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I remember something similar being the case with HP Laserjets a decade ago or so.

People were buying second-hand 1995-era Laserjets in 2010 because they were simply better than anything you could buy new. They... Just Worked.



The only problem with these ancient and durable HP Lasterjets - I used to use a 4L - is that they were slow. My modernish Brother HL2270DW - which I got for free at a garage sale because the toner cartridge was missing so they couldn't test it - is much faster and can print double-sided. And has a $20 aftermarket toner cartridge in it.


> The only problem with these ancient and durable HP Lasterjets - I used to use a 4L - is that they were slow.

That's not completely true.

Those printers sucked so much power you could brown out your local substation.

And the amount of ozone they kicked off could be smelled in a cube farm--I don't want to think what they would do to you in a home office.


I used to maintain/repair a couple of LaserJet IIIs (circa 1990), up until about 2010, when I got tired of the printer's footprint being so large, and retired my last computer with a parallel port. The LaserJet III was the VW Bug of laser printers in terms of being easy to repair.


We used old HP Laserjets in a warehouse up until about a year ago. Towards the end, we had to repair and replace them with increasing frequency due to the beige plastic becoming very brittle. As a result, the printers became hard to service and more prone to damage during regular use. Replaced with a cheap Brother laser.




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