New Printer, Again (2025)
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Good luck!
I ditched my Canon ink jet a few years ago and decided to be done with home printers of the ink jet variety. What a scam. I had a Brother ink jet before that. More bother than they're worth.
I have heard that toner printers are a better deal, but I don't have a great need for home printing so I eschew them.
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Got the new printer, took a while to set up and work out the kinks.
- After things are set up right, it works beautifully. (It's only the first days, so fingers crossed.)
- On my Macs, I install only the driver, none of the printing and scanning software also promoted by the manufacturer. But this being a newer printer, the driver works only with macOS 11 onwards. My older Macs that run OS X 10.x don't get native drivers. But ...
- AirPrint works pretty well with this new printer. The old Dell C2665dnf from 2014 always printed AirPrint jobs half-toned. But this new Brother printer (released 2023) appears to print AirPrint jobs about as well as those using its native driver.
- FTP/SFTP support. The Dell machines from 2007 and 2014 could scan to FTP or SMB, but not SFTP. This new Brother MFCL3780CDW supports FTP and SFTP; not only that, when using SFTP it insists on verifying the SFTP server's public key certificate. It insists on having the SFTP server's public cert preloaded into the printer/scanner, suggesting that its public key implementation maybe incomplete; but that's an easy way to support privately generated certificates, an important enterprise use case. Having SFTP support is is good because macOS does not support FTP anymore; FTP is insecure anyway.
- The new printer/scanner supports other things like scan to email, scan to networked drive (using SMB/CIFS), scan to SharePoint, etc. It can even accept print jobs from email. Other than scan-to-email, I do not expect to use these other features.
The rest comes down to stability, reliability, longevity. The Dell 3115cn printer from 2007 lasted well over 8 years. The Dell C2665dnf from 2014 lasted 11 years. Fingers crossed, I hope this one will last 10+ years.
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Still using an old Canon inkjet (I think MX922) and paying through the nose for ink tanks. But we don’t print all that much. If we ever need a new printer, I’ll be sure to refer to your notes above.
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Ax, Congrats!
I read your notes but still have a question.
Do you need a subscription for ink?
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Funny story ...
As I tried to dismantle the old Dell C2665dnf for recycling, I fixed it.
Good because I bought new toners for it not that long ago; so I can still recoup that "investment."
I don't regret getting the new Brother MFCL3780CDW.
Having a printer/scanner on each floor has its convenience, it's good to have a backup, and it's just a matter of time until FTP becomes totally unsupportable and I have to move all scanning function to SFTP anyway. -
I have one of the subscription based printers and because I print a lot at home (we don’t have access to a colour printer at school and so I do a lot of work printing at home) it’s really economical for me to do a subscription. I know the subscription model has taken over all things and it’s generally terrible, but for me this has been a fantastic move!
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Have an Epson. Took two days to get it working. It has quit functioning.
Will try to get it going whenever I feel like spending a day working on it or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.
Copy Copy is about five miles away. Doug mentioned that he sends all printing to a printing place. He is my hero once again. -
I'm looking forward to having a different, larger desk, a desktop computer, two monitor speakers, a printer (without subscription), and an office chair.
I'm going to pair this with a bookshelf, and a round table, low to the ground, with a couple low, comfortable chairs
This is the basic idea. Lighting everything correctly will be important.
I'm having this instead of a living room because I won't have room for both. I don't particularly want a living room, TBH.
The other part of this room will be a kitchen and a table and chairs that will fit. The kitchen will be delineated with a farmhouse table perpendicular to the long wall, if I can fit one, followed by the study.
I haven't had my own laptop since 2003. I've shared a few. The last time I had a printer was some time before 2003. The last time I had a complete stereo system was when I was in college.
