If you’re going to buy a printer (any printer) for very infrequent use, make sure to protect it from dust.

I just threw away my Brother Laser (stored in a very dusty location) because of dust all through the works making streaks on every print.

I started with a series of white dots on each page, and in order to fix that I cleaned the whole outer case, blew out the toner cartridge area with canned air, and installed a new toner cartridge.

Result: white speckles on each page AND several big black streaks down the whole page. 😡

I’m sure somebody who knows how to clean them properly could have resuscitated the thing but I ended up contributing to e-waste instead.

Better to keep it in a cabinet with doors, or store it inside a pillowcase or something for the 18-month duration between prints.

Same, I've had the same brother color laser printer for 15 years running on linux, and I think I've bought ink maybe 4 times.