[Info-vax] OT: HP Poised to merge PC and printer divisions

[David Froble]

Paul Sture wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:05:26 -0700, mathog wrote:
> 
>> Paul Sture wrote:
>>>> Rich Jordan wrote:
>>>> Well, this one is simple to answer.  Use Brother printers.  They don't
>>>> charge you anything to talk to you, before or after the sale.  Even
>>>> after the printer is out of warranty.
>>> I've been very happy with the Brother printer I have. It just works, no
>>> fuss.
>> +1 for the Brother printers.  We have a 5250DN (a little double sided
>> laser, the current version of it is the 5370DW) at home and that thing
>> has been fast and reliable since day one.  I'm probably asking for it
>> just by saying this, but in the 5  years we have had it we have never
>> had a page that didn't print correctly.  Mechanically it is great - so
>> far not even a single paper jam.
> 
> Mine's a cheaper USB only version.  No double sided, but it's easy to 
> print even pages, flip the paper and then do the odd pages.  Not that I 
> do anything like the amount of manual printing I used to.
> 
> No paper jams here either.
>  
>> The one and only thing I don't like about that printer is that peak
>> current draw can top 10A, so it does not play nicely on a shared circuit
>> with anything else that uses a lot of current.  Average current use is
>> much lower, and when it goes into sleep mode it only uses about 9W of
>> power.
> 
> Ah, the "delights" of circuit breakers which trip at lowish levels...  It 
> took me a while to get used to that.  Fortunately my printer doesn't use 
> so much.
> 

My point about Brother is that they have good customer support, and will talk to you 
without asking for a credit card #.  I had a Panasonic dot matrix printer, which quit.  I 
called with the error code / message I was getting, just wanting to know if it was broke, 
or whatever, and they just wouldn't talk to me without something like $40 up front.

My current technique is before I purchase something, I check out their support.  The 
Brother support was willing to talk about problems, no charge.

I prefer to support those who will stand behind their products, and who will support their 
customers.  I definitely do not support vendors who place date timeouts on their ink 
cartridges.