Why are printers so crap?

p4radox

p4radox

p4radox

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Joined
1 Oct 2004
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Every printer I've owned has been awful. These are:

Epson Stylus Colour 400
HP Deskjet 990cxi
HP Deskjet D1460

A summary of the problems I have had with my printers:

Ink levels not reported correctly
Unable to cancel print jobs
Unable to borderless print
Poor quality printing, even after cleaning print heads and replacing cartridges
Computer grinds to a halt whilst printing
Multiple pages fed into printer at once

And these same problems have occured on numerous computers and 2 different interfaces. What is it with printers? Is it impossible to make one that just... works?
 
Maybe I should buy a Canon next time.

The annoying thing is, I rarely print photos now. I only really print reports, so I got this D1460 on the cheap. If it simply didn't work I'd buy a new one. But it works, but badly, so I'm loathe to buy a new one...

Right now I've got a 13 page document in the print queue and it's just sitting there like a lemon. I can't delete the job, and turning the thing off has no effect.
 
got a Cannon MP380 and its really excellent. before that had old epson and lexmark, but they were cheap 30-40 pound ones.

Only few probs back with the cheaper ones
 
p4radox said:
Every printer I've owned has been awful. These are:

Epson Stylus Colour 400
HP Deskjet 990cxi
HP Deskjet D1460

A summary of the problems I have had with my printers:

Ink levels not reported correctly
Unable to cancel print jobs
Unable to borderless print
Poor quality printing, even after cleaning print heads and replacing cartridges
Computer grinds to a halt whilst printing
Multiple pages fed into printer at once

And these same problems have occured on numerous computers and 2 different interfaces. What is it with printers? Is it impossible to make one that just... works?
Click to expand...


Because you ain't bought a Canon esp the Pixma range. ;)
 
I had an epson stylus C70 years ago. It wasn't too bad but I didn't use it for a long time then had problems with print quality where the ink just dried up. I bought new cartridges and tried cleaning it etc but that didn't work so I binned it.

Told myself I would never buy an inkjet again and bought a brother HL-2070N monocrome laser printer and its fantastic. Okay so it doesn't print pictures to well ;) but for under £100 with built in print server its just plain awesome. Not to mention the cheap consumables for it!
 
The Canon MP's (ie MP600 etc) INK cannot dry out.

Every time you turn it off a kind of robotic arm puts a rubber cap over each print nozzle to keep the air out it (like your Permanent Marker Lid). ;)
 
Have a Canon Pixma MP160. Was a reasonable price, does everything well (including colour photocopying). Only bad points are slightly slow startup time when first switched on, and cubersome size.
 
I got an old C42 that I still use ( Mainly cos I have half a billion inks for it )
My main Printer is a CX3200 ( Cos I got the other half a billin inks for that too )

Although I do also have an RX520 thats hardly been used ( but I got no inks for that and wont have till I use up the CX3200s)

Basically, the CX3200 and the C42 have served me VERY well... I have had to strip them both down now, and reset the counters etc more than once, but they are still running very strong ( If a little noisy and slow ) and I have had far more use out of them than I really should have, I truly have...

As an example, I am the secretary of our local community center and every thursday, for the last 2 or so years, I have printed out 25 copies of the minutes ( which is usually 4 to 7 pages ), plus all the copies of any and all of our community newsletters ( perhaps 2 or 3 a month, but for every house in *** whole area ( 789 by the way ) ) plus any and all other thigns such as youthClub and KidClub newsletters and forms etc

As an example, only today, the CX3200 has been printing non stop from about 8:30 when I got in, till just past 11 and has gone through a whole ream of paper ( 250 sheets ) in just today and yesterday and its still not done and thats this weeks printouts.

So, as I said, thats what its done every week for the last 2 or 3 years.

( No, I dont pay for it, I got the printer bought for me, I get a small fee to cover the electricity used, and all the paper and inks are provided by the council in case you are asking )
 
or a Dell Laser printer.

i've got a little networked beast-of-a-printer right next to me, its printed about two thousand sheets of full text and the toner cartridge is more than 75% full, and it only takes 2.14s per page to print, which doesn't increase if there's more stuff on the page.

Laser > Inkjet.
 
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