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Printers: the ubiquitous symbol of modern hell – Telegraph Blogs
...Guardian Money reported yesterday how printing companies are screwing consumers with smaller cartridges. Measure-for-measure, ink is now more expensive than vintage champagne. Hewlett Packard cartridges, for example, are five times worse value than a decade ago.
The other manufacturers are just as bad, making cartridges smaller and harder to refill. They've got ink on their hands. Epson say the technology is more efficient now, meaning it's better value. They're efficient all right, when they work. The machines are the most temperamental, rage-inducing beasts ever inflicted on us.
Like call-centre phone lines, these machines are a ubiquitous symbol of modern hell. From the cryptic error messages to the dreaded paper jam, they find new ways to keep you up late sweating and swearing. You see people lose their partner or their job, but nothing compares to the blind rage induced by a printer which won't respond. Somewhere between Googling "Ricoh C2060 won't print" and kicking the whole thing to pieces, they realise they are completely helpless.
How, in an age of rapid innovation, have printers remained quite so useless? The big brands haven't even bothered to make them look good. With names such as DL882X, and noises like reversing lorries, they are a throwback to an era of floppy disks and the millennium bug. It's all very pre-dotcom.
Now we are getting ahead of ourselves, talking about 3D printers. In the future, they say, you'll be able to print out a washing machine, or even a house. It might change consumer capitalism forever. But even if they do design a machine which can spurt out affordable homes without suffering a brick jam, you can't help dreading the moment you are prompted to print the paperwork.
