In defence of printers
Or how all of you naysayers need to back off before I bust into your house like the Kool Aid guy if he was fixated on office equipment.
I’ve laced up my boots. I’ve slapped on my trench coat. I’ve covered every inch of my soft flesh with weapons. And I’m ready. Ready to go to war on behalf of printers.
Sadly, the machines receive constant hate. It seems like every week a tweet goes viral(-ish) that basically says, “OH SO WE CAN DRIVE ELECTRIC CARS AROUND AND MAKE MOVIES WITH OUR PHONES BUT WE CAN’T GET OUR PRINTERS TO PRINT?!?!!?!!?!?!?!”
If there was any justice in the world, these folks would be subjected to an inversion of that scene from Office Space. They’d walk outside, innocently, enjoying the morning air and, before they knew it, would have the ever-loving shit kicked out of them by three elephant-sized printers.
I’m here to break this negativity.
I’ve used wireless black-and-white laser printers for years now and have had no issues. Both of the units I’ve owned were a joy; simple to set-up, operate, and have proven endlessly useful.
Sometimes, during long, summer nights, I wonder if the people moaning about printers have actually used any since the early 2000s. Or, potentially, the problem isn’t printers themselves, but what people want from them. Maybe, just maybe, they’re aiming too high.
Let’s not get confused, printers, especially colour ones, are breathtaking bits of kit. Just consider for a moment how wild it is that an affordable, bootbox-sized plastic hunk can perfectly transfer a picture from your computer screen onto a piece of paper.
Herein lies many people’s issue with printers though: the machines themselves are loss leaders.
Companies sell them cheap because they aim to make that money back through ink sales. Because this is how these businesses profit, they’re incentivised to make the machines gobble up as much ink as possible and to get you to buy boatloads of the overpriced liquid.
This is why you hear horror stories about the scanners on certain printers not working when the ink is low — they want you to max out every credit card you have and take out a personal loan.
And if you’re thinking that third-party ink cartridges might solve the problem? Good luck with that, buster.
I want to be clear though, all the above is a business problem, not a technological one. Printers are amazing, it’s the companies exploiting them that are awful.
But there’s a way around this — and it’s called a black-and-white laser printer.
Rather than using ink, these machines use toner. The difference here is the latter is a powder, rather than a liquid. Without bogging you down with detail, this means it’s easier to reproduce, and you can use third-party replacements without any real loss in quality.
On top of that, the lack of bells-and-whistles means the printer just, well, prints.
And, really, do you really need a colour printer? Or one that scans and copies? Really, why? Why? Why, really? Come on, really, why? You think a home printer will do a better job producing your holiday snaps than the multi-thousand dollar equipment a professional company has?
My guess is you need a printer for some pretty basic tasks; resumes, travel documents, notes, and the like — meaning there’s little need for a fancy-ass machine that can copy documents and pump out full-colour images and fax and staple and brew you a delicious oat milk latte?
It’s this “all-in-one” mentality that’s the cause of so many problems for printers. Companies know we love the idea of having all this functionality in a single place, even if we’ll barely use those features, and use this Swiss Army Knife approach as both a marketing tool and a way to squeeze every last penny from our weak bodies.
But don’t blame poor printers for this. It’s not their fault.
Instead, game the system. Get a low-down-and-dirty printer that’ll spew out greyscale documents with the enthusiasm Rocky Balboa has for being punched repeatedly in the head.
Then, you’ll truly know what love is.