I have an HP LaserJet 4L. It's noisy and has an inconvenient Centronics interface. This is because it's over 20 years old, but it has been similarly reliable and repairable because it dates from the era when HP were a respected engineering company.

You should get rid of that old thing, and upgrade to a early/mid-2000s HP LaserJet 2300d. It's about the same size, but it's far faster at printing (especially graphics), has a USB interface, you can add a JetDirect 10/100 ethernet card, and is a true Postscript printer. It's also extremely reliable, and the ink cartridges are cheap on Ebay.

The 2400 series (which replaced the 2300 series) looks pretty good too, and has built-in ethernet (no extra card needed), but that's when they switched manufacturing to China, so I don't know how reliable it is.

I have the same printer, from 1992 iirc - still prints and has been an absolute workhorse. HP bought a lot of brand loyalty from me with that printer.

Those HP printers were some of the most reliable I ever dealt with. Fond memories.

Second Brother lasers. My HL-3170CDW color laser is still going strong after four years. Works flawlessly with Linux, OS X, and Windows; toner lasts forever; and print quality is fantastic.

My Brother 1650 is over 10 years old and still printing as well as the day I bought it.

Yep, my Brother MFC-something-or-other laser went about 10yrs I estimate before something went south with its brains. Never had a problem with the cartridges or any of the mechanicals, but I didn't use it often either. A brand new Brother MFC-L2740DW laser sits on my desk now and if it lasts 5 years I'll have gotten my $170 out of it.

The Brother color lasers also are happy to print without color toner cartridges present.

By contrast, HP's cheaper color lasers require the cartridges to be present, and if they run out and are left in the machine, they cause banding over your printouts. This is due to their integrated drums wearing out, so you have to replace the color toners even if they're not being used (or hack around with transferring chips onto less-used old cartridges, even black ones so they're seen as colour ones).

This is not true, I owned a 700$ multifunction printer scanner, copier, everythinger and it required me to hack the cartridges to print black, it always put shitty yellow tracking dots on all printouts. Don't send more business to Brother.

They have the worst software (on printer and in driver) of any printer company I have come across. Their driver installers download random bits from IP addresses in Japan with zero encryption. The hardware is stellar, the software is cringe worthy.

I'm assuming this is on Windows? Because I've never had to install anything on a Mac for it to work with a brother printer...

This is on a Mac. I wanted to see if the firmware bugs would be fixed by using their firmware update tool. The printer itself times out when attempting an on-device firmware upgrade. The downloaded update utility just attempts to grab a new firmware image from an IP which is non-responsive.

It can't scan over AirPrint if it has gone to sleep, it only can accept print jobs via IPP if you want it to WOL. So I have two printers configured, one via AirPrint for scanning and another via IPP for printing. There are so many low hanging firmware bugs that it makes me think the same folks wrote healthcare.gov

This is par for the course in brother firmware, https://gist.github.com/seanjensengrey/4223dc23d1f7cc95a157

I've had 3 of the Brother multifunctions in various offices (7920, 7940, 7960), and a couple of the color multifunctions (9340 right now). Generally happy with them in every way.

I was pretty surprised when network scanning worked out of the box on Macs. I scan about as much as I print. AirPrint works on the newest ones, too, from iPhone/iPad.

I'm a big fan of the Brother cartridges because they include a drum + toner in one, so each time you replace the toner you also get a new drum.

Their inkjet line of crap are the worst printers I've ever had to use and continually clean themselves out of ink, even when you aren't using it. If you unplug it and plug it back in, the damn thing will clean itself for a proportional amount of time. So it will use ink at a nearly constant rate regardless of whether or not you use it. It is totally some kind of fraud.

I bought a brother dcp7040 and am still on 1st full size cartridge after the sample toner ran out. Absolutely love this printer!! Ink junk can go to hell.

I feel like a laser printer evangelist now. I have a few laser Brother models I always recommend to people who complain about their inkjets based on their OS, the functions they need, and if they primarily print BW or color.

Sort of like high deductibles did to people's willingness to seek medical treatment, I know more than a few people with inkjets that actively avoid using them because "it's so expensive and never works".

They're afraid to use up their ink, so it ends up expiring(!) or drying out having been barely used, and the next time they desperately need to print something, they have to buy $50+ of cartridges before they can print anything at all.

The HL-2140 I got in '09 for $60 can print on transparencies for PCB masking, does manual duplexing and easy booklet printing under Linux and OSX, and with aftermarket toner refills I've only needed to replace the drum/cart once. Contrasted to the cost efficiency of all the low or mid range inkjets I've owned ($80-350), it's been an exceptional return.

I'm equally happy with our Brother HL-2150N. Already using the third cartridge in its fifth (?) year, but a very basic and cheap and capable laser printer.

Same here. I bought that one for my study but finally it was used by all my family (big error to put it on the network) who print 500+ copies with the original cartbridge. Given it was almost the same price as laser printer (~100€), it happened to be a very good deal over the years.

even when you hit the end of that toner cartridge there is a small hack to get you another at least 50 pages, the brother printers use some kinda beam sensor that passes through the cartridge if the printer detects this is unbroken the cartridge must be empty because there is no toner all you do is block this there a small clear plastic window on the cartridge reboot the printer and you're good to go. you may get faded pages after a while try shaking the cartridge a bit.

also people just don't buy inkjet printers if your printing patterns are limited to just a few prints a month there always just going to dry out go with the laser printers they use toner and never dry out.

Well to be fair I bought an Epson inkjet printer (Workforce something) several years ago and never used up its original cartridge. Granted I don't print much but I was still fairly impressed.

Of course that doesn't invalidate the point of TFA. Also they have an ink dump that is chipped - when it is "full" they force you to buy a replacement rather than just empty it.

Same printer, same experience

I have the same printer and I too have had no issues in 5+ years of use.

I have a Dell 1110 which I bought when I was a student. Same story except that I've put 1500 pages through it over the past 9 years. TCO: $300.

I would recommend Brother too, HL-2135W, very solid product.