shanen's Journal: Do you print too little?

How many of you don't print much these days? So what is the best solution to only printing a few pages once in a while? Here are some of the dimensions of the problem in the form of possible solutions and the new questions they lead to:

Inexpensive printers: The cost of new printers is quite low, but how long can the printer sit there without printing before it dies? Lexmark and HP used to offer an expensive solution with the integrated ink cartridges that also included new print heads, but...

Printing services: Mostly focused on photos, but there are companies where you can take your data for printing. My main concerns there are actually with the cost and the tweaks. Each print is expensive because you are covering their overhead way beyond the cost of the printing itself. Also, most of the time my first print or three isn't exactly what I want. It rarely comes out perfectly on paper the first time...

Social printing: For example, are any of you sharing one printer with your neighbors via WiFi? Do you just sneak a bit of personal printing onto a printer at your office? Do you travel across town to borrow your brother-in-law's printer?

One of the perks...

[Captain Splendid]

...of owning a business. It can easily absorb me printing a few things here or there on personal basis. Without it, I'd be stuck in exactly the scenarios you describe

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[shanen]

Again, I think this is a comment in my journal. Same topic was published on the front page and answered at some length. Can't remember anyone who actually used your response, though there was one branch about companies that were so worried about the occasional personal print by an employee.

Before I was forced (by excuse of age) to retire, my prominent employer used to make a big fuss about printer costs. They were especially worried about color printing.

Consider a personal laser instead

[damn_registrars]

I've had small lasers (grey scale especially though color should work as well) go long times between print jobs without issue. It's the inkjets that can't go 8 months without printing without needing more in supplies than they're worth.

For better or for worse we now see the all-in-one inkjets going for the price that the stand-alone inkjets used to go for. Now at least the throwaway printer doesn't take up space on your desk that you could have used for something else ...

As for me, I print all my ph

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[shanen]

Not even clear from the URL, but pretty sure this is a comment in my journal. I actually submitted the same query as an Ask Slashdot and it got picked up for extensive responses. Interestingly enough, your response pretty much captures the entire long list of responses. I felt like I had to read them all since I'd posed the question.

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[damn_registrars]

Congrats on getting your question to the front page. I've tried multiple times to do that with varying questions and I don't think it happened once. The process of how questions are selected is about as transparent as tar.

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[shanen]

I agree, but I think it was just some kind of slip-up during a shift change, assuming they are that organized. It actually happened quite quickly, and it should be quick for REAL news items (but NOT for such basic questions as mine). I've submitted a number of much better items over the years, but the ones they've actually selected have NOT been the better ones.

Having said that, I still think the fundamental flaws in the moderation-karma system are much more serious than the problems with topic selection fo

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[fustakrakich]

Yep, this is the logical way. There are lots of 15+ year old machines around my neighborhood. A multi function laser will go years without issues. And the fax still comes in handy these days for people who insist. The color stuff is far cheaper to outsource to Office Depot, whoever. And some places will even deliver the finished job to your door, along with the pizza, swear to god, we have it pretty good.

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[damn_registrars]

Hey, you forgot to troll me in that comment. You feeling OK?

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[fustakrakich]

What's to troll about? A printer's a printer... Pick the one that works best for you. I mean, is that all you do? Look to make trouble? Not tonight babe, I got a haddock

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[damn_registrars]

I'm disappointed. I really expected that I would click the link to your comment and it would feature you telling us about how the illuminati force us into an artificial duopoly of printer technologies and that the shadow government has a top secret technology capable of printing 1,000 full pages a minute using less ink than what is in a bic pen. And of course, we could obviously only get the government to release this technology to the masses by not voting - since voting for anyone from the D or R party w

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[fustakrakich]

You're not "disappointed". You're obsessed, and kinda weird... But I would love to see a printer do a thousand pages a minute. It would be impressive and more fun to watch than a kernel compile.

Oh, since you did bring it up (and I can't resist), props for confirming precisely what I said about your little lie there. (for those playing catch up, d_r sees everyone who doesn't vote republican or democrat and recommends voting them all out as a "non-voter", must be part of some democrat guilt trip to squeeze mo

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[damn_registrars]

props for confirming precisely what I said about your little lie there

I'd love to know what this lie is you think you're talking about. Care to really surprise the hell out of me and actually fill us in on that?

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[fustakrakich]

:-) All spelled out in the subsequent sentence, even put it inside parentheses. I fully expected you to ignore that one. I guess you can take pride in being so open about it.

And good job! One moment we were (I was) talking about printers, and wham!, you're off to the races.

Did you know that some people print so much it is cheaper for them to offshore the job? And some people print so little, it's just not worth buying a printer when they can go down the street. See? There ya go, that's how you print a a tho

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[damn_registrars]

I see. So you're lying about the political game you play here day in and day out. That's fine, carry on. You've made yourself so comfortable sharing that lie with us that it's no surprise you forced it into this discussion.

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[fustakrakich]

:-) Love it! This is you [youtube.com]... Very cool!

Public masturbation of 1673220

[shanen]

Z^-1