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SStrikerR
Apr 4, 2009, 07:10 PM
It fucking sucks. You have to load every fucking paper by hand and it takes a good minute-5 minutes to print 2 papers out, depending on how much of a bitch the printer wants to be. Then of course, if you don't feed it right it words are on a horrendous slant. To top it off, if you don't take the paper out the instant it's done, it eats the paper. :disapprove:

I get so frustrated with this thing sometimes, and I doubt anybody in my family wants to waste money on a new one. Once someone does buy a new one, though, I'm smashing this thing with a baseball bat till I'm satisfied.

HUnewearl_Meira
Apr 4, 2009, 08:08 PM
Printer technology has been around for nearly thirty years, now. In this time, we have overthrown the Soviet Union without bloodshed, established an international space station, cloned animals, developed blocks of memory that can contain several dozen gigabytes (down from the large boxes, the size of two tower cases side-by-side, which would contain 32 kilobytes), mapped the human genome... We've perfected the art of wine-making, reduced the size of incisions required by major surgeries (in some cases, down to a small hole), decreased the mortality rate among Diabetics, cancer patients, and others with once-thought terminal diseases, and we've even engineered viruses that seek and destroy HIV.

We've done all of these incredible things, among other fascinating accomplishments, but even still, an affordable printer that works properly continues to elude us. I think that the reliability of printers has actually declined, while we've been off cloning sheep and refining memory chips.

It seems as though we've moved on to some sort of a "disposable" design model for our printers. They've got some sort of a planned obsolescence, so that we will replace them at irregular intervals. It could be that ink will dry on the print heads (clogging them, thus rendering them useless), or the various mechanisms meant to snatch a single sheet of paper from the stack will stop performing in that precise capacity. One way or another, the device just stops working as designed, and that's assuming that it ever did to begin with. Not to mention the "print monitoring" software which portends to keep us informed on the progress of our print job, but fails to do so, as the connected device only returns the statuses of "Printing" and "Not Printing", rather than some analog between the two.

Struggle on, friend. Struggle on.

Ketchup345
Apr 4, 2009, 08:50 PM
In addition: Pressing "Cancel Print" means it takes 5 minutes to clear, even if it hasn't even started to print.

I had one HP printer (I think) that broke because a spring that was used to hold one of the ink cartridges in place broke part of the plastic clips (they were very fragile and in a place that made them easy to break). One little clip made the printer useless, as the clip was in a spot that even jury-rigging something was difficult and wouldn't last.

Luckily for you, new printers (with ink) can sometimes be bought for roughly the price of a black+color ink set. So instead of swapping out ink cartridges, just spend the extra few bucks and get a whole new printer.

Edit: The "Office Space" treatment sounds very acceptable for such a terrible machine you are stuck with.

DreXxiN
Apr 5, 2009, 01:13 AM
My printer doesn't work, period.

Tetsaru
Apr 5, 2009, 02:35 AM
I've had an old Lexmark Z22 printer for several years now... it's not bad, but I have had a few issues with it regarding paper feed a few times, and it'd get ink all over the insides of the machine right where the paper comes out... >_<

Also, I hardly ever buy colored ink for it, because it doesn't come separated into the individual Cyan/Magenta/Yellow cartridges like a lot of newer printers use nowadays (that, and ink is fucking expensive, lol). I'd end up having to print a lot of things in a specific color, and then have that color run out while the other colors are still fine, and end up with a weird, miscolored document. O_o; So, I just print in black and white most of the time nowadays...

SabZero
Apr 5, 2009, 03:41 AM
Get a laser printer, totally worth the investment (cheap if it's b/w). Get a duplex unit aswell, double sided printing means you can print booklets and stuff, WIN!

Only downside is nanoparticles and ozone so you best keep it in a side room.

Tetsaru
Apr 5, 2009, 04:04 AM
Lol, I remember a friend of mine once made a joke that the depleting ozone layer around the Earth could be replenished by putting a bunch of laser printers up there... O_o;

Outrider
Apr 5, 2009, 02:40 PM
I think my favorite terrible printer was the old Epson one that my parents had.

Did you know that with Epson printers, if you run out of any color ink, it refuses to print at all?

So if you want to print a black & white document, but you're out of red ink, you're screwed.

Yeah, that's genius design, right there.

Kylie
Apr 5, 2009, 02:49 PM
My PC and printer both suck. :lol: They should be high on my list for things to replace, but I'm cheap.

I understand where you're coming from.

astuarlen
Apr 5, 2009, 03:17 PM
I think my favorite terrible printer was the old Epson one that my parents had.

Did you know that with Epson printers, if you run out of any color ink, it refuses to print at all?

So if you want to print a black & white document, but you're out of red ink, you're screwed.

Yeah, that's genius design, right there.

I have a Canon printer/scanner I (regrettably) purchased a couple years ago that does did that, too. If I ran out of either of the two blacks, cyan, yellow, or magenta, it wouldn't just refuse to print; I couldn't scan either. And all the cartridges are chipped, so not only does it know when the ink is "out", but cheaper inks are not an option unless I want to mess around with removing and reattaching tiny chips--not the kind of thing I would enjoy doing when I'm frantically trying to print something at 3:00 am.

But here's the funny part. When I "upgraded" to XP 64 from 32 I couldn't find any drivers for my printer, so I installed some 64 bit vista ones for a similar model. Now when it tells me a color is empty, I can tell it to suck it up and print or scan anyway. And I've found that I can get several acceptable (acceptable for your standard home inkjet) prints which rely almost entirely on "out" colors.

So I, too, hate printers. And don't get me started on color matching. Which reminds me: I totally need to get to the lab to print before it closes today... rrrrrrrr.

Outrider
Apr 5, 2009, 05:35 PM
If I ran out of either of the two blacks, cyan, yellow, or magenta, it wouldn't just refuse to print; I couldn't scan either.

That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long while.

Somebody at Canon should get beaten with a burlap sack full of doorknobs for that.

HUnewearl_Meira
Apr 5, 2009, 08:46 PM
So if you want to print a black & white document, but you're out of red ink, you're screwed.

Fun fact: Gray shades require all the colors.

amtalx
Apr 5, 2009, 08:56 PM
Thread winner: I still have my dot matrix printer. :p And yes, it has the paper with the holes on the side.

Aeris
Apr 8, 2009, 11:02 PM
My mom bought around like 10-15 printers due to them having issues like not reading the ink carts, the scan light went out in one of them, a few fell many times and had many borken parts and some fell like 4-5 times hard on the ground before it stopped working again, my current one is a HP Photosmart C7200 All-in-one with wireless.

SStrikerR
Apr 19, 2009, 10:54 PM
Feel I need to bump this due to a new addiction to my rant.
It is 11:59 pm.
I just finished a project for spanish class, due tomorrow.
I need to print it out.
If it is even SLIGHTLY tilted, I will get points off. If part of it does not come out clearly, I will have to re-print.
I have a limited supply of paper.
10 have already gone into the trash can.
It is now 12:00 AM.
/facepalm

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE


Screw it, I'll do it in the morning. Provided I wake up early enough that I can shower, and finish a 30+ minute print job before I head off to school.

Midicronica
Apr 20, 2009, 07:24 AM
Why wasn't this posted?

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