Anyone know much about printers? Ink vs. laser

[Renard]

Also, I read some of these shit shady printer companies make some software update that disables your printer's ability to use third party ink. Didn't know you could do that. I think they said HP and another company does that so you must use their ink.

HP is the supreme shady printer company. On some of their new printers they literally disable printing if the printer isn't connected to wifi. So even if there's a USB port, the user can't print anything if the wifi isn't on. They do this because the internet connectivity allows the mothership to check if your printer is using the HP cartridges. If it's not, your printer stops working. On their laser models, you can't opt-out of this. They've even got some models that have a straight up subscription service that limits the amount of prints you can do based on your subscription tier.

Sheer insanity. Never buy anything HP, ever. Unfortunately even the good printer companies are starting to do shit like this after seeing everything HP got away with, always opt for a "dumb" model to avoid the BS.

 

[chardog]

I need a printer to print knife sketches for knife making. Something that only gets used very rarely but works when I need it, like once a year or so. I just found out that laser printers don't need ink? I only need to print in black and white.

All the printers I've used in the past use ink and only works for like a few years and when I need to use it again, it doesn't work anymore.

Laser has some sort of dry ink, doesn’t dry up, way more cost effective, and excels at b+w prints

 

[ssBaldy]

I need a printer to print knife sketches for knife making. Something that only gets used very rarely but works when I need it, like once a year or so. I just found out that laser printers don't need ink? I only need to print in black and white.

All the printers I've used in the past use ink and only works for like a few years and when I need to use it again, it doesn't work anymore.

Laser. The ink will dry out if used rarely.