Interesting. I will ask my younger, tech-savvy friends about their home printing ability.
I’ve had the same HP J4680 printer/scanner since 2009 when I got the “new” desktop. Earlier this year when I tried to download windows 10 I found out the computer was obsolete even though it had all the required specifications. Bought a new HP desktop at Costo and this computer “read” the old printer and all is well.
In this age of getting no printed receipts/bank records I would never dream of being without a printer.
Many younger people totally trust electronic transactions and keep no paper. It’s only through having a paper receipt/statement that I’ve caught numerous errors to get credited back.
The version of this that I found really annoying:
My printer, which I use quite often, broke. I ordered a new one from Staples.
The order confirmation came with instructions to print out a form to sign for the delivery people, if I wanted them to leave it even if I didn’t answer the door.
Hey, guys – what I ordered was a printer. If I could print your form, I wouldn’t be ordering a printer –
(yes, I know, some of their larger business customers have multiple printers. But a lot of their customers probably don’t.)
Oh god, YES!!!
Yeah, but you still might want to print a return label or something.
Anyway, I just polled some younger (30s) friends. They can all afford a printer (both the direct cost and the space). They are all very computer-savvy. They all mostly use electronic forms of currency, and not cash (and certainly not checks.) But three of four said they have a printer at home that they use.
FWIW, when my thoroughly-of-her-generation late-20s niece lived with us she brought her own printer. And printed about 10x as much as wife & I do put together.
Of course niece is a kindergarten teacher which involves LOTS of posters & handouts and such.
My wife’s WFH semi-retired lawyer business involves some amount of printing. Everything incoming is either a fax that goes directly to paper or if received via email/website needs to go onto paper to be filed in the paper files. Some outgoing stuff is printed and snail-mailed (especially her bill$!), but most of her output leaves here electronically. With a paper copy for the paper files of course.
My role as family bookkeeper / bill payer, etc., creates a few sheets a month. But nothing like those two women. If I was the only household member I’d still own an all-in-one. The incremental cost of ownership of a B&W laser AIO is so close to zero and it’s one of those things that when you need it, you need it. For all 4 of those functions. OTOH, you couldn’t give me an inkjet; too much fuss and clogs and … ; they’re shite from end to end.
just as a data point: here’s how important my printer is: I used it to vote.
I live overseas and requested an absentee ballot. My election board send me( by email) a ballot and accompanying forms as a pdf file.
I had to print out the file. Then I marked the ballot and signed the forms. Then I had to scan it all into a new pdf file, which I attached to an email and sent back to the election board.
So my printer is an essential part of American democracy. How 'bout yours? 
But other than that, I use it about twice a month to print out a page of something I want to keep (like a recipe, or a notice of renewal from my insurance company.)
I certainly would not want to live without a printer.
I havent used mine in years (inkjet) and last time I tried, it had stopped working. A friend gave me another one he no longer wanted, and when I fired that up some years later, that doesn’t work either. I always printed anything that needed printing at the office, but I haven’t been there in months.
I have a b/w laserjet for the kids, and a color inkjet/scanner combo for myself (mainly I’m the color toner gatekeeper).
I use it less and less… actually more for scanning and copying than anything. And when I want to print out a recipe. That reminds me, I was going to try making dal soup today.
I have a black and white laser printer, maybe two years old. I bought toner last year and it hasn’t complained about the level again.
I cannot get the printer to work with wi-fi anymore, so I bought a really long USB cable (it’s not near the computer) and that works fine. I print something fairly frequently (at least once a month) and I use the scanner function a lot. For instance last month I printed a passport application for my niece; I don’t know how she could have applied for her passport if she didn’t have access to someone with a printer.
To me, it’s too useful not to have, but I know a lot of people who don’t use them, or go to an internet cafe/print shop/library on the rare occasion they want to print something.
I feel like everyone needs to print something from time to time. So if you can afford your own printer (the space is probably as costly as the purchase price) it’s worth having one. And if you have one around, you find yourself using it for nice-to-have stuff, like printing out recipes, as well as need-to-have stuff, like shipping labels.
I have and use a home printer, although it doesn’t work very well anymore so I try to do my printing at the office when I can. Most of what I print is Amazon return labels, and since there’s both a UPS and a USPS drop box in my office building, that works out pretty well. I also sometimes need to print various government forms, most recently a parking permit application and a fishing license. Also I play guitar, badly, and my husband plays harmonica, slightly less badly, and we print out lyrics with chords/tabs/notes for each of us so we can play music together. In the before-times I sometimes needed to print concert tickets and things like that, not because I couldn’t download an app, but because there wasn’t one for that venue. For a while we couldn’t get our printer to work at all. My husband thought we could just do without, but I told him I would be buying another, and he managed to mostly fix it.
Up to 8 responses from friends in their 30s, and running the same ratio. Six say they have and use a printer at home, one has no printer, and one has one that he doesn’t use. And a housemate of one of the people who uses a printer says he doesn’t print on it, but does regularly use it as a scanner.
Here’s another nasty trick Epson pulled on me: my old Epson printer broke, but I still wanted to use it as a scanner. NOPE! Because the printing function wasn’t working, it refused to scan too. Dirty pool!
The problem with that is that only the inkjets are cheap enough. And they dry out and become unusable in a shorter time than you’d expect. So if you don’t print often enough to offset that, having a printer doesn’t make sense. You’re basically paying for the ink every time you want to print.
And even that’s assuming you’ll print more than 300 pages in the time the cartridge works. Otherwise paying the 10 cents a page to print at the library or similar is cheaper–and you get the paper for free and never have to worry about running out of ink.
With laser printers, sure, you get longer to print, but you need to print a lot more to offset the cost. They don’t sell them at a loss like they do inkjets, and the technology itself is more expensive.
I understand having a printer if you print often enough. But, otherwise? It only just now makes sense due to the pandemic, meaning the library might be closed or you don’t feel like risking it wherever you print.
Also, if it isn’t clear, using the scanner is not using the printer. I hope no one is voting because they still use an all-in-one printer as a scanner. Even I do that. But the printer cannot actually print anything, as it either has no ink or it dried up long ago.
You can get a laser all-in-one printer/scanner for under $200. So perhaps a bit more than an all-in-one inkjet printer, but laser toner doesn’t dry out the way that inkjet ink does. So you may save money in the long run. My current laser printer is close to fifteen years old and I’ve never changed the cartridge. (Of course I only print, on average, one page a month.)
Huh. If I bought an all-in-one machine and still use it, I feel like I’m using it. Of course, my all-in-one machine is a laser printer, so it’s been working for years with modest use. (We print enough that I think this is the second time I’ve replaced the cartridge – due to running out, not being too old.) And since that friend’s housemate DOES print from that machine, he certainly has a working printer in the house. (And she may print the household’s mailing labels and such.)
That’s not true. I have a Brother B/W LaserJet which was under $100.
Oh, and I’m 40, my wife is 35, and we use it often. She uses it more than me: to print out shipping labels and things for grad school. I tend to use it more for return labels or things that need signing.
But only if you print more than 2000 sheets of paper with it. You’re not going to do that at 1 page a month., as humans don’t live over 150 years.