One died...so I got another brother

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A true story of death, reacquisition and possible murder.

πŸ”˜ πŸ”˜ πŸ”˜



A couple weeks ago my home office multifunction centre decided to end it all and die. It wasn't a, go down in a blaze of glory, end of life, rather, an ignominious, tripped and fell off the bridge by accident, sort of death. There were a few grinding sounds, some clicking and whining and...dead. It didn't even have the good grace to spit out the printed page I'd asked for. How rude.

Out with the old

It had served me well, I shouldn't complain. I don't have to print, scan or copy much these days, but when I do, that multifunction centre always came through for me, except for when it died of course.

It was a Brother laser printer with a flatbed scanner, document feeder, large capacity paper tray and a few other minimum-requirement things I needed. I didn't need the best there was, just something that worked.

This was on my my mind when I went looking for a new one and was instrumental in my decision not to get a laser multifunction centre and opt for an inkjet verion instead I chose an Epson unit, after much deliberation and comparison between the options, forked over the money and went home to begin the onerous task of setting the thing up.

It was a nightmare...let me clarify, it was a fucken nightmare.

A false start

It wouldn't connect wirelessly to my computer. Problem one...but there's more.

I had to download and install a hundred and ninety three softaware files, the print head wasn't delivering even dots on the page nor would it align correctly and then...the ink cartridges ran out of ink, (being low-capacity starter cartridges that came with the machine.) I was prepared for the last though, I'm smart like that, and had bought cyan, magenta, yellow and black replacement cartridges...Smart huh?

I put them in, went through the print head set up and alignement process three more times, finally managed to get it worked out, and was good to go....But you know the story doesn't end there right? if you think the story ends there you're bonkers.

The end of my tether

That was a week ago. I was riding high, livin' large, with my fully operational inkjet multifunction centre and then, fucking fuckety fucken fuckballs, the thing wouldn't print.

It spat out a page of jibberish then, to add insult to injury, the page only came half way out and then stopped completely. The print head cassette was running left and right, about an inch each way, and it was clearly not going to work properly, because the fucken thing was shit! I pressed some buttons and what do you think I found? Yep, that's right, the yellow ink cartridge was empty. I thought that was odd considering it was brand new and had only been used to set up and align the print head. Do you see how I could be a little miffed?

That's when I reached the end of my tether and began to have murderous thoughts.

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Another brother

I wanted to take an axe to it, but I'd paid a few hundred dollars for this thing and, because I'm a fucken genious, kept the receipt. So there was no slaughter; instead, I threw the thing in the box it had come in, trundled off to the national office-supplies chain I'd bought it from and threw it through their fucken window and politely asked for a refund after explaining the issues. Thanks for nothing Epson!

The store people were happy to refund me but that wasn't going to solve my print-scan-copy issue and so I selected another model, the updated version of the laser multifunction centre that had died a week or so earlier. It's overkill for what I need but I figured it'd work ok considering I had gotten five years out of the last one.

I went home and spent some time setting it up and...it works; no murdering required.

I ended up with a Brother MFC-L2713DW and so far it's been ok.

The set up required some downloading and updating but it wasn't as difficult and annoying as the Epson unit had been.

It's laser so there's no ink cartridges and I've got it set up so it prints and scans wirelessly from my computer and my mobile phone which is useful. The toner cartridge is only a starter-cartridge but has a capacity of up to 700 pages of 5% coverage per page so that's probably close to the life of the machine for me as far as printing goes.

Operating under the threat of murder

I was very disappointed with the Epson inkjet unit which, in the past, I've found to operate flawlessly, and won't be buying another one any time soon.

I'm hoping my new Brother serves me well, that it lasts a while and doesn't misbehave or its death may be a little more violent that my last one was. I had to pay more than that Epson unit I'd purchased but I was happy to do so under the expectation of it working properly. I think it will be ok and, just to remind it of its obligation to me, I brought in on e of my axes and leaned it up against the wall next to the multifunction centre - For motivational purposes. I'm not above killing my Brother should it not deliver on its promise.


Have you ever been let down by a purchase that didn't work as it should have or was just so annoying or clomplicated to set up? Feel free to tell me in the comments below...You don't have to confess to murdering your purchase though, I'd not want you to incriminate yourself.


Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised so be humble and kind

Any images in this post are my own



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29 comments
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Photocopiers are made by the devil. They are made in the same factory in hell as mosquitos and wasps.

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Indeed they are, and it seems they get worse with every production run. The devil's factory must be busy putting out all these terrible things; you mention a few, but there's others as well. I'm sure we could come up with a sizable list.

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Burnt toast. Dog poo on ones shoe. Biting into an earwig in the salad and not finding the other half. Slugs. Overripe avocados. Vacuuming. People who can't take criticism about the poor use of apostrophe. Running out of jalapenos. Blackbirds.

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All'' o'f the above f'or sure.

Lol...Sorry, I have pooruseofapostropheitis to'day. 🀣

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πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚mosquitoes and wasps

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Hahaha! This made me laugh so hard! If printers and photocopiers have a mind of their own, they sure are full of evil! They tend to malfunction in times when you need them most. They slow down your work until your day is totally ruined.

In addition to mosquitos and wasps are roaches and flies!

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Oh man, I hate flies! I've swallowed a few in my time as well - horrific. Worst is when you're about to drift off to sleep and they come buzz like a whirling dervish on acid on your lip.

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I hate printers. I absolutely hate the, for all the reasons you specify. Wireless printers? Those I outright loathe.

Even after finally getting them set up the moody little bastards will semi-routinely decide not to print, or connect, or do anything, because of fuck you, really. There's no good reason for it. They're exercise for the heart as anger rises and blood pressure sky rockets, either cleaning out the arteries completely or threatening to blow your head right off your neck.

Good luck with the Brother! If you decide to use it as a shooting target, take pictures!

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I know right? What the fuck is going on with these things?

That blood pressure comment...It took me back to the exact feeling when that Epson unit was doing it's thing, or not doing it's thing depending how one looks at it. It wasn't my finest hour.

If my brother gets shot I'll video the whole thing. 😊

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Feel for ya mate. We had some similar issues a while back. Not to burst your bubble, but we got tired of dealing with the Brother driver issues. We had two really nice multi-function brother printers. One that did the one-pass two-sided scan. That one was at my wife's office before we sold it. It did a LOT of work, both scanning and printing, ran a counseling business with 7 therapists. The only issue was that it would frequently lose it's brain, or rather the laptops would. I understand it was normal for any printer to hang every month or three and have to be rebooted. But for some reason, (we initially blamed Windows update, but it happened with the couple MAC users as well) the laptops just couldn't find the printer, even after rebooting, even with static IP Address assigned. This would happen even more frequently with the "Scan to PC" option, where it wouldn't find the PC's to scan the files to, and we would have to scan manually by putting on the printer, running to other office and start the scan from the laptop. The biggest issue was that we were having to completely re-install the drivers every month or two, which was either a painful, long experience to manually remove all the drivers and software, reboot to make it "clean" and then reinstall, or just reinstall over the top which resulted in a new name, 5-6 versions of the same printer in the print menu, which was confusing to figure out which one to print to if the default settings ever changed. Which it did, because all of our therapists had printers at home that was usually their default too.. This problem was there with both printers. It would also often hang if you tried to print, and the printer wasn't yet "awake". This would require waking the printer up, manually deleting your prior request, then resending. Not a big deal if you're in the same room, but a PITA if you're all the way downstairs... especially if it doesn't clear the first time or two and you've now had to go up and down the stairs 3-4 times! Arrgghhh! So long story short, we dumped the old printers when we moved, and went back to the old standby HP after our move. It has a similar problem with the wake it up first before printing, else it hangs, but otherwise we at least haven't had to re-install the drivers for a year. Woot! I have to say if you do a lot of double-sided scanning, the one-pass machines are the only way to go. We'll never go back to the single pass. Good luck on yours, be interested to hear if you have any of those same issues with it over the next 6 months. (and yes, you know I'm a tech geek, I absolutely installed the firmware updates and such). Keep those install files handy!

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You list problems I've had and that nearly caused me to apply an age-old remedy for such issues to my MFC...the C4 remedy. Lol.

Seriously though, it is exactly as you say, been there done that. I guess I figured I'd go back to what I knew, the Brother unit, as I'd get what I expected. Weird logic, but that Epson experience nearly ended with such violence I decided not to tempt fate. πŸ™‚

I don't duplex much, don't print much in general but I'm hoping I have a smooth run, but I think you know what's going to happen as well as I do...so look out for the killed my brother post on a Hive feed near you soon. πŸ‘€

I fail to understand why this whole printer thing is so difficult; it never used to be. Back in another life when I was transitioning from one long term job into another I worked for a time at the same national office supplies company I bought this latest printer from. I was an Area Merchandise Coordinator and used to sell technology also (computers, printers, etc.) I don't recall there being this many issues and these things being so fickle back then. Why is it so? I don't know...What I know though, is that hand grenades and C4 is an effective remedy...although it doesn't help when stuff needs printing.

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Exactly right, it seems common with many tech things now though. They seem to get so focused on new features, new whizbang stuff that no one cares about and forget to focus on what people really want which is functional set it and forget it, consistent, stable function of the basics!

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As a general rule, I always go HP... for Laser and Multifunction InkJet.
... however, in a punch, I have purchased an Epson Inkjet, twice.

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I was going to go with an HP this time, I just couldn't find what I needed; apparently covid-19 has struck down the MFC population as well as humanity.

I'm hoping this brother works ok, or it'll get axe-murdered.

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Brother tends to have good quality toners, with good page yield & price.

I always recommended Brother to customers over other brands for laser.

I had customers who used Canon & Epson for their Artist inkjet printing.

Just be wary of cheap printers with minuscule ink cartridges. One product years ago had like 1ml of ink & a heap of colours.
@$11 each it was costing him a fortune. Luckily, I found a supply for him @$2, but still ridiculous to change cartridges after 1 or 2 photo prints.

But good on you for not putting up with a bad purchase

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I agree, I've been happy with my last Brother MFC from the print quality/yield perspective. Updating the drivers all the time is a pain in the ass though.

But good on you for not putting up with a bad purchase

Had it worked I would have run with it, but it was a pile of shite from the word go. Officeworks has a good refund policy and the chap I spoke to was helpful so I was happy to add to what I'd spent and upgrade back into the Brother unit. Let's hope I don't have to slay it. πŸ˜‚

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I understand your annoyance with that Epson printer that did its thing with you to end up not serving for nothing.

In my work and at home I also had problems with my Epson printer, I spent it in technical service, when it was one thing was another.

This purchase reminded me of a day when I bought a cell phone and the internet signal did not work well, I could not even use Facebook.

I went to the store to file a complaint and the owner told me that the important thing was that it made calls and sent messages, he wanted me to die or kill him, since he did not want to change it.

I had to take my brother, to put more character and I got my money back.

I was like crazy, that for me I needed the internet hehehehe.

I hope this new printer works out well for you.

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I understand your annoyance with that Epson printer that did its thing with you to end up not serving for nothing.

I think it hated me...which I don't understand because I'm totally loveable. πŸ˜‚

That sounds like a bad situation with your phone but I'm glad you have it sorted out now. I guess maybe the store guy thought he could take advantage of you because you were a girl? Lucky your brother along and got it all sorted.

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Adorable? Good thing you're like that hehehehe.

Yes that man was like crazy, thanks to God and my brother who put him in his place he gave me my money back and I was able to buy a phone that did work the way I wanted it to.

Have a nice day.

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I’ve never really had an experience with Photocopiers so I wouldn’t know but I can’t imagine myself in that situation of β€œthe false start” …… I’ll be so livid!πŸ˜‚

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Yeah, it wasn't very nice, but I got it sorted out eventually and now I'm able to print and scan. I hope that continues.

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I seem to remember having not great luck with Epson, but I've been fully digital for a while and haven't needed to print or scan anything (print would sometimes be useful now but I stopped needing to scan after getting a graphics tablet a million years ago).

Good thing it was easy enough to return and you seem to have gotten one that Just Works now.

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I rarely print but need to sometimes. Scanning, not so much now but it also happens, and so I need something to do it. I wish I didn't. I'm hoping this printer lasts a little while, and I don't have to kill it.

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Going to resurface an old one here. That's fuckzactly why you don't buy Epson! Lol. I've never had good luck with them personally. I was an HP guy for a long time but then realized it was just cheap shit that was intended to last a year or two before you had to buy a new one. So I opted to upgrade and got me a Brother and damn that thing is nice! The laser is much better for sure. It's a little on the expensive side but that's okay, it works and that's what matters. I don't know if I'll ever buy an inkjet again, I'm more of a laser guy!

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You have said it fuckzactly right, I don't know what fuckassery I was playing at with that Epson.

Also, lasers are cool. I mean printers and the Star Wars ones too!

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