Why are printers such pieces of crap?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I had an early HP Laser Jet in my office near Chicago for eons. The thing never even so much as burped. In fact, when I shut that place down to move to Utah, I gave it to a fellow film techer that worked for me.... he used it another 5 or so years before it died. In Utah I had an.IBM laser jet color printer. It worked for about 6 years flawlessly and then IBM got out of the printer market, so couldn't get parts. I actually didn't bother to get annother printer till I got to Tennessee, and It's a Brother monochrome LaserJet. It's been going flawlessly for over 3 years now. They included an extra carrier belt cartridge with it, but no hint of needing it yet. I owned a couple Ink Jet printers when I lived in Utah. Both ended up in the trash and I'm never buying another inkjet again. If I need color prints, I just go to office Depot and have them made. They have 50k dollar color laser printers that do a fantastic job for a few bucks...

[Mike Blakesley]

I just happened to think about this thread today when updating the software on the Epson printer that inspired me to start this thread.

It has (mostly) stopped the two-blank-pages-then-jam routine that I first wrote about, but lately I've experienced:

- A software update that failed once, but then worked
- Normally if you put paper into the back feed slot it will automatically use that paper without being told, but NOT ALWAYS.
- If I have to print a few sheets one job at a time (like labels, which demand not to be loaded in multiples), it will always print the first two or three jobs properly and then refuse to print the next one unless I turn it off and back on first.
- A couple of phantom paper jams -- it says there is a jam, but there just fucking isn't. Only solution is unplug it and plug it back in.

What's weird is, my whole computer life it's been drilled into my head by countless instruction sheets that you NEVER unplug a computer item without turning it off via the power switch first, lest you damage the sensitive whatchamacallits inside. But this Epson machine says, to reset the machine DO NOT turn it off, just unplug it. But I have found that sometimes just shutting it off will clear some problems, so I've taken to doing that most of the time. I'd say that I have to turn it off and back on at least a half-dozen times a month, or more.

I also have a separate Epson scanner that we use to scan our daily invoices. I paid for the "Smart Scan" software that organizes invoices by dollar amount, invoice number and date. That thing will scan fine one day, and then the next day it thinks the software is still in "trial" mode and refuses to save my information. The only solution I've found for that is just keep trying it until it works, sometimes four or five tries and then without explanation it will work....then repeat the same drill the next day or five days later or whatever.

So I'm rapidly losing my faith in the Epson stuff, glowing reviews or not.

I'm all for getting the government out of out business as much as possible but I sure wish they would throw some regulations at these printer companies. They could make a nice list just by reading this thread. Of course the price of printers would go through the roof, so ....

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I bought a Brother b&w laser jet. Don't really need color, but they make those too. Mine is now at least 3.5 years old and is at 58% on the toner cartridge.

[Marcel Birgelen]

My experiences with Epson also haven't been the best. Their printers may produce superior printing results when they DO work, but keeping them in working order isn't worth the effort for me. Also, their ink cartridges seem to dry out rather quickly...

I think I posted it here before, but just like Mark, I've been reasonably happy with Brother. I'm currently using two printers from them: A B&W laser for bulk office work and a color laser for anything that needs color. I've had the occasional paper jam on both machines, especially with non-standard stuff like labels, but nothing compared with issues I've had with similar hardware from Epson and HP.

What's weird is, my whole computer life it's been drilled into my head by countless instruction sheets that you NEVER unplug a computer item without turning it off via the power switch first, lest you damage the sensitive whatchamacallits inside.

I guess it's still a good rule of thumb nowadays not to just randomly plug and unplug stuff, even though many modern interface standards like USB, HDMI, DisplayPort, etc. have been built around hot-pluggability. Randomly disconnecting devices can often lead to data-corruption and unexpected software states. But we're not in the 1980s anymore, so most hardware isn't as sensitive anymore to such things as it has been.

[Steve Guttag]

We had an HP Laserjet 4M (the "M" part stood for Macintosh but we got it for the post script capabilities, back in the day). That thing, to Mark's point lasted from 1993 until 2020, or so. In fact, I'm sure, with some effort, it could have been kept going. The fuser failed (or that which drove it...we tried a replacement fuser but no-dice...so either the used replacement was bad or some other circuit). Print drivers was hard to keep up with since it was from the Windows 3 era. Boy did we print a lot on that thing (and that is another thing...we print a LOT less than before...just send people PDFs...not paper)...back in its day, we may have need to provide the client 3-5 hard copies of all manuals of things. So, a place like the AFI/Silver, we had to provide three sets and it took three large binders to hold each set so we're taking about 9-10 reams of paper for one job. That trooper just churned them out (you know...the paper was hot to the touch when it came out of the printer).

Our current printer (primary printer...we have several) is an HP but it already is showing its age. It is a color laser printer but again...we don't provide hard copies anymore...its all PDF. So, normally a printed page is for us, or a packing slip (that original HP 4M ended its duty in the shipping room printing packing slips). It's already getting hard to get toner for our current one...rubber parts have been replaced as has the imaging "belt."

[Marcel Birgelen]

The older generations of HP LaserJets and their first generation of Inkjets were built like tanks. Somewhere along the road someone at HP realized they could make more on ink and toners than on the hardware itself and that this would generate an endless stream of revenue. That's when everything went downhill quite fast.

[Leo Enticknap]

There are two forces at work here.

The first is that manufacturers have increasingly embraced the Gillette business model: sell the machine either at a very low margin or as a loss leader, and then make your money back with ridiculous margins on the consumables that the machine needs in order to operate. That is also why the manufacturers have become increasingly aggressive about planned obsolescence and sophisticated measures to try to prevent the use of refilled or third party ink and toner cartridges.

The second is that, as Steve noted, individuals and businesses are simply printing less than they were. The ability to read electronic documents is now everywhere - even on your phone - in a way that it simply wasn't in the 1990s. The main uses of our printer are to print family photographs for mailing to extended family occasionally, and my wife printing recipes, because she doesn't want her iPad in harm's way in the kitchen. The printer was bought in mid-2020 and only needed the first replacement set of ink bottles in July this year. So, excepting a few specialist models for unusual use cases, your average inkjet or laser printer isn't as robust and as heavy duty as it was a generation ago, because it doesn't need to be.

[Bobby Henderson]

The general public has seen a long enough history of cheap, shoddy-quality printers with over-priced consumables to develop an overall negative opinion of that consumer electronics category. Compound that with the sheer number of printer models and consumable product lines that have come and gone. The moment someone buys a consumer grade printer he should know he is effectively "renting" it for a relatively short time before it gets tossed in the land fill.

It's increasingly less necessary to print hard copies of various documents anymore. Really, it's kind of an "old people" behavior to print documents that can be read just as easily on a computer screen. My late Aunt Patricia did that all the time. We've seen those Progressive Insurance commercials with the life coach guy "Dr. Rick" trying to prevent his clients from becoming their parents. I laughed at the one bit where he tells one guy, "we don't have to print the Internet."

More people today are hauling collections of family photos around inside their smart phones rather than filling physical photo album books with them. With living space at an increasing cost premium less of those photos are getting printed, framed and put up on walls.

I'm trying to practice a more "paperless" routine in mundane behaviors. Years ago I'd write a grocery list onto a post-it note or a small notepad page. Now I just write the list into my smart phone. My Galaxy S22 Ultra has an S-Pen, just like the Note 5 I carried for a few years prior to that. I have an aging iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil; that setup still works very well. It's not necessary to fill out forms like tax returns by hand anymore (or even sign a hardcopy of the return). Just save PDF copies of them.

Paper clutter will become less and less of a problem. But organizing and archiving digital files for the long term will become a bigger battle.

[Leo Enticknap]

Agreed 99.99%, but there is one exception, in which I will continue to be an Aunt Patricia and print (or have printed): boarding cards for airplanes. I have been stuck in too many lines in which someone struggles to get the barcode or QR code to appear on their phone, and/or the gate agent's scanner won't read it, to want to risk it being me who holds up that line and incurs the wrath of 100 people behind me. Several times now I have been given a propaganda talk at the baggage check desk about how I can display my boarding pass on the airline's app and help to save the planet. In this case and this case only, bugger the planet - I'm having my boarding card as an actual card, thank you very much!

[Steve Guttag]

I, typically, have my boarding pass on my phone as a backup to the paper. I'll download the boarding pass...then "snap" a screenshot of that so it is just a picture that can be quickly pulled up (again, just a back up). So, yes...I still use a paper boarding pass. I print them at home for the first leg of the trip and when I self-check, if available. I never rely on the airline's "app" at boarding time. I too have watched people fumble as their phone times out before they get to the scanner and then hold everyone up.

[Bobby Henderson]

I don't fly very often, but I would definitely use the screen shot approach to show a QR code or some other kind of barcode in my phone rather than rely on a smartphone app to display the code at the moment of truth.

I already got into the habit of using smartphone screen shots long ago, thanks to the AMC Stubs membership program. Sprint/T-Mobile signal reception has been pretty flaky at the AMC Patriot 13 theater in Lawton. Rather than rely on the AMC app to bring up my Stubs membership QR code as well as the QR code for tickets I bought online, I just use screen shots taken prior to going to the theater.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I like using paper. I don't have to hunt for the image on the phone, and the image does not disappear when the phone goes to sleep as I stand in line.

https://m.facebook.com/PeacockTV/vid...7918791321880/

[Mike Blakesley]

This happened to me when we were flying last week. I had the app on my phone all cued up. I get to the front of the line, and just as I'm moving the phone over the reader, the screen blanked and it went back to the "login" screen, for no particular reason. So I let people by me until I got it running again.

So, having "learned my lesson," on the way home, I screenshot the QR code. This time I get to the head of the line, hold my screen shot up to the reader, and beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep! I had to step aside while they dug up my ticket and printed out a new boarding pass....when they then scanned with no problem.

Flying is so much fucking fun.

And printers are still crap.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Maybe, for this particular application, they're using a "timed" QR code, a code that's only valid within a specified window. You can do this to add some security to a QR code and to avoid someone else stealing your code. The scanner may have identified this QR code as a falsified QR code...

[Mike Blakesley]

OK fine, if they are gonna do that they should put "code only valid until xx:xx," then. But it was only a couple of hours between when I made the screenshot and when I got onto the plane.