Are printers the most frustrating piece of computer hardware?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have had my own computer for about 12 years. I’ve gone through various PCs and now I own a Mac Powerbook G4.

One thing has been constant throughout time. The printer, whatever kind I buy, will always give me enormous amounts of trouble.
I’ve gone through:

Clogged inkjets
Constant paperjams
Software on word processors that won’t print envelopes unless you’ve downloaded the super secret patch

And my current one, my all-in-one printer, which copies fine, which scans fines, which prints text documents fine, and will only print photographs after having the hardware uninstalled and reinstalled each time I switch paper types.

I’ve gone through different brands of printers, although I must say that my only constant has been that I buy relatively inexpensive ones. But will an expensive one just lead me to having a more expensive piece of hardware frustrating me?

2

Printing on a Mac frustrating? Oh my, yes!

I’ve not had troubles with clogged nozzles or jams, though.

3

I spent quite a bit of time the other week unclogging my ink jet printer and cursing. Now the thing’s spotty again. And accordionicizing every third sheet of paper. That it, when it’s not working fine and picking up three sheets from the try at a time for some reason. Printers are evil. But you can’t live without one. But I find my problems with my power cords shorting out more enraging.

4

I will occasionally get a paper jam. So I nearly disassemble the printer to get the paper out. First, I figure it’d be a good idea to cancel the print job.

It would be really nice if that function actually worked.

I end up having to shut the computer off for a couple of minutes.

5

Geez, I can’t recall the last time I had a problem with a home inkjet printer (aside from the old one finally dying and needing to be replaced).

6

Printers are bad, but scanners are worse.

7

Yes

8

Agreed. Nine tenths of the people I talk to with scanners can’t get theirs to work. Ever.

9

I have never had a problem that I couldn’t fix myself with a home printer. However I recently commented to someone at work that at any given time I bet there is a printer repair guy somewhere in our office. I have seen 3 different guys repairing 3 different printers on my floor alone in the last 2 weeks or so. The printer I use has been repaired twice on site and yesterday was taken away in disgrace.

10

I’ve had this HP ScanJet 2100C for a few years now. On my last computer (running WinME), I would have to uninstall & reinstall it every couple of months. I don’t what would happen, but it would either scan entirely in blue or the scanned image would be solid black.

I’m now running WinXP and it’s fine. The built-in interface that came with XP is 1000% better than the factory drivers.

11

I have an HP printer/scanner that has been quite disobedient. I’ll keep that tip in mind when I hook everything back up in my new home. Thanks Mr. Blue Sky.

12

My printer still won’t print photos after a reinstall of the software. And repairing disk permissions. I hate it.

13

Printers can be the ugliest (and I should know :slight_smile: ) part of a package software developer’s job, at least on PC compatible boxes.

In the old DOS days it was both better and worse. Worse, because if you wanted support for a particular printer you pretty much had to build it into the software. This could get complicated fast, especially when lasers came out with downloadable fonts and graphics. It was also better because since supporting all printers got to be a practical impossibility, you usually supported three or four kinds that used the same basic command set. As part of quoting a software package to a customer (these are industrial and commercial users, not residential) you frequently just told them which printer they had to have, and if they bought the software, you knew which printer they’d be using.

It’s much, MUCH better under Windows. With Windows and most high level languages, your program just sees the more or less constant Windows printer interface, and within some fairly broad constraints, you don’t care much which actual printer is selected. The windows print driver takes care of the messy details.

But it’s not perfect. There are small differences between printers, even very similar printers. Two different HP or Epson printers may share a common command set, but they might render the same type face/font/size slightly differently. So your bold headers at the top of the report may take up slightly more or slightly less room on the customer’s printer than on yours. Boxes you’ve created are slightly different sizes or line weights. Usually not enough to be real trouble, but on a tightly designed report it’s sometimes enough to be a problem.

14

JoeSki:
[/quote]
Originally Posted by RealityChuck

[/quote]
Printers are bad, but scanners are worse.

[QUOTE]

Agreed. Nine tenths of the people I talk to with scanners can’t get theirs to work. Ever.

[QUOTE]

I’ve still got my bulletproof, reliable, easy-to-use UMAX UC630 3-pass SCSI color flatbed scanner. Bought it something like $650 back in 1995 or 96, with full Photoshop bundled with it.

Ten years from now I will probably have a Mac G8 PowerBook running MacOS XIX but over in the corner I’ll have some elderly relic that still boots MacOS 9 and it’ll be hooked to that scanner.

15

A low-end HP color inkjet printer costs $70-$90 at Staples. Replacing both the color and the black cartridges costs about $50.

Shit. Just use up the ink, throw the whole thing into the trash, and buy a new one.

16

But remember, quite often the ink cartridges that come with the printer are only half full.

17

I’ve had the most trouble from printers out of the hardware I’ve used, but the problems have almost allways been on the software side, not the actual hardware (with a couple of exceptions).

Old HP Deskjet 300-400 series, transformer died after about 5 years.
Current Deskjet 840C, transformer dies after being flooded.

About once a year, a sheet of paper will get jammed in the 840, but not on a regular basis.

But on the software side, I’ve had a bunch of problems:

Canon BJC series, worked fine for years, then wouldn’t print on my PC, worked fine on other PC’s, but refused to talk to mine.
This Canon had the worst installation disk I’ve ever seen, it was so buggy that most of the time, the installation program would not finish, a “three-fingered salute” would be required. But, if you manually added the printer through Windows and picked the right driver off the disk, it would work fine.

Current 840C decided one day to ignore the parallel port completely for no reason, reinstalling the drivers did not help, worked fine on the first try with USB, then decided it didn’t like the USB ports on the back of the computer, but works fine with the one on the front, go figure.
Had a simialr problem with the install program like I noted on the Canon above.

I also have an HP Designjet 430 plotter, and for some reason the program I use forgets I chose a printer after a while, and I have to close and restart the program.

I’ve never had much trouble with scanners.

18

Add me to the “never had much trouble with scanners” group. As for printers, I was in a LaserJet up to my elbows the other day doing its badly overdue every-two-years rehab of replacing all the rollers and the fuser. Took it from “frustrated origami artist with indigestion and filthy fingers” to perfect quiet printing in half an hour.

Helpful hint: If your laser printer makes grunting noises, it’s time to replace the paper pickup rollers.

19

Well, when you think about it, the printer is, of course, going to be the thing to give you the most trouble. It has more moving parts than the rest of the computer put together, comes in contact with dust and crud all the time, and contains perishable ink. With the exception of the hard drive and CD/DVD reader, everything else in the computer is solid state. Only the printer is old-school. Not to mention that price competition on printers is phenomenal, so they are not exactly being built to last.

20

For the $99 and less low-end inkjets, sure.

I think the higher-priced stuff comes with full tanks; my new $169-with-rebate-coming Canon i960 had full tanks.