Anyone in my family, probably yours too.

To the outside tech user, they just want a printer and HP is global brand. My father would, considering our first ever computer was an HP so he'd be stuck with the mindset everything HP is great.

Because you need a printer, and their competitors are all just as scummy?

I bought a laser printer by Brother a couple years ago and never had any problems with 'fake' toners, and it also runs perfectly using CUPS on Linux.

I suppose people don't research refill options ahead of buying a printer? This ongoing maintenance cost would be the first thing I'd look into.

My initial question wasn't meant to be a rhetorical one. I was genuinely curious if there is any upside/reason why one should buy HP (print quality or whatever.)

Read the thread. Newer brother printers are also getting tricker with non-oem toners.

Well, thats depressing to hear.

I think HP are worst. Then Epson. Then Canon. Then Brother.

If you are willing to go to the professional/office grade, I can recommend the Canon imageClass line (caveat: only the models with native Postscript support) for use in Linux or wherever you might not want binary blob drivers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29869389

Avoiding their blobs may deny you of advanced features, but for documents where you're not aiming for max photo quality or color matching, it works very well.

I recently bought a Brother HL-4040CN off craigslist. Could not be happier.

It's 13 years old, but still runs like a champ. The network features are dead simple, like you'd expect. For $100, I think even the lifetime of the toner cartridges it came with is likely to be worth the cost.

I fully expect this printer to outlive my need to print things out.

Because it’s a decent no-hassle, networked all-in-one and the ‘sample’ toner cartridges that they come with last me about six years.