Everyone hates printers...

Over in this thread: https://permies.com/t/368946/Supervisor-Effect, Tim opened with an anecdote about a printer. It's funny how many of us have horrible printer stories in our past. It makes me fondly remember Office Space

I refuse to buy another printer.  In my house they just dont get enough use to make them cost effective when the ink goes bad and the new ink and printer do not work.

someone on the forum suggested to buy an ink jet printer because toner does not go bad.

Really great advice though I refuse to buy one ...

They should create a government body to oversee printers for the populace. We are getting so screwed. Don't believe me, take apart an ink cartridge and you will see it hold about a quarter of the ink it could and should hold. And the ink itself... is cheap to make so we are being WAY overcharged. How much so? Three years ago I could buy printer ink for my small printer at $75 a toner cartridge, now it is $102. There are four of them to buy! So for my small printer, ink replacement is over $400. For my plotter, it is well over $800 for new ink.

But it gets worse.

I can only buy from the printer companies and not third party ink suppliers because they put chips in the ink cartridges. When the ink runs dry it has code that only THEIR new ink cartridges can override. No refilling the cartridges with dry powder or bottle of ink on your own, nor will buying third party ink from other suppliers like Ink Farm who refill and recondition ink cartridges... nope they no longer work. But if you think you can just add ink before they run low and outsmart the printer? Nope, because they put software in that calculates ink usage to page percentages that activates that same out of ink shut down in your printer that only THEIR new cartridges can override.

But it gets worse...

Far and away black is the most used color so if you think you can just buy black ink and forget the rest and always print in black and white you would be wrong. They program the printer to even use yellow and cyan colors in making black and white prints so that all your colored ink cartridges are being used to some degree, that way if your cyan or yellow runs out and you chose to print in black and white.... nope, you are shut down until you replace those color cartridges too.

But it gets worse...

Now the printers have firmware upgrades. That just means if they ever decided not to "support" your printer, you have been what is called "bricked". It is a term that means your printer is now as worthless as a brick because it just will no longer print. Not because it is broken. Not because you cannot buy ink for it. It won't print because the printer company just decided it is not going to keep sending that particular printer firmware updates anymore. But all you have to do is buy a new printer of course!

I use my printer a lot because I print out the novels that I write. I prefer to read physical paper and ink books and not online reading so I use my printers a lot. The smaller laser printer ($500) churns out the book block, and the ink jet plotter ($3500) prints out the covers and dust jackets for the hard cover books since they are much bigger and the image quality is better. And that matters because people really do judge a book by its cover!

Rip laser printer.  

You were fun, if a bit senile in the last few years and wouldn't listen to your drivers.  The time you printed out some very important assembly instructions only to forget to put the cross indicating no glue, over top of the big picture of a glue bottle.  Oh how we laughed.

The electronics shop where I bought you, was closed, briefly used by our spy agency as a "secret" observation post, been torn down, rebuilt as a car dealership, torn down again, and now is a skyscraper with shops at street level.

Sorry mate. But the stress of juggling drivers and negotiating every line of ink, not to mention i can get three new, better printers for the cost of your toner cartridge.  

Bye.

I hate printers because the ink is expensive.

I have not had a printer that worked for almost 10 years until earlier this year got a clearance item epson eco tank 2840. this thing has been awesome. ive gone though almost 2 packages,1500 pieces of paper and the ink tank levels, the black is still 1/3 full and the rest probably 7/8 full. 1 paper jam from a piece of old wrinkled paper that I was able to get pulled out with not that much effort. print quality is great and it is very nice when I want a copy of something and just click print and in no time out it pops. an online search revealed refill ink bottles that have thousands of 5 star reviews for just over $20. the days of printer ink being more valuable than gold is over if you shop around. hopefully one day I'll get some picture printing paper and make some new photo albums or wall decorations.

Anne Miller wrote:I hate printers because the ink is expensive.

That's why i go laser.  Toner won't dry up and the last one cartridge used to last 8 to 10 years of frequent printing. About $10 cad a year.

Not looking forward to seeing what the current prices are.

r ransom wrote:Rip laser printer.  

You were fun, if a bit senile in the last few years and wouldn't listen to your drivers.Bye.

Hell no, do not go quietly into that good night!

I'm still keeping an antique laser printer alive on Win10. Canon MF300 series. Yeah, the operating system regularly "loses" the drivers but I reinstall them again and away we go.

I'll have to reckon with Win11 in October. I'll bet it will be extra pissy about an old laser printer. No matter -- put up your dukes you SOB!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

Hell no, do not go quietly into that good night!

I'm still keeping an antique laser printer alive.....

Do you think Dylan Thomas perhaps had just done battle with his 99th paper-jam when he penned that sentiment?......  :-)    I suspect the printer knew it was on its last print job and was destined for the dust-bin the next day.....lol

Just looked....I have a LaserJet 1020 (B+W) sitting in the corner of the room that I had fired up only a few weeks ago and was impressed that it worked immediately with my Win11 laptop.  It's pretty creaky, but I've always loved the fact that laserjets use a dry ink powder vs the frustrations of ink jets.  Amazingly, like that old Studebaker that gathered dust in the corn crib before being rescued, this printer had gathered ~7-8 years of dust under a footwell of a computer desk on the main floor where it was sidelined.  Similarly, I have an older 'mini-PC' that was piloting our Netflix experience before we decided subscriptions were a dangerous black hole requiring careful consideration....I've got a USB drive with Linus Mint flashed for installing onto it when the next opportunity arises as it's not upgradable to Win11.  I'm hoping this install may allowed for reviving an older CanoScan LIDE 70 for which drivers are difficult to obtain in the Win-World.  And then there's the Apple Imagewriter II......

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

r ransom wrote:Rip laser printer.  

You were fun, if a bit senile in the last few years and wouldn't listen to your drivers.Bye.

Hell no, do not go quietly into that good night!

I'm still keeping an antique laser printer alive on Win10. Canon MF300 series. Yeah, the operating system regularly "loses" the drivers but I reinstall them again and away we go.

I'll have to reckon with Win11 in October. I'll bet it will be extra pissy about an old laser printer. No matter -- put up your dukes you SOB!

It's a problem that the driver language for this printer is no longer understood fully by the printer.  It's like the printer speaks latin and the drivers speak Italian.  Most of the information gets through....except the important parts.

Example



This all started before the new windows upgrade and has the same problem from multiple devices.

The drivers are behaving as designed.   It's something wrong with the firmware or possibly hardware of the printer iteelf.  But no one services a printer that's over a quarter of a century old in town.  I might keep it another 15 years and then it wll be vintage and someone will repair it for nostalgia.

r ransom wrote:...  Most of the information gets through....except the important parts.  

Ah. Cognitive decline is the hardest. Farewell old printer, and thanks for your service.