To want a printer that just fucking works?!

[BertieBotts]

I am sick to death of it. Printers are such bastards.

Does anyone have such a magical appliance that doesn't randomly uninstall itself, pretend it's offline, refuse to recognise paper, says ink is completely empty when it's half full, jump into life and print something that seems to belong to a neighbour, implement a completely pointless 5 minute wait between printouts, just stop halfway through a perfectly fine printout and have a tantrum, or any other shenanigans?

They all work fine for a month and then the printer gremlins move in. I don't want to spend loads on one because we don't use it that often. I don't need any fancy features (a scanner is nice) I just want it to WORK!

Any recommendations?

YANBU I've just been unclogging paper from mine with a fork and tweezers. FML. It clogs up every other time I use it. It's almost new.

Ours has just done that, it keeps telling us what is wrong, we do what it wants, and it still won't function as a printer. I feel I'm dealing with a toddler not a piece of equipment! GRRR!

My printer incites the RAGE in me!

Printers can smell fear.
Agree, and they crave attention too. I leave mine alone, gathering dust, behind me in my office (I sit with my back to it). When I do switch it on it's so grateful for some action it flashes nice colours and chirrups in printer language and does whatever I ask.

Indeed they are the work of the devil.

What I can't understand is the necessity for it to make so many random noises when it first gets switched on. And every so often ours gets in to a state where every time you try to print it just produces the test page.

I have deleted everything in the queue. Turned it off. Waited a few seconds and turned it on. Tries to print and it still has some random crap I have tried to get rid of.

DH spent what I thought at the time was a wholly unreasonably large amount of money on a Xerox laser printer about 3 years ago.

I swear, it has been brilliant. No problems. Always connects. Always prints. Completely trouble free. It hasn't even worked out that expensive, because we've only had to replace one of the toner cartridges in all that time.

The only drawback is that it huge, and expensive upfront, even if it does work out much less expensive in the long run.

But don't tell DH I said that.

Every single printer I've ever had has behaved exactly like yours. It's a constant irritation.

I am convinced that you need to charm printers, like some kind of black magic.

Some of my family are quite techy - we can never make printers work. Others are airy fairy types: the printers always work for them.

Less logic and more feelings seem to be required.

My Canon occasionally says it's offline when it's not. Only with my work laptop though, not my personal one. At work all the printers decided they were offline for me too. I think my problem is a Microsoft/Canon issue. It'll print fine tomorrow - stupid thing.

I am scared to tell you what my current printer is as I might jinx it. Apart from my work laptop not letting me install the driver (think that is more to do with the work software) it seems to behave quite well.

I had an epson printer before and it was a total arsehole. I swear it KNEW when something was urgent / important and took delight in not working (application form, resources needed by a deadline etc). If the DCs wanted to print something for fun...worked fine then.

I fucking hate my printer.

You have my every sympathy. I fucking hate printers! They never work and mines constantly asks for cyon ?sp
Aarrggghhh!!!

Mines is refusing to work today so came on her then seen this thread 😂

Gave up on printers years ago and just use print shops now. There’s even some that will post the printed sheets out to you. Not only does it avoid all the stress and waste but I’m convinced it’s actually cheaper in the long run.

I gave up and bought a laser printer. Only B&W but I'm mostly printing amazon return labels. I love it! Toner is expensive but lasts loads longer and doesn't dry out in between my return labels 😂

I've got an ancient b&w Lazer that an old workplace was discarding. No wifi so I share a print folder with husband who is connected to it. But it's the only printer I've ever had that works as you'd expect - ie send to print and then printed paper comes out.

Currently have an Epsom business one that your pour ink into. Has not let me down so far unlike those hp bastards with their cartridges. I cannot work without a printer. I have been reduced to tears on more than one occasion. They are the worst machine ever.

Printers are bastards!!
I have to switch off the WiFi booster for mine to work, then it says the brand inks I've just paid 40 fucking quid for are empty, then it does print but stop half way through to chew the paper up, I despair!!
And now it's latest trick is to eat hair bands though I suspect my 8 year old DS may have helped it so I might possibly forgive the printer for that 1 failure but for the rest, the printer can go fuck itself!!

Even the massive fancy printers in offices are designed to tell you what’s wrong and walk you through fixing with colour coded, easy to find buttons and levers to unjam. They must be a more complicated technology than Ed give them credit for. Can’t understand why though

We also gave up and bought a laser printer.

The contrast! Not only does it print what you want when you want it, but it’s also really fast and quiet. No soggy prints either.

I think they are quite complicated and I can forgive that for the physical parts. It's the software parts that make me rage because that ought to 100% be fixable. Also I rarely have an issue with the hardware. It's the computer side.

I could have written this. Just bought a new bastard cartridge and it still doesn't work. Arsehole printer.

Brother, laser no wi-fi connect, only usb. Bliss!

I found a YouTube video that sorted mine after trying for days with the help desk and forums.

If you want a seldom used, but reliable printer, you want to buy a semi-decent black toner laser printer. Not an expensive one, just not the cheapest one available. Look one or two steps up and consider the cost of the replacement cartridges when you are pricing them.

We run two printers, our work horse laser and a ridiculously fiddly canon inkjet that prints just gorgeous color, especially on high quality paper that I use for special projects. If I don’t use the canon for a bit, it ruins the first few prints by splotching ink randomly and it uses 13 cartridges that all seem to run out amazingly quickly. So the laser printer is the default.

No! Printers have got even worse lately. I bought one recently which came with ink - but I had to sign up for a subscription in order to be able to use it! There was then also a limit on how many pages I was allowed to print - despite it being my paper! Credit card automatically gets charged if you over. Cancelled out of that situation and then the ink that came with the printer was remotely disabled by then so that it wouldn’t work! Terrible business model.