Printers Suck!

I am convinced that the printer is the single worst piece of electronic equipment ever created.  It always seems like if someone is having computer problems, 75% of the time it has something to do with the printer.  Ours is no different.

Last month when we were getting Kris’s dad’s paperwork updated, we had to fax information to one of the government agencies that was requesting information.  Odds are if you have to fax something, 95% of the time it is going to a government agency, because God forbid they would ever modernize and use email and a scanner (But they want us to trust them with running our health care).  Unfortunately, we had only a printer/scanner, not a printer/scanner/fax.  So we had to go out and spend money on a printer that also had a fax machine feature.  Luckily they are pretty cheap (only about $70) it is the ink that costs a fortune (Because as we all know, when the hard times come, printer ink cartridges will be used as currency).

Anyway, before faxing things, I first had to print it.  Well that was where the problem came up.  For whatever reason, jobs were being sent to the print queue and then disappearing, without ever printing.  After running all the self-diagnostics and trouble shooters, and after doing so, I was able to print a test page.  Once that was done and I realigned the print head, I tried to print the documents out, and again, sat there dumbfounded as nothing came out.  I went to the printer maker’s website to check and make sure the driver was up to date, which it was, but still couldn’t get anything to print.  As a last resort, I uninstalled all the printer software and then reinstalled it all, which took about an hour and fifteen minutes or so (that must be the equivalent of ctrl+alt+del when the OS hangs up).  After doing that, I was able to get the test page printed and print head aligned.  Then I when I sent the print job to it, I finally got results.

Total time to actual printed pages was over two hours.  I should be able to charge the damn printer company for my time.  What a waste!  We’re back up and running, at least until the next time when we’re not.