once upon a time i got an Epson 777 with a one-year warranty. thirteen months in, its paper feed broke.

then i got an Epson 820 and bought the extended warranty option from Fry’s (exchange it for free at any store if there are any problems). the one-year mark just passed recently, so we’ll see if it was worth it. :)

Stupid printers.

I’ve been offered $30 for the thing. It still prints fine in two-pages-per-sheet mode because the left-hand strip (where it won’t print) becomes the top margin. It can still be a useful printer, I guess. Maybe I should sell it for $30.

doh. you’re right, Pat! And I certainly did buy it with that card.

well, next time. :)

I started with Epson, but they sucked, so I changed to HP, and they suck. I am now onto a Canon. It hasn’t started sucking yet, but … even though it doesn’t suck yet, it still does all the things I hate about printers: 1. it often takes ages to respond after you’ve pressed Print (and that’s not my computer’s fault: it’s got a 3GB Pentium chip) 2. while it’s warming up it carries on with all sorts of meaningless whirring and screeching and flubbering and farting. 3. when you have to change the cartridge, you press a button to make the ink cartridge holder to come to the center, but you have to hold the appropriate button down for much longer than the manual suggests, and even then it seems unpredictable and temperamental.

Those last two adjectives sum up every printer I’ve owned: unpredicatable and temperamental: in other words UNRELIABLE AND TINNY.

Why the hell can’t anyone produce a printer that lasts more than 18 months and that simply does what it is supposed to do quickly and smoothly, without any fuss? It’s over 30 years since we put a human on the moon ferchristsake!

Well, I just joined the club of disgusted HP Officejet 7410 All-In-One users – lucky me.

I purchased the unit exactly 2 yrs & 2 months ago. Upon trying to send a fax a couple of days ago I got the Scanner Failure Error.

I contacted HP Customer Care (three times before I connected with a representative whose spoken English was spoken well enough to understand), described my situation, and said I was interested in having my machine repaired – oh ya, and advised I did not purchase an extended warranty.

The representative gave a well-rehearsed and authoritative, however completely irrelevant response to my request for repair. He stated if the Scanner Failure Error problem were a software issue a technician could work on it over the phone, but the unit’s problem was mechanical – a diagnosis that took less than one minute to deliver.

The representative wasted no time and with the determination of a used car salesman promoted and described in detail the features of a “beautiful printer” he could replace my crippled and useless unit with for only $225.00. Hmmm, bait the customer’s interest with the guise of a “beautiful” replacement and then flip it into a sale. Wow, I finally have had my first opportunity to experience and learn about HP Customer world class “Care.” I sure am happy I recently purchased that HP Pavilion notebook!

I informed the representative I paid $450 for the unit and expected it to last longer, and, that I never purchase extended warranties because part of my purchase decision is based on quality expectations. Since when did it become accepted protocol for the consumer to be burdened with specific additional cost in order to insure the quality of any product? In my book it is up to the manufacturer to deliver a quality product!

The representative offered to send me to a phone technician for a diagnosis – hmmm. I asked to speak with a supervisor and he said there was no supervisor. I repeated my desire to have the unit repaired and he suggested I seek out a local service provider to which I suggested it was HP responsibility to back their product. Long story short, he thanked me for my call and hung up on me.

My response to this situation is to vote with my dollars and not purchase another HP product. HP sucks.

Printers these days are crap. The manufacturers have gotten complacent (not just HP, seems to be a cartel these days), and they use materials that can easily break when doing something as simple as clearing a paper jam. (And stuff like that should be user servicable!)

What is needed is for a team involved in open source hardware projects to address this issue and design and make the plans for a series of printers to be made publicly available. The designs should be comparable to basic commercial model at first. (300 DPI or so, perhaps incorporate a scanner for multifunction or have multi-format paper feed availble. Get that working, then improve from there.) Then if you don’t have a machine shop available, it should be a matter of finding a distributor for the parts (and perhaps to a limited degree, service) of such printers. (I could also see people grouping together to bulk order on plans given to limited run prototyping manufacturers.) I know I wouldn’t mind paying $300 for a kit, if I knew I could use line-fed ink bottles for cheap and had something completely user-servicable. (If the plans are public, or if you put it together yourself – that’s actually a feature!)

Software may not be perfect at first, but that has aspect has already been proven viable under the open source model. Provided the developers are skilled, and users develop good rapport and feedback, the drivers and other software features for the printers can only improve with time.

If somebody ever accomplishes that feat, I’d suspect the quality of consumer grade models would go up substantially. The current cartel of manufacturers would no longer have their excuses for complacency (or outright malfeasance). Yes they can make newer model printers that look pretty, but if they break too easy or are stupid expensive on ink, then there’s something wrong with them. I shouldn’t be paying more than $200 for a dust-collecting paperweight.