Are Printers What They Used To Be?

Fifster asks: "Has anyone noticed any trends in terms of printer quality nowadays? Perhaps it's just me being nostalgic, but I used to have an old HP Deskjet 500 maybe...ten years ago, and it worked for years. Sure, it wasn't colour, and it was noisy and somewhat slow, but it never died. After I decided to retire it and buy a fancy new colour printer with features I don't really need, I've gone through about a printer a year. I finally decided to get a Brother HL-1440 laser printer to avoid the cost of cartridges after my last HP died after I replaced an expensive cartridge. Has anyone else noticed this trend of poorer and poorer quality printers, at least in terms of life expectancy?"

Comments

Printers Suck

[Noexit]

I've been going through about one a year as well. I don't buy cartridges anymore, just printers.

It's all that British spelling

[deadgoon42]

If you'd cut down on all those extra u's you're putting in color and favorite, maybe your printer will last longer.

Nostalgia?

[Faust7]

Perhaps it's just me being nostalgic, but I used to have an old HP Deskjet 500 maybe...

Nah, you're mistaken. A Deskjet isn't old enough for nostalgia.

Not even a dot matrix is.

No, it's not nostalgia until you've reached daisy wheel.

Re:Never owned one, never will

[ryanvm]

I've never understood the need to print stuff out. It's hard to grep a dead tree.

It's also hard to balance that notebook on your knees while you take a shit.

Re:Printer Issues... (And solutions!)

[tcr]

(I've also found that in really bad cases you can suck a bit of ink through the printhead, but it doesn't taste too good, although on the bright side it doesn't seem to stain your mouth as long as you rinse it out right away...)

??!! Sounds like you've been snorting toner, too... :-)

Re:Printer Issues... (And solutions!)

[sg3000]

> I've also found that in really bad cases you can
> suck a bit of ink through the printhead, but it
> doesn't taste too good

You know that "Post Anonymously" feature? This is one of times when you should have used it. I'm not sure if fellating your printer is anything you want to admit with a traceable user name.

On the other hand, you might be able to take pictures of yourself in the said act, post them on the Internet, and use the membership revenue to offset some of the cost of buying new cartridges! :-)