Yours portly doesn’t have any new music or covers this week, although I have arranged a delightful rendition of the theme from Agatha Christie’s Poirot and hope to record that soon (thanks to Ponty for that recommendation). Here’s the theme song itself, which is a killer sax solo:
The one thing that has forestalled my practicing and recording of my arrangement of the piece is my printer. I purchased an Epson printer some years ago because I’ve had good experience with other Epson products (we use their projectors frequently at school). The printer was, as most printers are, always a bit finicky, but it worked well enough for my needs, and it’s typically rare for me to need to print anything at home.
Then one fateful day I made the mistake of updating the firmware. Suddenly, the perfectly serviceable third-party ink cartridges I used weren’t good enough for my printer, which demanded only the finest (and overpriced) Epson ink. That took me down a rabbit hole of cheapskatery in an attempt to locate an earlier version of the firmware online.
Come to find out that Epson removes older versions of printer firmware from its site as soon as a newer version is available in order to prevent this kind of workaround. Indeed, it turns out that an entire cottage industry exists of people who download firmware files for printers, and then sell those files online to desperate users (like me) for thirty bucks a pop.
Rather than give into the extortion of strangers, I gave into the extortion of Epson and purchased an approved black ink cartridge (itself around $45!). I installed it and printed a test page, only to find it was consuming black ink without actually printing it to the paper. Meanwhile, the printer was also consuming the residual amounts of colored ink. After one test page, the three colored ink cartridges (or is it “cartridges of color?”) ran dry, and my printer refused to attempt to print anything unless I replaced those cartridges, even when I tried to print only in monochrome.
$25 and a few days later I had new colored ink cartridges (somehow, three of those were cheaper than one black ink cartridge); I also returned the original black cartridge for another. With everything ready to go, I tried to print again.
No black ink applied to the page.
At this point, I decided I was swearing off Epson forever. I returned all the ink cartridges and donated the Epson printer to Goodwill. That still left a printer-sized hole on my desk (and in my heart).
After doing some research (talking to CoPilot) about printers that don’t bend their customers over a desk and rob them blind, I settled on a Brother DCP-L2640DW monochrome laser printer with scanner (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchase made through that link at no additional cost to you). It’s $210 and uses those massive toner cartridges like you’d find in the photocopier at work.
Last night Dr. Wife got home from her first day of onboarding at her new job and told me she needed some documents printed to take in today. My beautiful Brother had been sitting in its box for a week, waiting for me to get my doughy paws on it. Nothing motivates quite like needing to print for your significant other, so I got the old boy out of his box.
The total setup time, including getting the thing out of its packaging, was ten minutes. Seriously. For printer setup and installation, that’s nothing. I probably spent five of those minutes just typing in the WiFi password (there’s not a keyboard, so you have to hit a little “up” button over and over again until you find the letter or number you need). It helped that I had an old USB cable and power cable from the disgraced Epson printer already hooked up.
After fumbling about with the toner for a minute—I felt like a monkey discovering tools for the first time—I had everything ready to go. Windows detected the printer easily through the device settings, and I attempted to print Dr. Wife’s documents.
The lights dimmed—seriously!—as the computer booted up. It apparently sucks from serious juice. I waited… and nothing happened.
Turns out I’d put the paper in the wrong place. Like a photocopier, there’s a nice little tray at the bottom of the printer. I loaded that up and the printer instantly printed out the documents in glorious black-and-white.
I then tested it with some sheet music I’d been needing to print for a student. Within seconds, I had two gorgeous copies.
So far, I can heartily recommend this printer. If the marketing hype is to be believed, this initial drum of toner will provide 700 pages of printing. Even if it’s substantially fewer pagers, it will be a long time before we need to buy more toner. And while the toner cartridges themselves are pricy, there are lots of cheaper third-party options that should work.
Having a printer that “just works” is a major blessing. It’s wild to me how in 2026 we still have printers that, apparently, possess their own spirits. If you don’t perform the proper rituals and make the proper sacrifices, you aren’t printing your plane tickets (yes, yes, everyone uses an app now, but you get the idea). The Brother DCP-L2640DW works beautifully right out of the box.
One caveat: I haven’t tried printing my phone yet. I did pull up one file to see if my iPhone would detect the printer, but it hasn’t yet. I’ll mess around with that later, though.
The $210 price tag is steep on the front end, but having a printer that works and prints cheaply is amazing. I also need a scanner for Offensive Poems: With Pictures; there’s another Brother monochrome without a scanner (also an Amazon Affiliate link; same disclaimer applies) for about $70 less.
It’s worth the price tag. If you didn’t need a scanner, you could go with the cheaper option, but, man, it’s good to have a quality laser printer.
