I hate printers. Hate them hate them. They hate me.

[ritaxis]

I have easily spent a thousand dollars over the last six years or so on printers -- not ink, that's a whole other fiasco -- and I never ever have a working printer. And whatever is wrong with the printer can never just be fixed.

The last printer had a phantom paper jam. No paper was acutally jammed but I couldn't convince the printer of this fact and the manufacturer had no advice.

This one simply doesn't print. As far as I can tell, the printer thinks it's in fine condition: the computer thinks it's in fine condition: the USB connection appears to be in order . . . it just doesn't print. Not from Open Office, not from Word Perfect, not from Notepad, and not from a command prompt, and not from Windows troubleshooting. It will print a nozzle check. I have gone through the troubleshooting steps in Windows and from the manufacturer's website. I am currently uninstalling the printer so I can re-install it. After that I guess I have to go crying to the manufacturer's phone help, at which point. . . I don't know. There's not much support for the model.

I hate the idea of giving up on having my own printer and taking files to a copy shop for printing, but I may have to. Too bad Kinko's, the big, well-equipped one down the street, closed.

On another front, I have decided to write other things for about a week and then go on a revision blitz for the not-Poland story before continuing with the draft, because the things I need to do to the story are giving me the trots, I can't sit and write the further stuff until I get that other stuff fixed.

On yet another front: spring blossoms scented the air when I rode over to the Women's Center this evening to teach moms in recovery how to do fingerplays with their babies. February's almost over, and it hasn't been very winter-like lately, but I haven't been heavily impressed with spring events either. The almond tree is blooming, though.

edit: . . . and the uninstall-reinstall did the trick. But why, for the love of all things real and beautiful, did I have to do this? Why don't things just work?

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

There are more-reliable and less-reliable brands, but I think you have identified that there's a really serious problem at present with printer drivers. It's made worse by a lot of printers, especially for home use, being very complicated printing/scanning devices that will print on a lot of different materials; and the DRM ink systems which artificially lower the cost of printers. WiFi printing doesn't seem to work as well as it should either.

Result -- lots of people buy completely unsuitable printers for their needs, because nobody is helping them work out what they need. As operating systems develop, the responsibility for keeping old printers working is with the printer manufacturers, who have absolutely no incentive to do this. There's a lot to go wrong, and it's very hard to fix issues outside a narrow range.

I *think* Apple's AirPrint is a partial attempt to deal with this -- they put out a specification for AirPrint, and manufacturers have to match that. They can then keep supporting AirPrint as they update the OS, so printers won't suddenly stop working. Maybe.

Anyway. You are right, and it's not just you.

Longterm solution, of course, is that we all reduce the amount we print.