The Amazon price is high because you’re buying a discontinued product from a niche seller.

Or in other words, the price is high because there is consumer demand for printers that work, without advertising, without drm, without screwing you around to squeeze you for cash.

Surely DRM here, and allowing closed firmware, and such, are anti-Capitalist? Don't they prevent the market from optimising?

Unlikely. I see this frequently, where niche vendors charge a lot for discontinued products.

Perhaps demand for discontinued products is not uncommon.

It can have other reasons than the old products being bad (e.g. I recently bought two copies of a discontinued mosue at higher-than-MSRP prices because switching to a different model costs me in time to get used to it) but I wouldn't discount it as a major factor. A lot of products really have gotten shittier replacements.

> A lot of products really have gotten shittier replacements.

A perpetual pattern in humanity is this refrain coming from old people. :-) You can find examples of it from centuries ago.

A lazy response in online discussions is this idea that "old man yells at clouds" is somehow an argument for how things have not gotten worse. We are in a thread discussing an instance where a company is making their product worse FFS.

It is reducing the value of something merely to one attribute.

That's hilarious. I have exactly the same printer. It's recently survived moving between countries not particularly carefully packed, twice. Working like a champ. I've had months where it's printed thousands of pages (radio drama rehearsal scripts for multiple cast members). Absolutely fantastic printer. Unsurprised to see its become a beloved classic.

OT: Quick question - does this model (HL-2360...) have a physical on/off switch? I run two Brother HL-2130 series which I turn on and off with a relais to save energy for standby.

It does not have a switch like I think you like - a switch near the power cord that cuts all power to the printer.

It does have a power button (near the wifi button) but I expect that is a soft switch of some sort.

That said, I plug peripherals like this into a power strip with individual switches for each outlet.

OT: Thank you so much for the reply. One more question: Does the Printer remember its Power state - like if the relais cuts it off and then it turns on again once it regains power? That would be super awesome to know and something I could not research on the net :-(. I'm happy with my HL-2130 (dirt cheap repleacement for drum (15€) and toner (10€)) for now, but some day in the future ...

If I turn on power to the printer from the power strip, it immediately powers up and will print. I think it has some sort of power-saver mode after it is done printing, but when I'm done I usually cut power to the printer at the power strip anyway.