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So first off, your hardware choice is essentially two-fold: Brother or Canon/HP. I say "Canon/HP", because HP's are just be-badged Canon hardware running HP software (and have been since the 1980's). Second, and with all due respect, I would keep your buying focus on what gets the job done best, less so on trying to outfox DRM. At this point, all of the print OEMs are more or less colluding around DRM, at least to some degree. It just is what it is. Welcome to printing in 2023. The best way to get "around" it is to just pick the machine with the highest reliability print engine whose consumables require the fewest touch points and have the highest yields for the class of machine you can afford, all of which will minimize the amount of time/energy having to deal with them. That, in-and-of-itself, will cut down on your total overhead more so than just the cost of refills. Trust me on that one. All things considered, I would stick with your inclination to buy the HP M479fdw (aka Canon i-Sensys MF744cdw). Why? First off, it's readily-available to you, and second, it's been out long enough that aftermarket toner availability should be abundant, much more so than if you were to buy the the newer HP MFP 4301fdw (aka Canon i-Sensys MF755cdw) and have to pay top-dollar for OEM consumables, until generics become available and their prices drop lower enough to make them worth it (could be 1-2 years before that happens). As for why not Brother? Mainly because the color quality and paper handling is not as good as Canon hardware, especially as the machine ages. Hope that helps. Any questions, feel free. More on reddit.com