Comment Re:The future of printing? (Score 1) 178
For home, printers are indeed used much less than 10-15 years ago.
Photos can be demonstrated on a tablet or TV, short documents and books can be read on a tablet. Printing emails is no longer the only option of keeping them safe. Maps can be used on a phone instead of being printed.
But if you need a formal or signed document, printers are still heavily used. I don't know how it's in the US, but in some countries you need stuff like
- passport copies for opening bank accounts, car registration, and so on
- offline bank payments (required as proof of payment by many government organizations here)
- visa application forms and supporting documents - can be over a hundred pages in total when preparing documents for the whole family.
This stuff is often difficult to get right the first time, so having a printer at home is much less stressful than driving to a print shop several times to get everything right.
Now in corporate/education, you may also need printed and signed confirmations for other stuff (especially when required by law). One more thing for which printers are better than tablets is handouts - making notes and diagrams with a pen is much more effective than fingerpainting on a tablet/touchpad or typing text on a laptop.
And let's not forget that printed documents never run out of batteries and have to be seriously damaged to be unusable. If you have a printed boarding pass, it's much less likely to fail.