10 Reasons I Hate My Printer

As seen on Twitter, in the original order. The reasons I hate my bloody printer, with which I have been locked in mortal combat for going on two years now, I think.

No. 1: It cannot find my wireless network, and NEVER HAS. This has persisted despite two different residences, a new modem and new router. I should rephrase: it can see the network, but it cannot complete a connection with it. Ever. No matter what my good friends on the Kodak helpline try.

No. 2: New ink cartridges allow color printing for about four sheets, then it all turns to hell. I installed new cartridges tonight so we could print the Boy's images for his new project. By the time we got to the third sheet, the Cardinal logo was yellow. It has completely lost the ability to calibrate its colors despite a recalibration this afternoon.

No. 3: It has the exact same problems as the original printer, which took months of hell before they replaced it. Some of you lived and suffered through my increasingly-hysterical Tweets while I wrestled with Kodak. After multiple attempts to fix it, they sent me a new one... which stopped working only a few months after arrival. Just like the first one.

No. 4: It now jams every other time I try to print a photo. This is a new one. It apparently doesn't like its own photo-print tray, because every other time I try, it jams up and that causes the printer to get all confused. The only solution is to cancel the print job and shut the whole printer down because apparently it can't figure out how to reset itself after this debacle.

No. 6: It requires the replacement of empty color cartridges when I want to print in black and white. This is a feature, not a bug, and one that all printer designers should just stop. We get that they want us to buy more ink. We're going to buy more ink. But in the meantime, let me print in black and white and don't make the whole printer shut itself down and refuse to play ball when I'm out of cyan. It's tacky. And it always happens at 11:30 p.m. when Office Depot is closed.

No. 5: The ink is actually so cheap that I cannot get generics, which means it ends up costing more. Oops. My previous printer was an Epson, and the cost of the ink was literally more than the printer. My primary criteria in my printer hunt was cheap ink, and I chose a Kodak ESP 9250 all-in-one that ostensibly did everything I wanted to and the ink was cheap as hell. Only I failed to consider generic and remanufactured ink, which can be significantly lower for Canon and HP printers. When I tried to find out about Kodak, they said the ink is so cheap that they can't undersell them... so they don't try.

No. 7: Kodak's tech people have never been able to solve any of its issues. I've chronicled this before. They walk me through their procedures, which I could recite by heart, and they can never resolve the problem. So they pass me up the food chain to someone else who can't solve it. Since the warranty expired, I no longer even try; the only useful thing they ever did was replace the stinking thing, and that only lasted a few months.

No. 8: It makes me so annoyed that I lose track of my numbers. Anyone have a sledgehammer?

No. 9: Sometimes it works just for a print or two, giving me a ray of hope before dashing me to the rocks. Today I got two black-and-white prints of the kids and one of the family printed, but the quality on that last one was pretty rough. I should have known. As soon as we got into Boy's project... a yellow Cardinal and a green-hued portrait, with yellow that should have been purple. Argh. For four or five minutes, I thought I had a working printer. Except for that whole wifi thing.

No. 10: I cannot afford to replace it, and it knows. It sits there on my desk and mocks me. Everyone seems to recommend HP printers, and I've picked out a couple models that do the things I want. Print, copy, scan, fax and photo, though I'd sacrifice fax or photo if I absolutely had to (and will just get separate machines on eBay for those things).

But a new printer isn't happening, not unless I sell, oh, ALL the books. Dragoncon's a-coming, but somehow I doubt that's in the works. In the meantime, I will continue the Battle of the Printer, as I send the rest of those prints to Shutterfly.

Aren't you all proud? I got through this without profanity.

Comments

  1. So sorry you are having these problems - sounds like this particular model is a lemon - all of them. I've had a couple of color printers and have never had any of these issues. BUT, the latest wonderful printer I have is now a very heavy paper weight because it's not a plug and play and the software to run it resides on the old desktop computer that bit the dust 2 years ago. I've tried to download from the internet but the printer is too old and they no longer support the software so you can't download it. :( So, I have been doing all my printing at work ( I must admit that I'm a bit spoiled because we have those massive ubber pixeled color printers that are photgraph quality and I doubt I could afford anything like that at home.)

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  2. Aww, that’s really a little annoying! But if you’re consistently dealing with those dilemmaa, it’s really a good idea to find another unit. Something that gives you a lot of headaches deserve to be replaced.

    Stasia @ALBImage.com

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