My all in one probably gets used mostly as a scanner, next as a copier, a fax machine and last of all as a printer.
OTOH …
One of my sillier monthly tasks is to submit an expense form along with all the supporting receipts. It’s easy to fill out the PDF expense form on-screen in my PC. It’s easy to scan the receipts. But the easiest way to combine the two is to print the pdf and scan it along with the receipts. I have PDF editor tools, but just printing, scanning, and trashing the piece of paper is the easiest.
I have a cheap Brother laserjet printer. It is wireless and does double-sided printing. It’s only black and white, but it does what I need it to do just fine. I use it at least once a month to print out documents and stuff.
Never been without one. I only use it occasionally, but my wife prints everything. I bought an Epson with the ink tanks because of her printing habits. For someone who loves trees, she sure kills a lot of them.
I have a similar printer. I’m a writer so I use it all the time. You see words printed on paper differently from seeing them on a computer screen. And I like paper. Print out a couple of sheets and carry them around is easier than any other form of display.
I also have a cheap inkjet for when I need color, which isn’t very often.
Didn’t have one for years, but ended up buying one of those Epson supertank printers (also serves as a scanner and copier) when COVID hit and I had to work from home.
But then we got called back into work a few months later and now here the printer sits…
I print a color copy once a week or something just so the print heads don’t dry out.
I do, print and scan as well. and I subscribe to hp ink. Not that I print so much but at $36 a year it’s a cheap convenient alternative to replacing a $35 cartridge every 25 pages or so. Also I was able to print a recipe from my phone & have no idea how it did that either.
I have an all-in-one color Epson inkjet whose print heads were badly clogged, but I was able to clean them out by following youtube instructions. It runs pretty well now. Also an old cheap compact Canon laser for black and white. Now that I’m doing a lot of work from home, work will pay for replacement ink for both.
Also have a clogged compact inkjet printer that my daughter gave up on, which I might attempt to clean out, as there are spare ink cartridges for it.
I mostly print work docs, recipes, crossword puzzles, and occasional legal forms. Not much else nowadays.
Even knowing this place skewed older, and that those who still have a printer would be more likely to check in, I did not expect the results to be so lopsided. Most people I know do not own a printer, other than some old one they never use. Most younger than me apparently never owned one at all.
I do still have one, an Epson all-in-one. I use it so rarely that when I had to print something recently I had to run the cleaning cycle several times before it would come out correctly.
…AND…it just stopped working, just printing blank paper. Gonna clean 'er a few times, then nuts to it and buy a new one.
Can anyone recommend a nice all-in-one, not Epson (durn 'em) where the scanning has an anti-moire feature, like if I want to scan from comic books? (I do, in fact, want to scan from comic books!)
(The old version of Epson Scan had an anti-moire feature, but their “upgrade” took it away!)
I have a Canon color laser printer, and because it’s not also a copier, I still have my older HP that made every printing task a major wrestling match.
We had a hell of a time finding one a few weeks ago. Nice lady at Staples explained that with everyone working/schooling from home, demand is through the roof. Supply, not so much.
I have an HP three in one inkjet, which is used maybe once a week. It prints stuff from my phone which is a plus some times. My wife who has an HP black and white laser printer which she uses heavily, especially to print out web pages when researching her books. She got it used from my daughter’s in-laws, and replaced an HP II-P laser printer which lasted at least 20 years.
Our libraries are still closed, so printing there would not be possible these days. Anyhow, printers are so cheap these days that it is worth it just for the scanner and copier.
I have had one taking up real-estate on my desk for many years, but after I very recently decided I needed to make space for a second monitor, I assessed how often I use the printer, which is maybe four times a year, and moved it off the desk to a less prominent spot. It’s still hooked up, as I will inevitably need to use it again I’m sure, but those needs are less frequent every year that passes.
I do note that most businesses assume everyone has access to a printer, as they will suggest printing off forms to sign or address labels for posting, that kind of thing. I recommend that everyone still always has one to hand, just in case.
A Brother all-in-one and we use it semi-regularly. My wife reads the New Yorker online (we also get the print edition) and often prints out interesting articles, not all of which appears in the print edition. Our “Sunday” paper (it comes on Saturday) this morning had a very funny cartoon for anyone who has moved recently and has a cat, so I scanned it and emailed it to her since she moved 6 weeks ago and has a cat.
I print US tax forms since it is hard to file online. At least I haven’t figured out how. I now do things on Zoom for my former employer that I used to do from my office (which I still have, although shared with another retiree) and I have to print out, sign, and return the scanned reports.
