Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable (via) I just don’t get it. How has no one managed to produce a printer that doesn’t suck yet?
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Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable (via) I just don’t get it. How has no one managed to produce a printer that doesn’t suck yet?
I actually had that same idea when I read this today. How hard can it be to make a reasonably priced, not subsidised by cartridges printer that just, well, prints?
Thats easy. It's because printers are hardware. And any hardware sucks in some cases.
gremu - 29th January 2010 00:46 - #
The best printers were the ones made for home use in the late 90's and early 2000's. One black cartridge, no need for messy multiple cartridges. Sure they were slow, but they always worked!
SCTW - 29th January 2010 04:38 - #
The one point missed is the wonderful printer usability idea.
"Let's reduce all functions to just one button."
Printers used to have half a dozen buttons - and you knew what they did. Now you have one, and you'll never know what it'll do.
Kenneth - 29th January 2010 10:41 - #
I would say "because they have moving parts" but that doesn't explain the driver "packages" with 2 services and 5 tooltray programs per printer.
I disagree with his complaint about missing printer cables, though. Do they even still sell printers where the "printer cable" isn't CAT5 or bypassed entirely with wifi?
Matt S. - 29th January 2010 18:08 - #
@Matt S.: Plenty of USB printers ship without a USB cable. Lame!
I've stopped buying home printers, far too much hassle. The ink, the ten paper types, loading the paper the right way (glossy side up?), the generic driver that gets colour matching all wrong, the specific driver that wants to install 5 other applications you'll never use and still makes colour matching hard, the A4 page that the Word thinks is A5, borderless printing that is sometimes borderless, double-sided that ends up two to a page and not double-sided and on and on.
These days; For photos I use whatever service Flickr is hooked up to. For documents I print at work on a room-sized printer maintained by 24/7 specialists who have to call in and fix it every week or so.
Rule #1: The HP LaserJet 4 (and 4M/L/P) was the greatest printer ever made. If you have one sitting in a cupboard, pull it out, get the network card for it, and use it instead of whatever you're failing to use now. Failing that,
Rule #2: Don't buy an inkjet. Unless you're willing to drop £2000 on a photo printer, just have some online shop do your photo prints for you. I've done the math, it's always cheaper.
My recommendation: the Samsung SCX-4500W. It looks great, has WIRELESS SCANNING that works beautifully with OS X (no drivers needed!), and most importantly, prints without a fault very inexpensively. If you don't want the scanner, the Samsung ML-1630 is also very pretty and works brilliantly.
I've been using both (the 1630 before moving to the UK, the 4500W after) for two years now, and they always just work. No fussing, no swearing, no cables.
Blaine Cook - 31st January 2010 14:15 - #