Why are printers such pieces of crap?

[Mike Blakesley]

I have pretty much sworn off HP printers because they just up and quit printing for no reason or start acting flakey in other ways. My most recent one started falling apart after about 4 years of use, and then the feeder stopped taking paper in, so it still prints but you have to baby it.

So now my new office printer is an Epson ET5850, which I really liked, for the first two months. It's a fairly expensive machine but I figured, I've had it with cheap printers, I went with a higher-end one that's had glowing reviews. A couple weeks ago it started "sometimes" recognizing that I had put a form into the feeder, but not always. Now the last couple of days it has started doing a thing where if I ask it to print something, it spits out two perfect blank pages and then claims it is jammed (but it's not). I have to cancel the print job, and then print the job again, and it prints perfectly. Then if I want to print something else a minute later, it does the exact same drill again....two blank pages, "paper jam," cancel print, perfect print. It does this about three out of four print jobs now. Of course this problem does not appear in the troubleshooting section of the manual. I have rebooted the computer, rebooted the printer, I guess the next thing is to reinstall the software, but why can't these sons-a-bitches just work the way they are FREAKING SUPPOSED TO!?!?

[Marcel Birgelen]

I completely agree with this guy: Printers were sent from Hell.

[Frank Angel]

why can't these sons-a-bitches just work the way they are FREAKING SUPPOSED TO!?!?

Because they are designed to work EXACTLY the way they to work -- i.e., with a VERY finite life cycle so stockholders can make money, executives make money and you and I and the rest of us just need to keep buying more printers; they simply don't care to design longevity into the damn things because you know...it's YOUR money they want. Designed obsolescence is the name of the game. You got 4 years out of a printer -- consider yourself lucky!

I just had an HP start printing garbage output. Had to get rid of it after 1 & half years even though the scanner part of it was fine so an All-in-One concept was a total waste of metal, plastic and glass. So I did exactly what you did...I bought an even MORE expensive printer, thinking jezz, this is going to last significantly longer. And like you, I got an Epson -- a ET-3700 -- with the big bottles of refillable ink wells because I also hated, besides the ridiculously, non-repairable early failures of printers in general, the fact that ink cartridges were idiotically expensive. What a great idea -- ink that you can refill over and over; just by the ink by the bottleful at a comparably inexpensive rate and your good to go for years and years. This printer stopped printing magenta before the first bottle of ink was exhausted. Never even got to do the main attraction of this printer, refilling the ink without needing to buy new cartridges!. No amount of "maintenance routine" runs or "deep cleaning" will coax magenta to again be part of the three color printing process. Now I have a printer that's only good for black and white jobs or, when I am desparate to print color, I get something that resembles early bi-pack two-color films.

And of course you are also left with the quandary, what kind of damage do i do to the environment when I dump big chunks plastic, glass and metal (well...very little metal these days) into landfills year after year? These companies can't make a printer that can actually self-clean the heads? Sure they can...they just choose NOT to.

Mike, I think the solution is to abandon the evidently erroneous idea that the higher-end printers have better longevity. Do the opposite -- buy the cheapest piece of crap printer and just toss it out at the very first sign of trouble. If they are destine to die before any reasonable useful cycle, so be it.

[David Ferguson]

I love it when multiple interests of mine collide - in this case film and printers! My big interest before film was computer collecting, with a special interest in older printers. I have waaay too many of them, from the original Apple LaserWriter - the first PostScript printer and Apple's first laser printer, to colour dot matrix, some early inkjets, and even parts of an impact line printer.

My favourite is the early laser printers, these were built like tanks and aside from minor issues (like rubber rollers either softening or hardening over the 40 years), just keep running. The sad fact is that now what's stoping me using them more often is I can't get new toner for them. Same with the dot matrix printers - the printers keep working but it's hard to get ribbons, although with those you can DIY "re-ink" the ribbons so all is not lost!

Having said that... modern printers are crap, and I detest them. This is especially for inkjets, they seem to be treated as disposable pieces of tech that have a really short lifespan, break down every few months, and cost the earth to keep running. When I had one a few years ago, there was always the "game" I played when going to the store to buy new ink, of finding the printer and ink that was on sale for a cheaper price than the ink I needed! There was almost always one there - so it would have been cheaper to buy an entire new printer rather than buying new inks. Madness, but that's the business model. I see in recent years HP has come out with an inkjet model they call "Ecotank" where the printer is initially more expensive, but the ink is cheaper. Sounds like a good idea, but I hope the printer is built to last!

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't know why the likes of Greenpeace aren't over there at the HP, Epson, Canon and whatnot headquarters, protesting the hell out of their policies of making printers cheaper than the ink in their as-hard-to-refill-as-possible cartridges... I don't know how many printers I sent to the junkyard in the last 10 years...

Everything about modern home and office printers stinks, especially inkjets. They're made out of the cheapest possible material, they spend more than half their ink on cleaning themselves, most of the technology in there is to avoid you refilling one of their cartridges and they clog up when not being used for a few days in a row. Every time in the last 15 or so years, once my ink cartridges ran dry, I ended up buying a new printer instead... how can that be economical?

[David Ferguson]

they clog up when not being used for a few days in a row. Every time in the last 15 or so years, once my ink cartridges ran dry, I ended up buying a new printer instead... how can that be economical?

This is so true. For someone who prints occasionally, you end up wasting so much ink doing "cleaning" as every time you need to print, the stupid nozzles are clogged. And then I've had a few inkjets now where no amount of cleaning will clear one of them. I even tried cleaning it with isopropyl alcohol, but that didn't help. The majority of the older inkjets I have had the nozzles built into the cartridges so they were replaced every time you bought new ones - maybe this was a good idea!

[Frank Cox]

It's my understanding that new inkjet printers come with a "starter pack" of ink, meaning that the quantity of ink in the tank is significantly less than the amount of ink that you get when you buy an ink cartridge separately. So even though it looks like it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer than just an ink cartridge, that ultimately isn't the case.

Some ink cartridges even have drm so you can't refill them -- the printer just refuses to recognize the refilled cartridge and that's that.

And then there's the ultimate rip-off: HP Free Ink For Life.

I personally use a laser printer. I print very little (and seemingly less all the time) and laser printers are far from perfect, but at least they aren't clogged up or dried out after sitting for a week unused.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It's my understanding that new inkjet printers come with a "starter pack" of ink, meaning that the quantity of ink in the tank is significantly less than the amount of ink that you get when you buy an ink cartridge separately. So even though it looks like it's cheaper to buy a whole new printer than just an ink cartridge, that ultimately isn't the case.

Yeah, those ink cartridges are "taster kits", but they usually last just long enough to get your job done.

In the office, we have a professional Xerox multifunctional machine which we lease and comes with the toner as a service (they automatically send you new toner once the machine indicates it's low)... At home, I just sporadically have to print stuff. David seems to have the same issue I do: Every time you need that damn thing, the nozzles are clogged up. Everything you print either comes out as plain white paper or some unrecognizable smeared garbage. So, if I urgently need to print something, I'll either head to the office and print my stuff there or I end up buying a new one. I've tried to unclog printer heads in the past, but most of those trials ended up in a lot of wasted ink and paper...

ISome ink cartridges even have drm so you can't refill them -- the printer just refuses to recognize the refilled cartridge and that's that.

Most printers don't measure actual ink levels, but they simply measure the amount of usage per cartridge. Without access to the encrypted data on the chip, you can't reset that data and the printer will simply refuse to print.

It's a bit like the xenon lamp in your projector, only that your projector would save the information on an encrypted chip on the lamp and it would refuse to light up after a certain number of hours have been reached, no matter what the actual condition of the lamp is.

And then there's the ultimate rip-off: HP Free Ink For Life.

Apparently, the "Free Ink For Life" program has been suspended... I guess "For Life" is a pretty flexible term in HP's universe.

I personally use a laser printer. I print very little (and seemingly less all the time) and laser printers are far from perfect, but at least they aren't clogged up or dried out after sitting for a week unused.

I've owned an Epson color laser printer for quite a few years, the thing would also try to pull all kind of evil stuff on you, like declaring the photo-conductor to be "dead" after x number of prints. It would also refuse to print once a since color rand empty. Luckily, the thing could be overridden via the hidden service menu. That way, I got more than three times as many pages from the average toner and more than twice the number of pages from the photo-conductor.

[Harold Hallikainen]

My HP 8600 inkjet seems to do ok. It's somewhere between 5 and 10 years old. I wonder what Consumer Reports or similar organizations say about this. Is someone making a printer designed for long life? So much consumer equipment is a race to the bottom, all driven by price. Further, automatic assembly has made it cheaper to build a new product than to repair an old one. Some friends have a table top ice maker that stopped working. It looks like the issue is either the water sensor, or perhaps the microcontroller. The manufacturer does not have a service manual on it. A new one is something like $130, so it is not cost effective to repair unless one wants to save all that refrigeration equipment, etc. from the landfill. The manufacturer says they are sending me a new circuit board for it. We'll see if that fixes it.

Finally, here's a nice video of a Teletype model 15. I'm currently using one of these (and it's probably about 75 years old). Works great!

https://vimeo.com/353151381

Harold
https://w6iwi.org

[Steve Guttag]

I hate inkjet for anything but photos. I, recently, got a new laser jet...B&W printer/scanner. Oddly, it is a color scanner (and not too shabby). The cost was something like $130. I don't print too much anymore and hence when my color printer, which was FAR older than 5 or so years...it was probably 10-15 years old ran out of toner, I pitched it in favor of this little guy. So far, so good and for $130, I don't expect much. We still have the color laser jet at the office if I need to print things in color (drawings for projects often benefit from color though normally I send them in a PDF so it is up to the user to print out, if they need it). We had a laserjet 4M that we got in 1993 that lasted until 2020...seriously, it was a trouper but the fuser is what finally did it in. We tried changing that without success and just called it quits.

[Mike Blakesley]

I think the solution is to abandon the evidently erroneous idea that the higher-end printers have better longevity. Do the opposite -- buy the cheapest piece of crap printer and just toss it out at the very first sign of trouble.

That's probably the best advice. At the theatre we have a $70 Laserjet that we've had for at least 10 years. It prints about 3 or 4 pages per week, tops...boxoffice reports, mostly. I think I've put new toner in it once or twice. At the store, I have a similar cheap-o laser that is just used to print warehouse invoices, and it's been running for about 3 years now with no problem. I guess it's the fancy-pants machines that are the least reliable. Too many moving parts, maybe?

Although I think the biggest issue with my current office Epson is the software, not the mechanical bits.

Anyway, this thread has made me feel better knowing it's not just me. Keep the horror stories coming, guys!

[Marcel Birgelen]

That's probably the best advice. At the theatre we have a $70 Laserjet that we've had for at least 10 years. It prints about 3 or 4 pages per week, tops...boxoffice reports, mostly. I think I've put new toner in it once or twice. At the store, I have a similar cheap-o laser that is just used to print warehouse invoices, and it's been running for about 3 years now with no problem. I guess it's the fancy-pants machines that are the least reliable. Too many moving parts, maybe?

After a "deep" study of "printerology", I think printers can roughly be classified in three different species:

- The Suckers: The general pieces of crap for the home and small offices, where the replacement ink cartridge is often more expensive than the device. If somehow possible, you should try to avoid them like the plague. If they're your only option, then don't play their game, just consider the printer to be the consumable. Once the ink runs dry, you get a new one... if we all keep doing this, their business plan of selling us ink that's more expensive than most designer drugs per ounce will eventually fail.
- The Keepers: The old ones that still work and for which there still seemingly is an endless supply of toners and cartridges... you may want to hold on to them as long as possible, as in, as long as we humans still poses the necessary interfaces to communicate with them...
- The Professionals: You know, those heavy, clunky boxes that usually come with their own set of wheels and need at least 5 people to be transported to a destination their wheels won't take them. Those kind usually just seem to work... If you print a lot and your business depends on printing stuff on dead trees, you may consider getting one of these. They're still printers though, so they will eventually start crapping out on you, so make sure you've got your service tech on a short leash.

[Randy Stankey]

Rule #1 for buying printers: Avoid HP.

ALL that is Hewlet-Packard is ALWAYS bad, ALL of the time.
Nothing that HP sells has any redeeming qualities, whatsoever.
NEVER buy HP.

Years ago, HP was the shit. Now, they are made of shit.

I have tried a few different brands and have settled on Brother.
I have a Brother laser printer, now. It works well. It might not be the best photo printer but it works the way I want it to. It JUST works.

That's the second thing... Inkjets. I have, pretty much, sworn off inkjet printers and, the last two printers I have had were both laser printers.

My last laser printer was an HP. Yeah, I know that I said HP sucks but it was given to me for free. All I had to do was replace the toner/drum cartridges.

There's the big bug about HP. Their toner cartridges also contain the drum unit. When you replace the toner, you also have to replace the drum, which makes the cartridge about twice as expensive. With that HP printer, I paid for one set of cartridges and, when they needed to be replaced, I donated the printer to the Salvation Army and bought a new one. The Brother printer that I have, now.

With this Brother printer (HL-3170 CDW) the toner and drum units are separate. You only have to buy toner. The drums stay in the machine until it's time to replace them. I have had the printer since 2015 and have never replaced the drums. I think I have gone through two or three sets of toner but never any drums.

Oh! And another lovely thing about HP! When one toner cartridge goes empty, the whole printer becomes unusable! It locks up and won't run until the offending cartridge has been replaced.

With this Brother printer, when a cartridge goes down, I have the option to bypass the bad one.
The printer gives a warning that says something to the effect, "CYAN cartridge empty! Print quality may be affected! [Cancel] - [Continue]"

Secondarily, if you don't need to use color, there is a monochrome option. When set for monochrome, the colors are bypassed, altogether.

Honestly, since the bulk of the stuff I print is just reports and word processor documents, I only use color about 10% of the time.
I just leave my printer driver defaulted to mono and only turn on color when I want it.

Probably, the next laser printer that I buy will be a black and white printer, only. If I need to print photos or anything in color, I'll probably just load the file onto a USB stick and take it to Staples or Walmart for printing in color.

It's also a pretty safe bet that the next printer I buy WON'T be from HP!

[Bobby Henderson]

I have no printers in my home at all, and I don't want any either. But I do own a shredder and use it on a frequent basis. Junk mail, other kinds of paper, etc all builds up quickly. I don't need to be adding to the pile with pages spat out of a consumer-grade desktop printer.

Even when consumer grade printers work properly the cost per page can be ridiculous. Consumer inkjet printers are well known for the drawback. There are countless numbers of printer models and the kinds of consumables they use (ink/toner cartridges and other parts) can go obsolete and out of production after only a few years.

At my workplace we have one commercial level office laser printer and have a service contract with it from a local vendor. That's the only thing I use for printing anything on normal size sheets of paper. For all my own personal documents I just print to PDF or leave it as a file saved in the original document format (usually some kind of page layout or vector drawing program).

We have 3 large format printers at my workplace, two latex-based printers made by HP and a flatbed printer made my Mimaki. The two HP latex printers are several years old; they'll probably get replaced within the next 5 years.

I don't know what has happened with HP and their consumer level printers in recent years. A decade ago they were pretty good. I had a Deskjet 1220c at work that never gave me any complaints, other than how much ink it used and what the replacement cartridges cost. It appears the commercial-grade HP printers are a different animal in terms of reliability. I haven't had too many complaints about our latex printers. They were a nice step up from the Roland thermal inkjet printer we previously used for large format printing work.

[Harold Hallikainen]

It's really too bad that the reputation of HP has deteriorated so much. They were an excellent test equipment company, but I guess they spun off quality with the test equipment to Agilent. Every week or so I need to scan large drawings. I go to the local FedEx Office ("Kinko's"). They have a nice very large HP scanner/printer, but it crashes pretty much every week. I then have to wait 10 minutes or more for it to reboot.

As mentioned before, to make it in the consumer products world, a company has to race to the bottom in price, and quality follows.

Harold