I’ve been a devoted fan of the home laser printer for quite some time. My current printer is a Brother laser that I purchased over a decade ago. Though I couldn’t find any email receipt for my actual purchase, I did find confirmation of the warranty registration. That eventually enabled me to find the charge on my digital credit card statement:

In November of 2012, on what was probably a Black Friday deal, I paid a measly $84.99 for a Brother HL2280DW. That printer has since survived two moves, printed thousands of pages of assorted documents and return address labels, scanned an assortment of documents, and needed its toner replaced, I believe, one single time. It‘s been a steady, sturdy companion, and I give it the highest praise one can give a printer: I do not hate it.

I have almost no feelings about this printer and that is how it should be.

You too could have a healthy non-relationship with your home printer, provided you stop using an inkjet. Really stop and think about it. How often do you actually need to print in color? The answer is likely “almost never”. If and when you do, there is likely a Staples or FedEx Office store nearby. Photo printing is even easier, at any CVS, Walgreens, or one of a hundred sites online. As Nilay Patel recently wrote when declaring any old Brother laser as the best printer of 2023: “The Brother whatever-it-is will print return labels for online shopping, never run out of toner, and generally be a printer instead of the physical instantiation of a business model.”

For a look at just one of the ways things can go terribly wrong for those who take a different route, read the tale of woe that was Nathan Edwards’ experience with region-locked printers. It is a horror show, and HP ought to be deeply ashamed of, well, pretty much everything.