this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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A computer shop once laughed in my mom’s face for asking if they’d repair her printer. The accepted practice is to just throw the whole thing out when you want new ink or it stops working.
Eventually she tracked down a guy in another town who fixed printers, and he fixed the printer (a bottle cap was jammed inside, in case you were wondering. He returned the bottle cap).
That was 20 years ago and things aren’t better.
Man I know it.
I've definitely bought a new printer before because it was cheaper than ink. More than once.
Nowadays I've got a Samsung B&W laser that gets most of what I need to print, and a brother MFP inkjet for the rest. I'm keeping my eyes out for a color mfp laser when I visit thrift shops...I'd gotten one before and it worked well for a while but it was an HP so it broke and became non-economical to repair (and really, I didn't need/want a giant corporate LaserJet in my home office).
But I don't even really print in color...very rare that is even needed. If it is, it's probably stuff like kids birthday invites and I'm gonna be better off sending it to a print shop like Staples or Kinkos or just order it online, anyway.
In fact I'm fairly sure the heads on the inkjet are a solid glob now.
I found my pair* of Brother color laser MFPs on Craigslist, being listed by a small business that was getting rid of them. I think you'll have a lot better luck finding them via some method like that than by checking thrift shops.
That said, they are pretty giant, being designed for small/medium office use. However, I'm not sure there even is such a thing as a "small" color laser, since they inherently have to contain four sets of rollers instead of just one.
(* if you find somebody selling more than one of the same model, definitely get two so you have one for spare parts.)