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?

YABVU because there is no such thing as a printer that works. More chance of seeing the Loch Ness Monster.

@SweetBabyCheeses99 was that the hp instant ink program? Drives me INSANE.

Printers are conscious beings. They do the opposite of what you want to deliberately wind you up. Like cats.

@Morgoth

Printers are conscious beings. They do the opposite of what you want to deliberately wind you up. Like cats.

They can smell fear and hurry

YABU. Printers are one of life's trials to be endured and there's nothing you can do about it.

I use 5 different printers on a regular basis both at home and at work.
Every single one has issues on wifi. I bought every single one a printer lead and plugged them all into their nearest pc. Every single one now works perfectly every time and has done so for the last year.
Just don't believe the lies, there is no such thing as a wireless printer that works.

Just send all the stuff you want printed to the pc that is plugged into the printer. Works every time.

YANBU you just have look at mine funny and it’s un-installs itself. If you have to turn off plug for any reason it refuses to talk to you for least a month. Will randomly eat 8 pages and then shuffle them so little bit of print appears across all of them and unusable. Oh and middle of night it will start up and set and give you a heart attack!

They can smell fear and hurry

Exactly this. They sense it in the air like a bloodhound. They’re sentient and I’m sure most are possessed by some sort of poltergeist.

The likelihood of your printer printing what you want is inversely correlated with the urgency of you needing it. Need to print an important document for a life-changing meeting or interview? FORGET IT. Clearly the optimal time for the printer to uninstall for no reason whatsoever.

Canon pixma series but now superceded but i printed 21000 greeting cards on the a4 version ..also have a3 canon also printed thousands no problem .5 individual inks ( 2 blacks) ..inks supplied by Www.worldofinks.co.uk in Petersfield excellent service ...no affiliation to them but great one man b and servicec. Hth ..

And I agree with PP’s. What is it with printers “suddenly coming alive” in the middle of the night and scaring you to death?!

I refuse to have a printer for this reason. I have bought numerous printers and everyone has been a massive, stressing, malfunctioning wind up merchant. Good luck Op you have my sympathy.

All printers are cunts.

I have a theory that they are a social experiment to assess how much shit we will put up from an inanimate object before setting them on fire.

Plus you need to watch this...

m.youtube.com/watch?v=SgqaYEqJWGE

They are really annoying and a 100% cash cow. These companies could fix these problems in a heartbeat, but they're just a mechanism to make a massive markup on ink.

The Oatmeal has a good cartoon on this phenomenon:

theoatmeal.com/comics/printers

We use ours maybe 4 times a year. Works great first time. After that always get empty ink messages. They aren't empty but have probably dried out to a degree.
We put our cartridge in a bowl of hot water for an hour, dry off and put back in the printer, it then works fine again until the next time when we repeat the process

I remember listening to a podcast years ago, it was a group of IT guys and they were speaking about printers. They were saying that it is the only piece of equipment that can seem to stop working with no apparent issues.

Honestly printers are the worst, rather go back to printing blocks 🙈

We had one at work once that spoke.
I used to have to fight the urge to ask it to make me a coffee!

I would rather take toddler twins tanked up on energy drinks to a wedding than print a document.

I don't think I've dared use mine since Easter 2020 as the trauma of printing two children's "home learning" was too much to bear after two weeks.

As soon as you replace a cartridge it then decides that another colour needs replacing. This was annoying enough when Staples was 2 miles down the road. In fact it probably would have been quicker to hop to Staples while blindfolded and get them to do the printing.

There was one day that my previous printer definitely smelt urgency and fear and ended up being so enraging that only the thought of having to sweep up the components from the drive saved it from being lobbed out of a first floor window in frustration.

I didn't have this much bother with the dot matrix printer for the Amstrad!

Printers were bastards when home PCs first became a thing in the 1990s. There was a brief golden age when they started working properly, circa 2005 - 2010. Then, some printer-twat had to over-complicate them with air drop and wifi and they went back to their natural bastard state.

I brought a brand new one that for no love nor money will fucking work. I’ve set it up per the instructions, pressed every bloody button under the sun and nothing. It never bloody prints, it’s not recognised and I can’t fucking buy ink for it because it’s not recognised

@LilithTheKitty

I've got a laser printer now. Only black and white, as the colour one was out of my budget, but it's brilliant. Prints straight away, no need to clean print heads and the toner lasts forever.

Same here. Not a moment's trouble.

The best thing for printers is for them to be taken out on to the back concrete and threshed to death with a big hammer.

upinaballoon I actually did this. Shameful I know but it was my 4th printer, it was lockdown and loads of kids work to print off, I was feeling stressed anyway and I took the biggest hammer i could find to it....after jumping on it and kicking it against the wall repeatedly and calling it a no good c**t. Never been violent before or since. The kids weren't there but the neighbours probably were! I've never admitted this before

In a similar boat to you all.

Ours will accept only one sheet at a time.
Coaxed gently with silk gloved hands whilst praying to the Gods of Canon, it nevertheless chews up said A4 sheet and jams in 50% of printing occasions.

The printer at work was a Multi Functional Device; we all called it the Mother Fucker Device because it NEVER, EVER printed right the first time. I was nearly in tears one day because it would NOT print 2 pages. It gave up at 1 and sulked.

Printers must hear the worst language, they get called all sorts.
I sit near the printer at work.....