PCG Article Printers are evil incarnate (PCG Article)

[ZedClampet]

Only tangentially related to PC gaming, but an important story none-the-less:

So why is it that now, in 2022, using a PC printer is up there with massaging your dog’s anal glands on the list of jobs you’d do anything to avoid? It’d be simpler for me to plan an elaborate, sexy heist in which I break into the Gutenberg Museum with a team of Turkish acrobats and use a 600-year-old relic to hand-print my British Airways boarding pass than it is to just plug in my bastard laserjet.

I bought an HP a few years ago. To get it to connect to my computer, I have to take the paper out. Unplug the machine. Wait a minute. Plug the machine back in. Wait while it goes through a bunch of processes. Then put the paper back in. This only works about 50 percent of the time, so I often have to do it twice. Then, if it runs out of color ink, it refuses to print anything and directs me to join their monthly toner program. I only want to print in black and white, but, no, it's not going to do that so long as there's no cyan. To make matters worse, my wife can't ever get it to just use black ink, and so the printer naturally just combines all the colors to create a dark ink, thereby wasting all the colors while the black ink just sits there doing nothing. The machine was designed for evil.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Yeah, printers suck. I mainly use mine for the scanner, though. Between home and work office, we're all paperless, so I have to scan everything in for backup. But I've had a ton of printer problems over the years.

 

[Brian Boru]

Networking in 90s, local email accounts in 00s, printers anytime—these are the reasons everyone needed their DADA—ie to take the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes.

I only ever had one inkjet, not as bad as Zed's but a real PITA all the same. In fairness to dot matrix which I used early 90s, it always worked—even if at a snails pace while burning your ears.

Lasers are the way to go. They're really cheap nowadays, so worth getting a B/W one if you do relatively a lot of non-color printing. I haven't used color lasers, or heard anything about them, but worth checking up if you need a new printer which does color.

Speaking of new printer, I usually upgrade whenever the cost of toner for my current printer is dearer than the cost of a newer printer with some toner included.

Btw most printers work on the razor or game console business model—sell the appliance at or below cost, make the profit on ongoing sales of whatever the appliance consumes.

 

[Pifanjr]

I got a printer from my parents they weren't using any more and it's been the best printer I've worked with. Even the phone app works great and the third party cartridges are cheap and seem to work just as well as the official stuff. It did refuse to print when I first tried it because it hadn't been used in forever, but it was fairly easy to find an option for automatic cleaning and that just worked exactly as intended.

 

[ZedClampet]

The most reliable printer I ever had was the first one I ever had. It was kind of funny looking back on it. It was made by Brother. This was before wireless connectivity was a thing (1980's), so it had a cable that you had to plug to your computer. But the funny thing was how it worked. It was basically a typewriter without keys. It had a ribbon and the little arms that slammed against it to create the letters. It would go to the end of the line on the right, and quickly return to the left side and start typing again.

As primitive as it was, it always worked, if very slowly by today's standards, and was an absolute godsend, as I'm a messy typist, always hitting the wrongs keys. I actually had, by this time, a good typewriter that would white-out mistakes for me, so I had stopped having to use liquid White Out, but this was even easier.

Combine that with my Apple IIc word processor that had spell check, and I felt like a total writing badass.

I got a printer from my parents they weren't using any more and it's been the best printer I've worked with.

Who makes that printer, if you don't mind my asking? I don't need one anymore, but my wife still occasionally uses one.

Lasers are the way to go. They're really cheap nowadays, so worth getting a B/W one if you do relatively a lot of non-color printing.

If I ever spend money on a printer again, that's what I'll do. I've always gotten color inkjets so that I had the option of printing out digital photos, but I don't print out my photos anymore.

 

[Colif]

We have a new wireless HP printer but I think last time I tried to print to it from my pc it didn't work. I normally print to PDF and put document on a USB, and go into the room its in and use mums PC as it sees it. The scan function works as often when they scan an image they send it to my PC instead.

I don't like them myself. Ink is too expensive and where they make most of the money.
I rarely print anything.

 

[Frindis]

I print so little so If I ever need to use a printer I'll just visit the library to pay for some prints or for free at the local town hall. I used to own a black&white printer back in the 90s and that one worked like a charm for several years.

 

[ZedClampet]

I print so little so If I ever need to use a printer I'll just visit the library to pay for some prints or for free at the local town hall. I used to own a black&white printer back in the 90s and that one worked like a charm for several years.

Hmm. I don't know if our library will print stuff for you or not, but if I went to city hall and tried to print something, I'd probably be arrested. We do have an Office Max store a few minutes down the road, though, and they'll print anything for a few cents a page. I've used them a couple of times.

 

[Frindis]

It's not cheap though, here in Norway it costs around 0,5USD for printing 5 pages. On a positive note, it costs the same for colors as black/white. I wouldn't be using the library for anything sensitive though, probably one of the less secure places you could ever log into personal details from. Yeah @ZedClampet You'll probably get arrested if you try to print out the whole anarchist cookbook😁

 

[mjs warlord]

I recently replaced my canon printer with an epson , the only reason i changed brands was because the canons were all mega tanks that would print 7000 pages and the machines are so big they would not fit in the location i have all my gear , an archway under an open plan staircase . I lost count of the number of times i ran trouble shooter because i kept getting told it was offline and i was on the verge of taking it back. One time i ran the trouble shooter and my wife said why is the canon at the top of the list ,we dont have it now .... red faced i thought how did i miss that.... I put the mouse pointer over the canon icon and it said remove from list.
Since then the printer has worked 100% , i have used many printers over the last 22 years and this is the first time anything like this has happened ...... I guess the pc was saying offline because the canon was at the top of the list.

I always use the windows snipping tool to copy bits of a website to save on ink and paper

 

[ZedClampet]

You'll probably get arrested if you try to print out the whole anarchist cookbook😁

Ha, I just can't imagine our city hall having computers and printers for visitors. If they did, they probably wouldn't care what you printed unless it was some sort of terrorist plot, but I'm imagining breaking into someone's office and using their computer, which I think would be the only way to get something printed there. I don't think there are any resident amenities, just government offices, like for the mayor and Knoxville Area Transit. They'd probably prefer you didn't show up there at all.

 

[mjs warlord]

Printer manufacturers admit they make a loss on printers and rake back the loss in ink sales

 

[mainer]

Gods, I remember my first PC printer, back in the early 1980s. It was an Epson dot matrix printer. It was huge, the paper box was heavy and took up a ton of space, and it was really noisy; occasionally sounding like two cats mating with all the screeching. But it was a beater, I used it for years, I ended up taking it to the Salvation Army Store.

After that, I usually just took files I needed to print to work and print them there (or scanning documents). Once I retired l lived without one for a few years. Recently, I found myself needing to get a few documents either printed or scanned. I didn't need all the fancy features or the ability to print photos, just basic document printing.

I finally found a cheap ($49 at Walmart) Cannon MG2520 that I'm really liking so far (outside of the installation). Small, light, quiet, and doesn't take up much space. It's ink jet, so not the most economical in the long run, but I don't print or scan that often, and then it's only some type of document.

 

[Frindis]

@mainer Salvation Army Stores, we got those in Norway also. Remember visiting one some months ago. I bought some black/white plates and when I was leaving I could hear the cashier whispering: "Finally someone bought those" I thought to myself that they were not that bad, I like those "colors". Two months later one of those plates just broke in half from dishwashing. Cheap is not always good, even if it is for a good cause.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I think my first printer was a B&W dot matrix printer for my Commodore 64. But I was living the high life, and I ended up getting the first ever color printer for the C64. It used some kind of wax-like tape that came with different tapes for CMYK. It had to print every line with each tape, individually. So every line took 4 passes of printing. It took forever to print anything, but in its day, it was awesome!

Lasers are the way to go. They're really cheap nowadays, so worth getting a B/W one if you do relatively a lot of non-color printing. I haven't used color lasers, or heard anything about them, but worth checking up if you need a new printer which does color.

I have a Brother color laser printer for my work office, and it's amazing. I've used a lot of printers, and it's my favorite, by far. They're expensive, though. I think I probably paid close to $600 for it.

Printer manufacturers admit they make a loss on printers and rake back the loss in ink sales

For inkjet printers, it's almost cheaper to just buy a new printer that comes with ink than to buy replacement ink cartridges.

 

[Zloth]

I think my LAST printer was a B&W dot matrix. Once I got out of college, I never bothered with printers again.

 

[Pifanjr]

Who makes that printer, if you don't mind my asking? I don't need one anymore, but my wife still occasionally uses one.

It's an Epson Stylus Office BX635FWD.

@mainer Salvation Army Stores, we got those in Norway also. Remember visiting one some months ago. I bought some black/white plates and when I was leaving I could hear the cashier whispering: "Finally someone bought those" I thought to myself that they were not that bad, I like those "colors". Two months later one of those plates just broke in half from dishwashing. Cheap is not always good, even if it is for a good cause.

My wife and I drop our plates so often it makes more sense to buy cheap ones...

 

[mjs warlord]

For inkjet printers, it's almost cheaper to just buy a new printer that comes with ink than to buy replacement ink cartridges.

A few years ago in england an online retailer did a deal that if you bought 3 packs of ink he would give you a bottom of the range epson printer for free epson got the sales but his competitors were not happy.

My first ever printer was for the zx spectrum in 1982 , the paper was metalic and a stylus burnt text into the paper , the smell was aweful

 

[WoodenSaucer]

My first ever printer was for the zx spectrum in 1982 , the paper was metalic and a stylus burnt text into the paper , the smell was aweful

Oh, man! I forgot about those. I had one of those, too. I think my paper came on rolls, and after it burn/printed, you just tore it off like a cash register receipt. I completely forgot about that until you said it. I think that was my first printer, too.