Random info because I used to work at an office supply store: Most brother toner cartridges are cheaper because they separate the drum (That extra piece you take apart and place the cartridge in when you replace the toner) from the toner container. This makes for cheaper cartridges, but at some point you will have to replace the drum and that can sometimes be as much as a new printer. That said drum units last for >10,000 pages usually. Overall in my opinion it's a better design than HP or Cannon who's cartridges include the drum and are thus more expensive up front, because you are only replacing what needs to be replaced at the time.

Another Brother laser printer user here. I did have some strange networking problems when I initially configured mine for wireless use. The Macs on the network consistently lost the ability to connect.

My son eventually resolved the problem, though I never bothered to ask how. Never had that issue with Canon, but so far, I much happier with the Brother. The toner cartridge lasts WAY longer than the Canon inkjet and per-age cost is less. I did give up color, but I don't need that often enough to worry about - I can just print at work or go to FedEx/Kinkos.

I bought a wireless colour Brother laser printer in 2010. I basically don't touch it except when something needs printing. No cleaning, no maintenance. Still has the original toner cartridges, still works great and prints instantly. Works with basically any OS trivially; it even supports lpd, so it should theoretically work with anything as recent as Version 6 AT&T UNIX, but I don't know anyone with a UNIX system from 1975 so I haven't been able to test that theory.

I have same zombie connectivity issue with Mac clients. Have to walk over and bounce the printer. Doesn't happen with Windows.

Would love to know your son's fix.

I think he gave the Brother a fixed IP (using the admin tool on the wireless router, maybe). We didn't change anything on the Macs themselves. If he's around this evening, I'll ask.

I had this problem. There was a firmware update for the printer that solved the issue. Now it reliably wakes from deep sleep on WiFi from my Mac. It is a Brother DCPL2520DW.

Does your printer set up its own WiFi? Had this happen at one location, interference caused spontanious connectivity drops.

I had the same problem with a Mac losing the wireless connection to our Brother. The best I could do was make the router give the printer a fixed IP, then manually set the port to that IP on the Mac (I'm not in front of it now, so can't recall the exact details.)

Laser printers are the way to go.

I finally, after 12 years, bought my first cartridge for my Lexmark personal laser printer. The only other things I've had to do to this printer are refill the paper tray and use some Rubber Renue[0] on the rubber bits that pick the paper up.

This printer spends most of its time idle and goes months without printing anything, yet whenever I hit print it wakes up and prints a page. There's no worry about drying ink or clogging print heads or wasting half your ink to the self-cleaning cycles.

[0] http://www.mgchemicals.com/products/cleaning-products-for-el...

I got my Brother MFC for around $50 with some clever rebate-stacking. It's an awesome little printer that plays very well with Linux. Highly recommended!

My Brother laser printer gave a "low toner" warning and refused to print. A piece of electric tape over the sensor and I've been printing for literally years since. Whether the sensor is intentionally set to go off way too early or it's a technical problem, it felt pretty slimy and feels ever-slimier as years go by and I'm still printing without issue.

Seconded. I think I'm on my third toner cartridge in 6 years for my Brother MFC.

I bought whatever model consumer reports recommended at the time.

You really need to look at your 50 cartridge as a cost per page. Some Brother's take a larger capacity cartridge that costs more but results in a lower cost per page.

I love my Brother MFC (7840W). This is the longest I've ever owned a printer and the toner is not expensive when compared to inkjet.

I bought a monochrome HL series almost a decade ago (on sale for $50), and haven't yet needed to replace the drum. I buy toner refills for $15 once or twice a year, and it's always had Linux support. Total cost of ownership, paper excluded, has been around $20/yr.

I'm about to buy a new Brother color laser, as soon as they go on sale again. I'm strangely thrilled.

I was gifted a high end HPOJ Pro and a small mountain of cartridges (it takes 5 or 6 colors!) several years ago (my SO used it for school), and the cartridges once installed dried out or 'expired' long before they were ever depleted.

Now that she doesn't need it, it's going to electronic recycling sooner than later. If they hadn't thrown in the ink, I couldn't imagine shelling out $45-60 on it at regular intervals just to be able to print anything. It's practically a subscription fee shakedown just to use the damned thing.

Brother is playing the game, too. My 3-month-old Brother MFC (printer, copier/scanner) just refused to recognize the generic ink cartridge I bought off of eBay. I had to pry the RFID(?) chip off the empty Brother cartridge and hot-glue it to the generic cartridge. Now it works.

Their inkjets aren't bad either, when I do print I frequently want color but not often enough to want to spend 2-3 times as much upfront on a color laser printer. So far I've replaced the cartridges in my MFC-J4420DW once with the XL sized cartridges for ~$40 and they're still at ~70% capacity after printing 200 pages in the past year. Sure, I'd pay less with a laser printer, but for the volume it made more sense to amortize the cost than pay it all upfront.

>Changing a toner is $50 per cartridge.

What is the yield though?

I haven't seen anything that even comes close to the cost savings with a Kyocera (not to mention their machines are work horses will print all day without issue). I can get a Kocera TK 3112 toner which yields 15,500 pages (and it actually does) for $66.

From what I can tell, the printer that that toner cartridge goes in costs $700. Is there a cheaper one?

But as a company they cripple other products

go black and white for even more savings.

i've never actually needed color, ever.