membership” that night they doubled the years on the extended warranty.
The extended warranty covered the bulb which at that time was 100s of dollars; it had 1000s of hours on it before we got it. The TV started developing some issues before the extended warranty was up. They ended up replacing the screen and all the electronics. A month later the bulb burned out so I got a new one of those also. The only thing that wasn’t replaced was the plastic holding it all together. Essentially, the TV was like new.
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