It's done.
The old printer has been deposed. Long live the new printer!
I ordered it at 4.30pm yesterday and it was delivered at noon today. How is that even possible? Dark magic perhaps.
It took just 45 minutes to unbox and set it up. The whole process went smoothly... print was calibrated and software updated. It effortlessly reached through the ether and found my laptop and they instantly hit it off.
It printed wirelessly at first time of asking, purring quietly without all the hooing and haahing and cartridge shuffling which characterised my interactions with the old printer.
It does my bidding without kicking up a fuss or spitting sheets of paper at me. It hasn't mangled anything.... yet.
Of course, it's currently on its best behaviour, minding it's p's and q's and going out of its way to anticipate my every need and complying immediately.
It's small and neat and sits unobtrusively on the window shelf by my desk in the office. The old printer was a hulking great thing.... really heavy and it boded big time. It's currently boding in the dining room while I decide what to do with it. I don't want to consign it to landfill so I'll try to freecycle it. Perhaps someone with much more technical nous than us could return it to health. At the very least it has about a dozen brand new ink cartridges which might do someone a turn.
We've never really seen eye to eye... the old printer and I. It was only a few weeks old when it maliciously chewed up a sheet of adhesive labels and was never the same again. I'm guarding against getting lulled into a false sense of security by the newcomer though. Just because everything's fine and dandy at the moment doesn't mean it will stay that way.
The first test will be a batch of double sided A5 leaflets, which I need to print by this weekend. Of course before I even attempt that, I need to order more inks. For some inexplicable reason, printer manufacturers supply new machines with 'starter' cartridges, which contain a mere scintilla of ink and last about 10 minutes.
Which brings me to my next pet peeve. Why are branded cartridges so damn expensive? Granted the new printer takes XL capacity cartridges, which are claimed to print 600 pages for the colours, more for the blacks. However, as that depends on the print quality used, it's practically impossible to check the claims made. My leaflets have to be reasonable quality so I'm dubious about how many pages I will actually achieve.
However, for the time being, I'm back in business. Being printerless always makes me a bit twitchy so after two days without it's a relief to have one again. But two days of faffing about have put me hopelessly behind on my weekly To Do list so once again I'm playing catch up.
Best go and get on then......
4 comments:
I am so happy for you. I hate when technology doesn't work.
"Old" technology ALWAYS worked. We had TVs with tubes and them never stopped working.
And I remember the old clunky black telephones provided by "MA Bell." They were awesome. Of course, you were stuck in one place because the cord was attached to a box in the wall and your neighbor could listen to your call because of party lines but hey they worked (laugh).
Happy printing!
Absolutely agree Dorothy! For all the time and effort which working technology saves us, it claws back in all the time and effort expended when it goes wrong.
Well, after all: these producers make their money not from the hardware (the printer) but from the inks or toner or whatever. Well, you said it yourself: branded cartridges are expensive -- they want every penny they can out of you. Which is exactly why the starter cartridges are supplied with very little ink indeed: the sooner you'll have to buy new ones!
Absolutely Petra...!
I've ordered some replacements already, as I have a lot of printing to do over the coming weeks. Not the branded ones though.... the generic ones are just as good and loads cheaper! :)
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