The printer issue really flares up anger in me. Before, I was able
to be totally MacGyver in the past with this same issue I once had, using a bit
of isopropyl alcohol, a coffee filter, and maybe a clean toothpick to fix such
a problem, but now systems are too intricate for that kind of jury-rigged
repair job. I tried to, but failed. After researching online, a replacement
print head is more expensive than the cost of a new printer. I shopped Ebay and
other sites for used models of my printer to salvage the print head from it.
The used printers themselves were far cheaper than the new print head, but the
shipping costs were outrageous. I had no luck locally on Kijiji. It looks like
I’m screwed into shopping for a new model. I really hate this kind of waste.
Sure, I could try to sell this old one on online myself as a parts only unit to
recoup losses, but again, it still pressures me to consume more than I want to;
pushing an exorbitant and unrealistic shipping cost onto someone else for a
near obsolete machine, which only a real idiot would do. Realistically, for the
lack of one small piece, an otherwise perfectly functional printer goes to a garbage
dump*. I love technology, and some of the reasons why I love it are for saving
time, space, energy, and money. I start to dislike it when I see instances where
somehow it fails to systematically do any of that. This is one case where that is so.
The only other reason I would even bother to get a new 3-in-1
is that I may have a little eagerness to see what kind of technical enhancements
have been made since this last model, which I don’t believe have been very
significant in the world of printer technology. People aren’t so eager to create
waste of room and resources by slapping things down onto a hardcopy anymore. For
a world trying to use technology to get on the greener side of the
environmental fence, printers are the absolute antithesis to this means of
progress. They use paper after all. With the world ditching paper on an
increasingly broader scale, one would think that R & D for printer
technology would be ironically to cut down on paper-use itself a bit. My lack
of printing actual paper pages was probably part of the problem as to why the
ink dried up in my print head. The only thing I think would be of any interest
to me in a newer printer would be streamlining content and power efficiency: to have one
that could be networked such that it can pull stuff directly off the Cloud,
eliminating the use of another power-sucking unit to process a printout. To be
able to crop web pages instantly so that you aren’t wasting extra ink printing
the superfluous material that you don’t want on a page would be a great feature
to see as well. I see HP has Smart Print that can do some of this stuff.
*- Even, when taken to a recycling centre, like SARCAN here
in Saskatchewan, only a small volume of the weight percentage of an average
electronic appliance is collected for reuse. The remainder is still a lot of toxic plastics
that are destined for landfill. The itch to replace obsolescence really affects
us negatively.
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