Dump Your Stupid Inkjet Printer!
Seriously, dump it. It’s stupid. Go “Office Space” on that thing. You have been in this abusive relationship for far too long and it’s time to move on.
I hate inkjet printers because they suck and they’re money pits. And yet for some reason, almost everyone seems to have one. Let’s break this down:
Inkjet pros:
- When it works, you can quickly print out a color photo of passable – not pro – quality.
- Inconsistent print quality.
- Expensive ink cartridges.
- Expensive photo paper.
- Clogged ink nozzles.
- The time you spend troubleshooting them.
- The space they waste in your home/office.
- The frustration they cause you when yet another expensive piece of photo paper is wasted because your inkjet sucks.
Sure, maybe the relationship started out well enough. You got the printer cheap and initially, it made some decent prints. Then it sat there for a couple of months and the print heads started to cake with dry ink. Maybe the nozzles clogged. So you try the inkjet utility and run the “clean print heads” function on the quick setting. It doesn’t work, so you go with medium and then eventually high. Maybe that even worked, but you just consumed 30% of the ink in that $40 print cartridge performing maintenance. And 3 months later, maybe you can do it all again.
Maybe one day you decide to use a cheap $10 cartridge from a 3rd party that offers 100% compatible cartridges guaranteed. That works nicely initially and you think you’ve found a clever way to circumvent the expensive ink cartridge scheme. But later on, you find out that this cheap ink has clogged up the printer worse than the expensive stuff and rendered your printer useless. So you get another printer, rinse, and repeat the ridiculousness.
In four years since I bought my little HP laser printer, I’ve enjoy super-fast prints – tons of them in fact and only had to replace the toner once. My sheet music prints come out much crisper, prettier than any inkjet could have managed, and it covers 99% of the rest of my printing just fine. In the rare cases when I need a nice color print or photo, I send the job electronically to a print house and get something back that is also much prettier that a home inkjet would have done. I also saved money and a lot of frustration.
If I buy a computer and they offer me a free inkjet, even if there’s no stupid rebate attached to the deal (which there always is), I’ll say no thank you. Goodbye crappy inkjets. Good riddance. /rant
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