Printers suck because people keep buying trash. If you buy an ultra cheap inkjet printer where the ink cartridge is also the print head and it has no way to clean itself other than to spray out...
Exemplary
Printers suck because people keep buying trash.
If you buy an ultra cheap inkjet printer where the ink cartridge is also the print head and it has no way to clean itself other than to spray out more ink, you are going to have a bad time. And yes, those kinds of printers will always fail if you do something stupid like turn them off because the way they prevent clogging is to spray more ink out.
There is nothing wrong with these printers so long as you know that they are designed to be used frequently. And frankly, thats the exact reason why people should not be buying printers. It makes much more sense for most people to simply have your documents printed at an office printing shop than to own a printer.
Frankly a lot of the problems also go away simply by purchasing a better quality printer. Business class printers will outperform bargain priced printers every time, plus they will last longer and are more likely to have replacement parts if anything goes wrong.
Then of course, there is the more obvious choice of getting a laser printer which doesn't deal with liquid ink and thus drastically reduces the points of failure. These have been on the market for decades.
Finally, most printer issues I hear people complaining about are not a fault of the printer, but rather the Windows printing system. To them, I have no solution but to deal with it.
Yeah, I bought a Brother all-in-one office printer in 2012, and it's still printing away with no significant maintenance needed. It's a workhorse and has more than paid for itself.
Yeah, I bought a Brother all-in-one office printer in 2012, and it's still printing away with no significant maintenance needed. It's a workhorse and has more than paid for itself.
This is all very true, but in defense of the trash buyers (myself included): It's a PITA to get to a print shop to spit out 2-3 pages or photos. Laser printers start at a much higher price point,...
This is all very true, but in defense of the trash buyers (myself included):
It's a PITA to get to a print shop to spit out 2-3 pages or photos.
Laser printers start at a much higher price point, so if you're only printing < 10 pages a month, that sounds insanely high. Also doesn't do much good if you want color for one reason or another.
Nobody knows they're buying crap, in part due to technical ignorance. Marketing certainly doesn't help.
Printer manufacturers make Windows print systems worse by pumping out garbage, bloated drivers.
I honestly have no idea what inkjet printers cost, but I just bought a network-capable (Ethernet and WiFi) black and white laser printer for $120 last month. That's probably more than an inkjet...
I honestly have no idea what inkjet printers cost, but I just bought a network-capable (Ethernet and WiFi) black and white laser printer for $120 last month. That's probably more than an inkjet printer, but it's really not very expensive, and at ~10 pages per month, the "starter" toner cartridge should last 7.5 years. My experience with previous Brother laser printers suggests that the printer will still be in perfect working order when I finally have to buy more toner. Furthermore, since it's networked I don't have any need for the bloated manufacturer drivers. Windows detects and installs the printer with two clicks.
It's possible to find color lasers on sale around that price point too. I bought one that has Ethernet/WiFi as well for about $160 five years ago and it's held up great. Only had to replace the...
It's possible to find color lasers on sale around that price point too. I bought one that has Ethernet/WiFi as well for about $160 five years ago and it's held up great. Only had to replace the toner cartridges that came with it this year as well, and that's with it seeing moderate use in that time. Compare that to my inkjets that, while holding up well themselves, ended up costing hundreds of dollars in ink due to the cartridges inevitably drying out before I finished with them.
It only gets use for printing return shipping labels and the occasional training guide I make for work that has pictures in it at this point, but not having to worry about if my ink has dried out when I do need to print those is worth it itself.
To be honest, I wouldn't blame anyone for falling into the this trap at least once. It only bugs me that there are a few people who seem to do it over and over again. There are a bunch of shopping...
To be honest, I wouldn't blame anyone for falling into the this trap at least once. It only bugs me that there are a few people who seem to do it over and over again. There are a bunch of shopping maxims that they have to ignore to keep falling for it - mainly, "you get what you pay for".
There are cheap laser printers now. The least expensive one I have seen new was $50. I would still call it a crap printer, but it's still going to give most people a better experience than an inkjet.
To be honest, I have gone to recommending that most people refrain from buying printers altogether because there is little reason to print things in modern times. Most forms are submitted online now, and tickets and coupons can be scanned from your phone. And if you are looking to print photos to put in a frame or album, you will get much better results having it printed at any number of printing services, including the ones they offer at major retailers like costco or target or walmart. Or you can order prints online and have them delivered to you.
Honestly the cost balances out pretty quickly when you consider how much cheaper toner is than ink. We have a (noncolor) laser printer and I don't think I'd ever go back to ink jet.
Honestly the cost balances out pretty quickly when you consider how much cheaper toner is than ink. We have a (noncolor) laser printer and I don't think I'd ever go back to ink jet.
Yup I bought a second hand small office HP B&W laser, scanner & fax over a decade ago. It cost under £50 presumably it was just being got rid of. After perhaps 7 years it started becoming...
Yup I bought a second hand small office HP B&W laser, scanner & fax over a decade ago. It cost under £50 presumably it was just being got rid of.
After perhaps 7 years it started becoming unreliable in turning on. A google explained this is a known problem with this model and it needs the ICs reflowing. So I took the circuit board to my local maker space and some students re-flowed the ICs with a hot air soldering station.
Since then it's been utterly bombproof.
The problem isn't printers, it's people buying junk that isn't designed for their use case.
They also intentionally make these ultracheap ones impossible to repair at home. They're full of plastic parts that are either glued together or held in place by little more than friction. Once...
If you buy an ultra cheap inkjet printer where the ink cartridge is also the print head and it has no way to clean itself other than to spray out more ink, you are going to have a bad time. And yes, those kinds of printers will always fail if you do something stupid like turn them off because the way they prevent clogging is to spray more ink out.
They also intentionally make these ultracheap ones impossible to repair at home. They're full of plastic parts that are either glued together or held in place by little more than friction. Once disassembled they cannot easily be put back together again, which makes paper-jams way more catastrophic than they ought to be.
I wouldn't be able to tell you that, unfortunately. For the most part I have stopped dealing with inkjet printers altogether. But to be honest, I don't think there are any that don't anymore. Even...
I wouldn't be able to tell you that, unfortunately. For the most part I have stopped dealing with inkjet printers altogether. But to be honest, I don't think there are any that don't anymore. Even business class machines do it. Instead of trying to avoid machines that do that, find a machine where that would be less of an issue. Something like Epson's EcoTank line, where ink is going to be very cheap.
Printers will always be shitty. It's a physical machine, applying ink to a fragile piece of paper as fast as possible. It's gonna break, especially when rock-bottom price of entry and high return...
Printers will always be shitty. It's a physical machine, applying ink to a fragile piece of paper as fast as possible. It's gonna break, especially when rock-bottom price of entry and high return ink sales are a priority.
It's compounded by crappy DRM drivers trying to prevent you from using off-brand ink. That and getting any hardware working in Windows is a PITA regardless of technical skills.
My wife worked in a print shop, she can fix printers like no other. And she hates then even more than I do.
Obligatory Office Space link. (It's actually the second option that comes up when you start typing "office space".) (EDIT: And I just got to the end of the article where he posts the same link....
Obligatory Office Space link. (It's actually the second option that comes up when you start typing "office space".) (EDIT: And I just got to the end of the article where he posts the same link. Oops!)
I have written a driver for a well-known printer company before, so I have a bit of the "I know how the sausage is made" aversion to printers. I'm in the market for a new one and all the options are terrible. I'm going with a black and white laser printer, and I'd like something multi-function (includes scanner and fax). And they're all huge monstrosities that start falling apart shortly after you bring them home. I should also mention that I'm looking on the macOS side where printer drivers are not quite as terrible as on Windows. (That isn't to say they're great or anything, but they generally work without too much effort.)
My current printer is a Brother MFC. On the one hand it's probably ~15 years old it still (barely) prints. On the other hand it's been dying a long slow death over the last ~7 years. First the WiFi failed. (And it was a pain in the ass to set up in the first place anyway. I had to enter my WiFi pass-code using only a number pad, the way you used to on an old-school cell phone when texting was first introduced. For "a" press 1 once. For "b" press 1 twice. For "c" press 1 three time, etc.) No problem, it sits on the desk next to my desktop computer. I'll just connect it over ethernet and use network sharing to share it with the rest of the family. That worked for a few years. Then it just stopped working. Like, it's still connected over Ethernet to my desktop machine, and I can still select it to share it, but it doesn't actually respond to any requests to print from any machine other than the desktop machine. For about the last 3-4 years, it has continuously shown "paper jam", even though there's no paper jam and it prints just fine. Also, the driver continuously reports the toner is low, even though it's just been refilled. Basically, the only function on it that works is to print from my desktop computer. (Well, the fax machine and scanner still work, but the scanner is crap anyway.)
If anyone has suggestions for something similar, but that won't fall apart, I'd appreciate it. I can afford to buy a business-class printer if that will get me what I want (though as mentioned, I'd like something small. I don't want a huge office-copier-style printer that's 3 feet tall and has 6 trays for paper.)
For some reason, there isnt really any decent printer wifi. Often times they just fail for no discernable reason, with many of those times being that it arbitrarily forgot a network configuration...
For some reason, there isnt really any decent printer wifi. Often times they just fail for no discernable reason, with many of those times being that it arbitrarily forgot a network configuration option. In any case, wifi networks change and internal wifi modules do not tend to support the newer fancier security options.
If you think setting up wifi on your printer is bad, I have one that can only be configured via network. So you have to plug it into the ethernet to get it to work in the first place....
Oh and don't forget they're one of the last bastions for 2.4 GHz requiring me to keep that online for no other reason. I too have one like that. Except no Ethernet.
Oh and don't forget they're one of the last bastions for 2.4 GHz requiring me to keep that online for no other reason.
I think it's time someone disrupted the printer industry with an open hardware printer. Really, I think all hardware would benefit from being developed in an open source, community-oriented...
I think it's time someone disrupted the printer industry with an open hardware printer.
Really, I think all hardware would benefit from being developed in an open source, community-oriented fashion, where if any manufacturer turns evil, everyone can move their business to a different manufacturer working from the same design+standard.
The rapid advancement of 3d printing is what boggles my mind about paper printing. Physical machine, check. Complex process, check. Many points of failure, check. Fine detail, check. They fail, to...
The rapid advancement of 3d printing is what boggles my mind about paper printing. Physical machine, check. Complex process, check. Many points of failure, check. Fine detail, check. They fail, to be sure, but when they do, you're far more likely to be able to repair it yourself instead of chucking the whole thing and starting from scratch.
I tried a few months back to find some kind of diy platform for paper printing. Unfortunately, the only market section in which self maintenance opens up is with industrial printing. I would absolutely love to see a diy explosion of paper printers like we've seen with 3d printers. There would still be nightmares, but the nightmares would be my own, and the method to resolve the nightmare would be attainable through other means than well crap, time to get a new printer.
There are groups of people who hack Epson Inkjet printers (P600 I think) to give them a 2D bed for garment printing. You might find more of what you're looking for with DTG printers, possibly...
There are groups of people who hack Epson Inkjet printers (P600 I think) to give them a 2D bed for garment printing. You might find more of what you're looking for with DTG printers, possibly DIYDTG or OpenDTG. I once tried this with an Epson P800 that I got for cheap, but was unsuccessful in fooling the printer into working after disassembly.
I would be interested in participating in any efforts to work towards something like this if anyone wants to start one. It might be easier than it seems, given that you can buy replacement inkjet printheads - removing the control circuitry from these and designing some open source boards is a big effort, but would be a step in the right direction.
This exact topic came up on HN a few weeks ago. See: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers? The discussion has a lot of good comparisons with 3D printing. (cc: @aethicglass)
Because some old people still want to print out their emails in order to take notes on them before retyping the response. I don't know why, but there it is.
Because some old people still want to print out their emails in order to take notes on them before retyping the response. I don't know why, but there it is.
Printers suck because people keep buying trash.
If you buy an ultra cheap inkjet printer where the ink cartridge is also the print head and it has no way to clean itself other than to spray out more ink, you are going to have a bad time. And yes, those kinds of printers will always fail if you do something stupid like turn them off because the way they prevent clogging is to spray more ink out.
There is nothing wrong with these printers so long as you know that they are designed to be used frequently. And frankly, thats the exact reason why people should not be buying printers. It makes much more sense for most people to simply have your documents printed at an office printing shop than to own a printer.
Frankly a lot of the problems also go away simply by purchasing a better quality printer. Business class printers will outperform bargain priced printers every time, plus they will last longer and are more likely to have replacement parts if anything goes wrong.
Then of course, there is the more obvious choice of getting a laser printer which doesn't deal with liquid ink and thus drastically reduces the points of failure. These have been on the market for decades.
Finally, most printer issues I hear people complaining about are not a fault of the printer, but rather the Windows printing system. To them, I have no solution but to deal with it.
Yeah, I bought a Brother all-in-one office printer in 2012, and it's still printing away with no significant maintenance needed. It's a workhorse and has more than paid for itself.
Own a Brother laser printer that I bought around 2008 and still print from it. (Which I do 3 times a year, maybe?)
I also love my Brother laser printer.
This is all very true, but in defense of the trash buyers (myself included):
I honestly have no idea what inkjet printers cost, but I just bought a network-capable (Ethernet and WiFi) black and white laser printer for $120 last month. That's probably more than an inkjet printer, but it's really not very expensive, and at ~10 pages per month, the "starter" toner cartridge should last 7.5 years. My experience with previous Brother laser printers suggests that the printer will still be in perfect working order when I finally have to buy more toner. Furthermore, since it's networked I don't have any need for the bloated manufacturer drivers. Windows detects and installs the printer with two clicks.
It's possible to find color lasers on sale around that price point too. I bought one that has Ethernet/WiFi as well for about $160 five years ago and it's held up great. Only had to replace the toner cartridges that came with it this year as well, and that's with it seeing moderate use in that time. Compare that to my inkjets that, while holding up well themselves, ended up costing hundreds of dollars in ink due to the cartridges inevitably drying out before I finished with them.
It only gets use for printing return shipping labels and the occasional training guide I make for work that has pictures in it at this point, but not having to worry about if my ink has dried out when I do need to print those is worth it itself.
To be honest, I wouldn't blame anyone for falling into the this trap at least once. It only bugs me that there are a few people who seem to do it over and over again. There are a bunch of shopping maxims that they have to ignore to keep falling for it - mainly, "you get what you pay for".
There are cheap laser printers now. The least expensive one I have seen new was $50. I would still call it a crap printer, but it's still going to give most people a better experience than an inkjet.
To be honest, I have gone to recommending that most people refrain from buying printers altogether because there is little reason to print things in modern times. Most forms are submitted online now, and tickets and coupons can be scanned from your phone. And if you are looking to print photos to put in a frame or album, you will get much better results having it printed at any number of printing services, including the ones they offer at major retailers like costco or target or walmart. Or you can order prints online and have them delivered to you.
Honestly the cost balances out pretty quickly when you consider how much cheaper toner is than ink. We have a (noncolor) laser printer and I don't think I'd ever go back to ink jet.
Yup I bought a second hand small office HP B&W laser, scanner & fax over a decade ago. It cost under £50 presumably it was just being got rid of.
After perhaps 7 years it started becoming unreliable in turning on. A google explained this is a known problem with this model and it needs the ICs reflowing. So I took the circuit board to my local maker space and some students re-flowed the ICs with a hot air soldering station.
Since then it's been utterly bombproof.
The problem isn't printers, it's people buying junk that isn't designed for their use case.
They also intentionally make these ultracheap ones impossible to repair at home. They're full of plastic parts that are either glued together or held in place by little more than friction. Once disassembled they cannot easily be put back together again, which makes paper-jams way more catastrophic than they ought to be.
What's a good ink jet printer that doesn't clean itself by squeezing out ink? Genuinely curious to hear of an exact model to look into.
I wouldn't be able to tell you that, unfortunately. For the most part I have stopped dealing with inkjet printers altogether. But to be honest, I don't think there are any that don't anymore. Even business class machines do it. Instead of trying to avoid machines that do that, find a machine where that would be less of an issue. Something like Epson's EcoTank line, where ink is going to be very cheap.
Printers will always be shitty. It's a physical machine, applying ink to a fragile piece of paper as fast as possible. It's gonna break, especially when rock-bottom price of entry and high return ink sales are a priority.
It's compounded by crappy DRM drivers trying to prevent you from using off-brand ink. That and getting any hardware working in Windows is a PITA regardless of technical skills.
My wife worked in a print shop, she can fix printers like no other. And she hates then even more than I do.
Obligatory Office Space link. (It's actually the second option that comes up when you start typing "office space".) (EDIT: And I just got to the end of the article where he posts the same link. Oops!)
I have written a driver for a well-known printer company before, so I have a bit of the "I know how the sausage is made" aversion to printers. I'm in the market for a new one and all the options are terrible. I'm going with a black and white laser printer, and I'd like something multi-function (includes scanner and fax). And they're all huge monstrosities that start falling apart shortly after you bring them home. I should also mention that I'm looking on the macOS side where printer drivers are not quite as terrible as on Windows. (That isn't to say they're great or anything, but they generally work without too much effort.)
My current printer is a Brother MFC. On the one hand it's probably ~15 years old it still (barely) prints. On the other hand it's been dying a long slow death over the last ~7 years. First the WiFi failed. (And it was a pain in the ass to set up in the first place anyway. I had to enter my WiFi pass-code using only a number pad, the way you used to on an old-school cell phone when texting was first introduced. For "a" press 1 once. For "b" press 1 twice. For "c" press 1 three time, etc.) No problem, it sits on the desk next to my desktop computer. I'll just connect it over ethernet and use network sharing to share it with the rest of the family. That worked for a few years. Then it just stopped working. Like, it's still connected over Ethernet to my desktop machine, and I can still select it to share it, but it doesn't actually respond to any requests to print from any machine other than the desktop machine. For about the last 3-4 years, it has continuously shown "paper jam", even though there's no paper jam and it prints just fine. Also, the driver continuously reports the toner is low, even though it's just been refilled. Basically, the only function on it that works is to print from my desktop computer. (Well, the fax machine and scanner still work, but the scanner is crap anyway.)
If anyone has suggestions for something similar, but that won't fall apart, I'd appreciate it. I can afford to buy a business-class printer if that will get me what I want (though as mentioned, I'd like something small. I don't want a huge office-copier-style printer that's 3 feet tall and has 6 trays for paper.)
For some reason, there isnt really any decent printer wifi. Often times they just fail for no discernable reason, with many of those times being that it arbitrarily forgot a network configuration option. In any case, wifi networks change and internal wifi modules do not tend to support the newer fancier security options.
If you think setting up wifi on your printer is bad, I have one that can only be configured via network. So you have to plug it into the ethernet to get it to work in the first place....
Lol. It reminds me of those messages from early DOS: "Keyboard not found. Press any key to continue."
Oh and don't forget they're one of the last bastions for 2.4 GHz requiring me to keep that online for no other reason.
I too have one like that. Except no Ethernet.
I think it's time someone disrupted the printer industry with an open hardware printer.
Really, I think all hardware would benefit from being developed in an open source, community-oriented fashion, where if any manufacturer turns evil, everyone can move their business to a different manufacturer working from the same design+standard.
The rapid advancement of 3d printing is what boggles my mind about paper printing. Physical machine, check. Complex process, check. Many points of failure, check. Fine detail, check. They fail, to be sure, but when they do, you're far more likely to be able to repair it yourself instead of chucking the whole thing and starting from scratch.
I tried a few months back to find some kind of diy platform for paper printing. Unfortunately, the only market section in which self maintenance opens up is with industrial printing. I would absolutely love to see a diy explosion of paper printers like we've seen with 3d printers. There would still be nightmares, but the nightmares would be my own, and the method to resolve the nightmare would be attainable through other means than well crap, time to get a new printer.
There are groups of people who hack Epson Inkjet printers (P600 I think) to give them a 2D bed for garment printing. You might find more of what you're looking for with DTG printers, possibly DIYDTG or OpenDTG. I once tried this with an Epson P800 that I got for cheap, but was unsuccessful in fooling the printer into working after disassembly.
I would be interested in participating in any efforts to work towards something like this if anyone wants to start one. It might be easier than it seems, given that you can buy replacement inkjet printheads - removing the control circuitry from these and designing some open source boards is a big effort, but would be a step in the right direction.
This exact topic came up on HN a few weeks ago. See: Ask HN: Why are there no open source 2d printers?
The discussion has a lot of good comparisons with 3D printing. (cc: @aethicglass)
People need a signature for legal stuff, or want a backup that can be accessed without a computer, or it's just cheap to have and pass around.
Many people do not own large tablets and reading certain things on a cellphone is cumbersome.
Also: legal documents.
Because some old people still want to print out their emails in order to take notes on them before retyping the response. I don't know why, but there it is.