To fucking hate printers? (A rant about HP Instant Ink)

[QuestionableMouse]

Trying to print a returns label with my shit goblin of a printer. It's black and white and the black cartridge is full. The colour one has an issue apparently and so I can't print anything.

I also can't get a replacement cartridge from Instant Ink until I resolve the problem yet I've ran through all of the steps at least three times without them fixing anything and the problem only started with the cartridge they sent me. I've given in and ordered a new colour cartridge because I'm so frustrated.

Why are printers so fucking frustrating?! It's one black and white page ffs!

I was going to post the cat vs printer link but someone has beaten me to it!
My adult DC has an ongoing rant about the fact that we have about 7 printers in this house but only one works.........I am always about to try and get the others to work..........I should give up.

I would go for a brand/model that can do double -sided printing and about 20 pages/minute (faster if you want to print loads). Many now offer printing from phones (Apple or Google print).

Our HP has served us well, but look through some reviews on Currys/Amazon to help you decide.

We have 3.

One has been hurled out onto the patio in fury to die in the rain.
Ds’s only works when the moon is in the right quarter and needs endless tlc to even think about complying
Our main HP glowers in the front from. It has no home as it’s too big to fit anywhere. I think it resents being homeless and doesn’t comply for this reason.

I wisely paid an additional £15 for a warranty. In that 2 years I got through 3 printers 🙄. Final one still going but have a laser printer still in its box for when the inevitable happens.

How unlike printers are to washing machines. Ours has served us well for 15 years now.

Our printer likes to play favourites with me & DH. Sometimes it'll only accept print requests from me (and not just my laptop, from my phone too) while refusing to acknowledge DH. Other times, it decides it's a Daddy's printer and ignores me but can't wait to do DH's bidding. It's like having a histrionic child who is also our office manager.

Oh this thread has made me laugh - My Epson twat is sitting under my desk - looming - It has decided to spring into life and put the flimsy paper tray out like a dragon's tongue as if inviting me to tread on it - at which point the whole thing is broken for the sake of a tray ( cf - for the want a nail , the shoe was lost - for the want a shoe the horse was lost etc etc ) .

Are laser printers better and are they much more expensive - I do print out photographs & honestly I am not up for going to a supermarket or snappy snaps or similar, by the time I have got to either I will have lost the will to live - although plastic twat is already doing that for me - is there a decent ( colour ) laser printer available?

@LikeAGlove

Oh god. We have a HP printer too and it I actually loathe the thing. DH stays away from me when I have to use it.

Nothing in the world gets me so angry as that damn printer.

I too have HP problems non-stop, I'm fed up of having to re-input my wireless passwoprd for starters and that's really fiddly to do. It randomly shows as being off-line but will suddenly start printing. Being on my own I can kick it was much as I like!

@QuestionableMouse

I tried taking the colour cartridge out but then it threw a strop because it didn't have both cartridges.

It is a shit goblin. 😁😂😂😂

SOrry if you've already checked this but is the printer set for black and white rather than colour? I once spent ages messing with this, even though it was a b/w document it was set for colour and the cartridges were empty.

@Kljnmw3459

We had a printer-scanner some years ago and it would stop functioning unless all the ink cartridges were branded and full. We couldn't scan anything or print black and white if for example yellow was out. Then we dared to use a universal ink and it just totally stopped working ever again.

My HP will take non-branded cartridges though it gives me a message, a sort of printer naughty step.

When aliens invade the earth - they will look at two things - 1) dogs are the dominant species because humans follow them around picking up their crap and 2) Printers speak their language and have been lurking for decades as some sort of 5th columnists , waiting for a more technological species to come and make them part of the Glorious Alien Reign. - Obviously thinking of aliens as a bit more robot like than organic here.

I hate to tempt fate but I really like my HP printer, and I have also been using the Instant Ink service for years with no problems.

I can say that any occasional time that the printer has played up was when I really needed the printing done quickly.

We had an HP printer, well several over the years, where I used to work. The owner of the business insisted on HP printers as he was convinced of their superiority, despite the fact that they were always going wrong.

My cheap Lexmark produces faultless copies, prints both sides and also prints photos.

My last one, also a Lexmark, which I had for years, died when the rollers stopped picking up the paper. Obviously the same problem being experienced by that poor cat in the 'cat versus printer' clip; I feel his pain.

We had a printer-scanner some years ago and it would stop functioning unless all the ink cartridges were branded and full.

Isn't that illegal under competition law - that you don't get free choice as to which ink to buy? Or would they just program them that way and then deny everything?

I work from home as the main admin person, so I have a colour laser printer/scanner at home provided by work, who also buy all of the supplies. 99% of what I print is for work, but it's handy having it for the odd bit of our own printing well, we pay for the electricity anyway.

It's a Canon, which I've certainly found much less annoying than the previous makes I've had - HP and Epson being especially bad. It does warn you to beware of the ubiquity of 'counterfeit' ink, by which I suppose they technically mean fake ink pretending to be official Canon ink, but is obviously designed to make you panic about using third-party compatibles that never claim to be the branded stuff too.

However tempting it is, ever buy a printer for less than £100-£200. They're designed to fail and are treated by the manufacturers as effectively just the packaging for their expensive inks.

I would definitely never go back to inkjet again. I would have used the word 'diva' too! You're relying on every single one of the many nozzles staying clean, clear and functional, which they inevitably fail to do after a while - just one of them out will likely nobble your whole page. It's such frustrating, fallible technology.

I don't know the scientific details of the exact workings, but lasers give a much better and reliable coverage and finish. Inkjets are designed to be extremely fancy in their design and spec; lasers are just designed to get the job reliably done. Lasers will last you for far, far more pages, over a good few years, and when they eventually die, they're well and truly borked and it's time for a replacement. Before too long, with an inkjet, you just have to get used to it getting less and less good and putting up with it until it eventually just gets too bad and irritating to tolerate any more.

On an entirely unrelated note, it so happens that inkjet printers were invented by a man whereas laser printers were invented by a woman....

ever buy a printer for less than £100-£200.

NEVER, that should have said.

I hate printers. Mine refused to print saying no paper. Despite me loading paper. I am afraid we had a falling out and my printer is in bits...

I have a HP that must be at least 15 years old. I remember when it was in regular use in our office, it was amazing. And by amazing I mean it only did the things it was supposed to do. I guess we set a very low bar for our printers, eh?

I upgraded when I was printing my wedding invites myself to a printer that would print card and kept the HP going a while as it could print the inlays with gold ink. So I had two printers for the one job. Both worked wonderfully until I eventually put the huge HP away in storage and then the Epson, upon realising it was now the only one, started acting like the little bitch all printers want to be. I swear to god that thing suddenly behaves when the HP comes back out. The HP is like a threat.

A fifth wave is right. Printers are the forefathers of Skynet, waiting to destroy us one day but settling for now just to kill off as many of us by high blood pressure.

Yea, I’ve had that Epsom/HP combo who will only play nicely if they are together.

If they are apart then they just ram the shutters down on everything.

Hansgrueber, we had this. In the end it came down to internet providers. We have 18 items linked to the router ( don’t ask)

Bt couldn’t hack it, even on super dooper fast infinity. We switched to Vodafone mobile, and they all worked. And we no longer pay a standing charge.

Had to buy new printer recently. HP envy pro. HP smart app won't bloody work on my phone at all. Poxy useless thing.

Oh yeah, I have the smart app. Pain in the arse!

When the world witnesses The Rise of the Machines, it won't be expensive defence computers that start it off.

It'll be attributable to the printers and photocopiers of the world, who have clearly become self aware over the last 30 years, hate all humans and have been quietly rebelling with non existent paper jams and replace toner/ink instructions for the entire time. And now we've put them all online so they can join together in combating the Human Threat.

There's a storm coming.

Remember. Printers are Skynet.

[Ominous theme music starts]

I hate printers. Mine refused to print saying no paper. Despite me loading paper. I am afraid we had a falling out and my printer is in bits...

At least it's good to know that it saw that it was indeed BU and was consequently overcome with contrite emotion

I've had the exact same issue this week with HP. No phone number to contact them and the Advisor bot on their website gave me the rage.

If you cancel the plan you then get a number to call which has resulted in me getting new ink sent, even though my colour ink is supposedly 65% full. What a faff

I think there's a love/hate relationship within the printer designer/developer community. Although we all know that the world isn't ready to go completely paperless just yet (if indeed it ever will), in the minds of the super high-tech geeks, the whole idea of actually printing a hard copy on to paper is just yesterday's news - so archaic that they just can't put their hearts and energies into caring enough to make something brilliant and reliable. They personally only ever use the cloud and simply can't understand why anybody else would really care much about a printer as anything more than a mediaeval curiosity that they retain out of habit.

This might be a slight stretch, but I always think the same with the brittle little grippy claw things in the middle of CD and DVD cases, which were probably never fit for purpose from the very start. I've bought some DVDs for presents and, although the case is still nice and clean and factory sealed on the outside, there's that instant tell-tale rattle, before it's ever even been opened. Millions of us (especially those of us over a certain age) still use discs on a daily basis - and get really irritated when a disc ends up rattling around loose in the box rather than securely held in its proper place - but they'll never bother to look for a functional alternative that actually works because "oh, nobody uses discs now".

I've had the exact same issue this week with HP. No phone number to contact them and the Advisor bot on their website gave me the rage.

To YOU, it's an 'advisor'; to THEM, it's a mechanised off-fobber.

I so get the rage with machines designed to gaslight you into thinking that you're the one to blame. We've had a number of Panasonic HDD recorders, which are brilliant most of the time, but they can be prone to failure (they have a 'Deskstar' HDD which I believe is widely referred to in the trade as the 'Deathstar'). When the HDD fails to properly record a programme - and it's always 'operation stopped/was unsuccessful', no actual apologies at all - it recommends that you 'use another disc'. Like your car breaking down on the motorway and giving you an error message telling you to try using an alternative engine to proceed.