Am I the only one that thinks printers are the work of Satan?

[Cl0udsForDays]

yup all printers suck.

[Uttamattamakin]

11 hours ago, NadiaMayer said:

When I has go for Linux back in the mid 2010s CUPS was way more useful then anything m$ could bake up. printing just worst it was fast it didn't complain just did the job and has nice webserver see all I need and told me what was wrong.

When I print on windows i better hope I praised the machine god and give my PC a good dusting for when I need to print. 

I am talking about WAY back using Linux.  Late 1990's early 00's using Linux.  Buying any reasonably priced printer meant windows specific drivers.  So windows specific that they often could not work at all without Windows, not even on Mac. 

[Aderalia]

Printers are only bad if you buy the wrong one for your needs. Or the cheapest one. But lets face it: the cheapest car is gonna suck as well, same goes for the cheapest laptop. And if it's not the correct product for your application you are going to have a bad time.

 

What is a work of Satan however is the marketing from certain companies as well as the incompetence of most personal working in electronics retail...

[Sarra]

6 hours ago, Aderalia said:

Printers are only bad if you buy the wrong one for your needs. Or the cheapest one. But lets face it: the cheapest car is gonna suck as well, same goes for the cheapest laptop. And if it's not the correct product for your application you are going to have a bad time.

 

What is a work of Satan however is the marketing from certain companies as well as the incompetence of most personal working in electronics retail...

I feel like you are missing the forest for the trees.

 

Almost all printers aimed at consumers are designed to fail. They are designed to require ink, which manufacturers are deliberately price gouging. They are intentionally being anti consumer, anti competitive, and deliberately hiding this.

 

There is nothing ethical, or consumer friendly, about the entire printer market. It's a pyrimid scheme of scams.

[CrowTheRobot]

 

 

After shifting to district IT, I've always worked in environments where supplies and most of the maintenance is covered by service contracts, but it seems like every company is shit in one way or another.  The one I've spent the most time working with between two districts frequently mishandles toner requests, fails to properly submit service tickets to their techs, and uses networked toner level tracking that fails miserably in various ways.  We're about to shift to another company, but they refuse to service the three dozen Kyoceras we have (meaning we have to replace them with a different brand because we're not pulling service for them in-house) and they only deal in third-party toners instead of OEMs, and we've had a bad history of third-party toners breaking devices.

On 6/21/2023 at 3:02 PM, Monkey Dust said:

Home printers are absolute shite. Office ones seem to give less trouble, but in fairness, I've never worked IT support. How much printing do people still do now? I haven't had a home printer for over 10 years, not missed that temperamental heap of junk once. I never print at work either now, and post covid a lot of people in the office are the same.

I spent five years as a TA for an elementary school before I got canned early on in the pandemic, then shifted to school district IT.  The school I worked at as a TA had three copiers and a handful of individual printers for special use cases.  The main office copier was 95% off limits to anyone not working in the main office, and it was common to have lines at the other two copiers.  They seemed to jam significantly at least once a week, and it was common for me to be sent, especially on conference days, to make class sets of packets for at least my class, if not also 2-3 other rooms in the same grade level, with a dozen or two pages per packet a lot of times.

 

On the IT side, I've had people call me for jams because they're printing entire class sets of old standardized state tests, and have watched as enterprise-grade printers and toners will be bone dry within a week or two of replacement because people would rather print everything themselves than send anything ahead of time to the district print shop.

[lord_galathon]

OK I'll admit that Konika printers have given me the less issues so far.

 

How about that PDF printing setting "Print as image" to solve most slow/missing information printed on page from Adobe Reader? That one made me so angry back in the day.

[Sarra]

32 minutes ago, lord_galathon said:

How about that PDF printing setting "Print as image" to solve most slow/missing information printed on page from Adobe Reader? That one made me so angry back in the day.

PDF was, and still is, a trainwreck for things it wasn't meant for.

 

I genuinely hate working with PDF files, in any capacity beyond just reading shit from them.

 

If I have the option to get information in a PDF or an alternate format, unless it's something really stupid, I'll opt for the alternate format every time.

[XNOR]

On 6/21/2023 at 9:02 PM, Monkey Dust said:

Home printers are absolute shite. Office ones seem to give less trouble, but in fairness, I've never worked IT support. How much printing do people still do now? I haven't had a home printer for over 10 years, not missed that temperamental heap of junk once. I never print at work either now, and post covid a lot of people in the office are the same.

Office printers are no better. I've worked with $50k+ printers. It's the same bullshit in a more expensive, shiny package.

[Aderalia]

On 6/27/2023 at 3:29 PM, Sarra said:

I feel like you are missing the forest for the trees.

 

Almost all printers aimed at consumers are designed to fail. They are designed to require ink, which manufacturers are deliberately price gouging. They are intentionally being anti consumer, anti competitive, and deliberately hiding this.

 

There is nothing ethical, or consumer friendly, about the entire printer market. It's a pyrimid scheme of scams.

Maybe a bit, but the fact is that depending on where you life its not so bad.

Epson for example doesn't look out third party inks at all (at least not within the last 10 years).

HP still does that, even tho they have been sued and lost over and over, but they seem to enjoy being an arse.

Canon is hit or miss, they don't lock stuff out in Europe but do in some markets.

OEM vs Third Party supplies is a whole discussion on its own tho.

 

The newer Tank printers however are a complete change in direction. Same goes for the mid and higher end cartridge based printers. They have much more user replaceable parts. Like the dreaded waste ink container for example (Epson calls it a Maintenance Box). Canon is offering an excellent repair service in Europe, that genuinely makes it worth fixing printers rather than just buying a new one.

Even Brother (they used to have a bad name for being overpriced, yet under performing, especially in the Office Inkjet segment) is offering some Ink tanks, as well as more friendly (admittedly still expensive) long range cartridge printers that make perfect sense to buy, unless you print a lot.

Its really only the low end stuff and HP (consumer) printers that still haven't heard the shot.

[Aderalia]

19 hours ago, XNOR said:

Office printers are no better. I've worked with $50k+ printers. It's the same bullshit in a more expensive, shiny package.

My Epson WF Enterprise is pretty amazing to be honest. Can't say anything long term tho, i just got it 4 months ago.

OEM Ink is cheap and very good, replaceable maintenance box, software is ok.

[Nalyk]

I've always had similar issues with printers.  If it isn't printing from the wrong tray or printing double sided when you don't want it to, to printing landscape instead of portrait.  Then it's ink or random network errors that stall out the print queue. 

 

Printers are a giant pita.  Period. 

[doubleflower]

On 6/22/2023 at 2:21 AM, Sarra said:

Yeah, printers are a mixed bag, at best.

 

It's pretty garbage tier that companies, like HP, use that as an excuse to be ridiculous and predatory, with shit like Ink DRM, and bricking printers for whatever reason, not to mention, selling 2 oz of ink, in a cart that has space for 8 oz, for $99.99+ tax.

That's because consumer printers itself have little, if no profit margins at all, which lead to manufacturers relying on expensive consumables to make money (also partly explains why a lot of home printers are terribly built compared to business ones because there is a real race to the bottom for companies to make the absolute cheapest printers to appeal to the general consumer) 

 

Even a lot of enterprise models (like those HP Pagewide/Laserjet Enterprise stuff) usually depends heavily on services like Managed Print Services which covers things like servicing, repairs and supplies to make up for the thin margins 

[Tanaz]

I have a 1 year old Epson Inkjet. Didn't really need it after the first 3 months but decided to keep it and kept printing test pages every 3-4 days so it doesn't get stuck. STILL lost 2 of the colors and even after multiple print head cleanings it is still clogged. Printers suck yes. Laser printers come with their own set of issues (quality of color prints mostly is bad unless it costs thousands of $). Just stupid stupid machines.

[4uffin]

Yes. They never work when I need them to.

 

therefore

—————

Printer = Satan

[cooky560]

The fun facts of cheap printer ownership:

 

- I very rarely, if ever print anything, so it doesn't make any sense to justify a high end printer.

- As a result of this, the ink for my printer often sells for more than I bought the printer for, fun!

- This printer is usually dead and needs to be fixed when I do need to print something once every few months.

 

Printers really need a better design, and saner ink pricing.

[Aderalia]

58 minutes ago, cooky560 said:

The fun facts of cheap printer ownership:

 

- I very rarely, if ever print anything, so it doesn't make any sense to justify a high end printer.

- As a result of this, the ink for my printer often sells for more than I bought the printer for, fun!

- This printer is usually dead and needs to be fixed when I do need to print something once every few months.

 

Printers really need a better design, and saner ink pricing.

You are like many many people

 

And to everyone who (honestly) doesn't need a printer: Don't get one. Print Shops are dirt cheap compared to spending 50$ on Ink every time you want to print something cause its dried up.

Or even better: Have a something like a family printer. I print for my entire family and basically half of the village.

If you have something confidential, there are self service copy shops as well.

[cooky560]

Print shops are great if you live near one. There used to be one within a 5 mins of me that cost under $1 per print, however where I live now it's less simple.

[Stahlmann]

My first comment in this thread didn't age well...

 

A few days ago our office printer suddenly spat out error codes and stopped working. After looking up the codes they meant "critical hardware failure" and that only the customer service technician can repair the printer. I opened up a support ticket and the technician was here 1 day later.

 

By the time he arrived the printer went back to working as if nothing ever happened.

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, cooky560 said:

The fun facts of cheap printer ownership:

 

- I very rarely, if ever print anything, so it doesn't make any sense to justify a high end printer.

- As a result of this, the ink for my printer often sells for more than I bought the printer for, fun!

- This printer is usually dead and needs to be fixed when I do need to print something once every few months.

 

Printers really need a better design, and saner ink pricing.

You're a perfect candidate for a laser printer. They'll sit for months, then spit out a page like no time passed at all. Refilled toner cartridges are ludicrously cheap, too.

 

I made the "cheap inkjet" mistake a couple times. I kept one from the thrift store because its flatbed scanner is actually pretty nice, but the plastic, $20 big-box special went in the trash once its second set of cartridges dried out. I lucked out and found my HP P1606dn at the thrift store one day for $10, it only had about 100 pages on its odometer so the toner it came with was still brand new.

[tkitch]

5 hours ago, cooky560 said:

The fun facts of cheap printer ownership:

 

- I very rarely, if ever print anything, so it doesn't make any sense to justify a high end printer.

- As a result of this, the ink for my printer often sells for more than I bought the printer for, fun!

- This printer is usually dead and needs to be fixed when I do need to print something once every few months.

 

Printers really need a better design, and saner ink pricing.

go buy an 100$ Brother personal laser.  (Network support is an extra 20 bucks or so.)

 

As long as you print a few pages every 6 months or so, it won't care.  You'll probably get 3 years out of the included starter cartridge.

 

Non-OEM refilled cartridges are stupid cheap.  (But given how often I replace them, I buy OEM.  I can afford the price when it literally goes for 3+ years.)

[Sarra]

16 hours ago, doubleflower said:

That's because consumer printers itself have little, if no profit margins at all, which lead to manufacturers relying on expensive consumables to make money (also partly explains why a lot of home printers are terribly built compared to business ones because there is a real race to the bottom for companies to make the absolute cheapest printers to appeal to the general consumer) 

 

Even a lot of enterprise models (like those HP Pagewide/Laserjet Enterprise stuff) usually depends heavily on services like Managed Print Services which covers things like servicing, repairs and supplies to make up for the thin margins 

That is the opposite of a valid reason for this.

[Smith6612]

I wouldn't say they are the work of Satan per-se. The problem with printers is always around implementation and support. I think it's a situation where so many companies have tried to solve for the problems printers have, and just fail in some way or another. Like others mentioned, Linux support was poor for ages because no company would develop for Unix-based printer systems. Apple probably helped push some of that forward with their inclusion of CUPS into Mac OS X and the marketing push towards making printers easier to add, which meant designing printers in such a way that some generic PostScript driver could send print instructions to a printer, and it'll print. Then of course, the rest of it comes down to the printer firmware itself, which is generally a pile of crap spun multiple ways.

 

I can give many examples of how printers suck, from HP, to Xerox, to Ricoh. HP honestly has been the longer lasting brand for me, as I have some LaserJets at the office which are 22-some years old now with JetDirect Cards sporting SDRAM still in operation, and with the creation of Universal Print Drivers and Generic PostScript Printer drivers, they just print away. They don't care if aftermarket toner is installed. They don't care that they have been shipped all over the country, have been used in dusty environments, or have operated in excessively cold or excessively hot environments. They just print. The Xerox machines at work seem to like popping their hard drives (Xerox installs crappy 5400RPM 2.5" drives into the machines) and have horribly slow processors and likewise don't like aftermarket supplies. The Ricoh machines have a horrible web interface and lock some functions like wiping machine data behind a service technician barrier. They don't publish their firmware on a website in a good manner for uploading via a web interface, and a Windows only utility is needed to perform self service upgrades. Both Xerox and Ricoh basically require service contracts on them.

 

For Home printers, the problems I run into with them often boils down to networking on the computer or in the home network itself being busted. But anything printer side is usually just terrible firmware for the Wi-Fi, or the use of WSD rather than tried and true Port 9100 printing. The Wi-Fi problems usually boil down to things like, driver crashes in the printer when 802.11r is enabled on access points for roaming, WPA3 Transition mode breaking wireless association, random incompatibilities with routers stopping connections from working, and the auto-discovery services for a printer's IP address just downright breaking after so many hours of power-on time. Driver-wise, stuff like HP Smart is trying to solve a problem but does so in a horrible manner (using WSD which just doesn't work because the service crashes on the printer all the time...).

 

Now cartridge DRM is just something entirely different, and it's an issue with business MFPs and many Inkjet printers alike.

 

Before others mention Brother - Their printers are solid for home use. Their drivers for ages have sucked worse than HP's. But Brother would be my go-to once the HP at home finally dies. Hopefully I can still get printers with Ethernet ports then...