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Why Printers Are So Terrible
And what (little) you can do about it
Recently I participated in a discussion on Twitter started by someone who was looking for a new printer.
This prompted conversation on a subject that’s both common and dismal:
“Why are printers so terrible?”
Because wow, they truly are. Like many people, I’ve had printers break on me in a myriad of irritating ways. Sometimes, the nozzles on inkjet cartridges started leaking or clogging, or wireless connections crapped out and never worked again. Other times, paper jams created a pile of internal confetti impossible to extract — or, conversely, the printer insisted it suffered from a paper jam that didn’t exist.
Then there’s the shakedown of wildly expensive, proprietary inkjet-cartridges, a substance “more expensive than vintage Champagne and even human blood”.
Printers are thus weird outliers in world where most other consumer tech has gotten better over time. Processors have gotten faster; hard drives have plummeted in price. Name nearly any tech category, and it’s better and cheaper than previous decades.
But not printers. They were wretched ten years ago, and they’re wretched still.
