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so couple of years ago bought a HP multifunction printer,
really only use it once a month or less
worked fine, replaced the 3 color cartridges once
then the black ran out. OK, new black (free extra when bought),
printer went about auto-aligning, and error message
switch off, wait, switch on, aligning, error message.
switch off, re-seat cartridges, switch on, same
it's dead. and yes, it's out of warranty.
OK, time to look for another printer. price range: cheap - mid $
inkjet: cheap but these days all crap build quality, expensive ink (that dries if little used)
inktank: expensive (ffs, it's the same thing with a bit of tubing), cheap ink, ink won't dry up but the heads will
laser: used to be reasonable but catching the same diseases as above-mentioned.
the manufacturers suck:
HP wants you on ink subscription (even worse numbers than ms office one-time vs o365)
brother: if just one tank empty the printer stops (yup no b&w if say only the pink is out.)
cannon: "cheap toner", but users report maybe 50 pages if lucky before they run out again
lesser brands: all have one or more of the above too
- not one [I'll be frank here] honest supplier anymore.
here's a treat: those new ink tank printers - the ink really is cheap, claimed as cheapest price per page, until...
they all have a "waste cartridge" as well, it's not cheap, and even more NOT user replaceable. ... must be sent to the service dept for replacement (and by then your model out of date it'll cost more then the printer did, more than a brand new printer.)
Summary of findings:
1. Cheap to mid price printers: all (yes really! every single one of them, even the eco/tank models) have some form or other built-in / by design obsolescence anything from a year to 3 (depending on warranty - not joking, it's planned).
2. NONE of the review sites, toms, techradar, pcmag..., not one even hints at that, still handing those pieces of junk 4.5 - 5 out of 5 stars and quoting price per page, lifetime tco and other stats based / extrapolated on very small very limited [manufacturer's] tests.
Fake news has nothing on the amount of bullshit [paid] review sites pump out.
oh, and if you're interested I've settled on the cheapest model **rox multi function laser. it's B&W only, that's fine - from almost a whole day of research it's the most reasonable (and surprisingly cheap) printer with a semi-reasonable lifespan and decent [real] lifetime tco.
(For color / quality / quantity I'll [continue to] "borrow" printer use at clients.)
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Recognizable, as I don't print very often the inkjet cartridges always dried out. I finally got so fed up that I bought a Sam**** color laserprinter that now works for years without any printing problems. 
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Ditto.
And every time I want to use it, I turn it on, it prints, I turn it off.
Only problem was making a cover to prevent the cat shredding the rollers, shedding into it, and dropping grit / water / dandruff into it.
Wish I'd done it years ago - would have probably saved money, and definitely saved a lot of hassle.
I think you suggested the Samsung?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I've the 430W - you have the scanner version I think.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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the canons i've had survive my cat, who has convinced himself that there is a monster living in my printer.
this is why i buy them.
first priority of any tech purchase: can my cat destroy it?
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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It's HPs.
What once was a well and rightly respected test equipment company is now an angry cornered wounded animal who makes auto failing cheap a$$ s**t to shake down regular use and mees. Computers (failing Motherboards) and stink jet printers (drying jets and the error conditions).
The laser printers are still pretty good. We beat the daylights out of a monochrome $99.00 hp m201 laser here at home and it's still running after two years.
We have given up on printing in color.
HP should be ashamed but I don't think they can afford to.
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If you can do mono get a cheap mono laser, can't beat the price and never have to worry about ink drying up!
I use mine every so often and never have problems.
Technician
1. A person that fixes stuff you can't.
2. One who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge.
JaxCoder.com
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Avoid consumer products.
Get a (used) 4000 series HP. Do the services as required and they will survive you.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: Get a (used) 4000 series HP. Do the services as required and they will survive you.
I have one of those, salvaged from a previous employer who got acquired by a larger company; subsequently the local office closed. Nobody wanted it because it's rather huge, especially with all the accessories and multiple paper trays.
I've had it for 12 years, and the company had been using it for a number of years before that. I'm sure it's closing in on 20 years now.
"Servicing"? What servicing? 
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dandy72 wrote: "Servicing"? What servicing?
Every 200 000 prints or so you need to exchange some rollers and bits of rubber. (and vacuuming)
I've serviced HP 4000 series printers with more than a million prints on them.
They just keep going.
The only thing that seems to be able to kill them is excessive violence or faulty electrics. (also in excess though)
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: Every 200 000 prints or so
I probably still have a way to go then.
Jörgen Andersson wrote: The only thing that seems to be able to kill them is excessive violence
...a la Office Space? Yeah, not much would survive that 
Jörgen Andersson wrote: or faulty electrics. (also in excess though)
It's going through a decent UPS with surge protector. That's about the best I can do.
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Before you order it, check two things:
1) How much toner comes with it? The frequently ship with a "sample" toner with a lot less in than "real" cartridges.
2) How much are the toner cartridges? It's not just inkjet / bubblejet where the Consumable is King!
I get away with it on my colour laser because I don't print much - so the "sample" toners should last several years - but you do get people buying a printer, using most of the toner and selling it on ebay because it's cheaper to offload the printer than replace the toner ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: but you do get people buying a printer, using most of the toner and selling it on ebay because it's cheaper to offload the printer than replace the toner ...
A coworker did exactly that - bought 3 of the same printer model at once (color/laser/best price I'd ever seen for one of those). When a starter cartridge ran out, he'd put it up on ebay (with the full disclaimer that it needs a new cartridge), and start using the next printer. I have to think that if he's still on the third printer, he must've started buying cartridges by now.
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Quote: sigh, printers suck these days
"These days". 
Printers have always been a crapshoot for me. They either start working out of the box on the first try, or you can spend an entire afternoon trying to set one up.
Last time I had to go through that, a buddy of mine replaced his old dead printer with something newer...between the two of us, we've spent a solid 45 minutes just trying to feed it paper, which it did absolutely nothing with. Then--without trying anything differently--it just started working as if there had never been any problem, and it's been working fine since. We never could find what it is we were doing wrong...
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maybe the printer had trouble calling home...
(a lot do that these days.)
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If that's the case, then knowingly or not, that would've totally been my fault intent.
A printer has no business talking to the outside world.
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I want a tool that i can cron that will pull from github and execute a build on a solution.
I'll be setting it to run nightly.
I know there are offerings out there, my question is do any of you have any experience with one that you can recommend?
I'm not paying since my sourcebase is free so I'm trying to keep the project free minus my labor.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Cake sounds like just the ticket. Thanks!
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I'm using Azure DevOps, which is free for teams up to five users and 1800 minutes of builds and releases per month (one job at a time).
Of course I'm using it because I'm doing full Microsoft stack and it integrates well with Azure.
I found it easy to set up and the pipelines can be clicked together quite easily (haven't used the YAML pipelines yet).
For most my builds I can take the default .NET Core template and leave it at that.
The only downside is that it builds rather slow since you have to wait for an agent to become available...
Think an average of 3-4 minutes per build unless you're using building on a self-hosted machine (with is also supported and you can run one for free).
You can also take a look at GitHub Actions[^], which is in beta.
I haven't used it myself so I can't really say anything about it.
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i'll probably mess with the GitHub one. The thing about MS services is I don't trust microsoft not to pull them. Something like GitHub will stay github even if it changes hands (probably)
so i've been using github for my source control and as offsite backup for my sourcecode (along with onedrive)
works for me. redundancy. =)
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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mines the Samsung SL-C460W.
