Are ALL home printers complete bastards?

[CharliesAngles]

As in, really unreliable, expensive and utterly contemptible temperamental twats?

We've had three.
All "good" brands - HP, Epson etc, and they've all been absolutely useless.
Only print come alive when they feel like it.
Refuses to connect to the WiFi.
Always running out of ink (Like, how???? When you've refused to print a damn thing ever?!)
Not even wanting to print out loads. It's just the odd thing for DCs school work now and then.

Just wondering if I'm missing something here, and all you wonderful MNs are in some secret club, and actually know of the Holy Grail of home printers?

Share please? 🙏

Yes. Ours is totally shit. Never works , hate it.

Yep, I don’t know how it’s possible

I have never had any luck printing wi-fi with any of mine. Luckily I mainly print from my laptop which I can plug into the printer with a lead.

The printer has one job. I have no idea why it is completely incapable of doing its one job with any reliability.
Hate the bloody thing. So many flashing lights for its pathetic reasons why it can’t print. Argh.

They are all dickheads BUT they do sink into obsolescence after a few years so it might be worth hurling your current printer into the sea and getting an up-to-date model. Our cheap new printer is excellent (HP I think), whereas our expensive old one didn’t work at all.

Lol. I know...and since the pandemic and WFH i can't even avail myself of the office one now as a back up!

If you only print occasionally then the ink can dry out and clog. You really need to print regularly otherwise they just waste the ink on cleaning cycles. If you use 3rd party inks they can also cause problems.

YES.

Yes.
HTH.

Ah, not just me then.

Hate mine. It never works.

All printers (and sewing machines) have little sensors on that can detect your stress levels. When it reaches a certain point, they refuse to work.

We replaced a Canon Ink Guzzling Money Burner MK1 with an Epson Massive Ink Reservoir Only Prints 3 Lines Before Quitting. I think it would be cheaper and quicker to keep a scribe to copy stuff manually from my screen…

Yup - ours is a total PITA too. It refused to connect to the wifi all last week so I fitted a cable to it yesterday as it obviously can’t be trusted. Hopefully that’ll teach it!

yes 🤣

Indeed

Yes they are. I tend to use the library to print stuff now but it’s not cheap and obviously limited opening times. If I need to print something it’s always at a stupid time and needed like three hours ago. Home printers just make me growl.

@ProfessorRizz
I've shoved it in a cupboard in the dining room for the time being, to let it have some time to think over its life choices and hoping it will be shamed into action

Was sick of it giving me smug looks.
Maybe I will get it out and accidentally drop it.

From a height.

Yes, complete pricks. It's why there's so many memes / jokes and stereotypes about it.

The only way we can get ours to work is to hardwire the connection (HDMI). If we try to print remotely over wi-fi it works maybe 3/10 times. Useless

(edited - sorry, it's my phone's turn to be a complete pricks)

Yes.
I have a thermal printer. It's wonderful but only prints black and white and on thermal paper. But no ink so really cheap to run.
Not suitable for everyone but brilliant for my needs (until I wanted to print out a CV, then I had to go to local stationers). I'll never go back to ink jet, never.

Oh yes. Ours have sat in the cupboard under the stairs waiting to ruin our day. Total bastards.
The current one is mostly reliable, but gets through ink as though we’re printing War & Peace every week.

I have a Brother multi function laser printer which is at least ten years old and is brilliant.

Has been reliable, and available over my home network. Toner isn't cheap, but it does work reliably.

My cheap very old Brother laser printer is the only one that has ever worked reliably for me (still does). It plugs into the laptop with a USB cable. None of the fancy WIFI printers ever worked.

Op i feel your pain. We have a HP printer which rarely gets used. The ink always always dries up and won't work. I ring up and they say order new bike ...I go to my library instead now. I admit defeat 😕

Only one we have every found any good was a second hand laser B&W printer which we had years ago. It wore out in the end 😢
various new printers, all sorts of problems - not wanting to connect, jamming... (I think the ink problem isn't so bad if you print a lot and often, else the ink dries up and clogs the dispenser)
Our local church had a huge, really expensive super-duper one that they mostly used for printing the parish mag. It collated the pages too. After some years of regular expensive repairs they gave up. Now the required pages are emailed to a printing company in Germany and the set of mags returned complete. They couldn't find a company in the UK who would do it more cheaply!