Printer Wars: My Home Office Battle
I finally got fed up with my home office’s Brother inkjet printer/scanner/fax and bought a comparable Canon unit to replace it. The Brother printer had always been finicky about recognizing non-Brother ink cartridges, but a recent firmware update (why oh why did I click “Yes” to accept that download?) apparently knocked out recognition of the third-party cartridges I had installed—forcing me back to buying the overpriced Brother brand.
Even then, I still had printing problems. After a desperate attempt to clean the ink nozzles, I found that two of the recently purchased official Brother color cartridges were nearly out of ink after only a week.
Our printing needs are few, but when we need it—especially my wife, who also works from home—we really need it. So I trashed the Brother and ordered a similarly featured Canon printer/scanner/fax machine from Walmart Plus, which delivered it to our home later that day.
Setup was mostly straightforward, though I had to combine both the manual and automated processes to get it working properly with all our network devices. (I haven’t set the Canon up to print from my two Linux machines yet, but I don’t expect that to be a problem.)
This isn’t the first time I’ve had to replace a home printer; I’ve had a variety of models over the years, including Epson, Canon, and HP. What have I learned from all this?
I’m impressed with how well this under-$100 Canon printer works (not including the cost of cartridges). It’s a complicated piece of electronics and machinery for the price!
For the most part, I’m satisfied with having replaced Amazon Prime with Walmart Plus—partly because of Amazon’s hamstringing of the Washington Post.
Crippling consumer use of generic cartridges—especially via a “firmware upgrade”—is blatantly anti-consumer.
In summary: operating and maintaining a multifunction printer for a home office—where printing and scanning needs are infrequent but critical—is a necessary evil. Sure, I can print the occasional family photo to mail to distant friends, or print pictures of my grandchildren on sticker labels. But the fight over generic ink cartridges, regardless of the manufacturer, is a royal pain in the ass—and it always seems to strike at the worst possible moment.
It almost makes me nostalgic for the days when our home printer was a rock-solid Apple ImageWriter II—an example of which, by the way, is pictured at the top of this page.
© 2025 Dennis D. McDonald
