Laser Printer Olympics - Qualifying Heats now underway!!

[MercedesDriver]

Fantastic description Bruce, printers are I believe the first AI creatures with full life circle, and unfortunately your printer life is about to end.
On a serious note, I print a lot on a daily basis and have experienced different types and brands of printers. Like Doodle, my good memories are with HP 4L which was loud, slow (something like 4 bw pages per min I think) but we ran many thousands prints out of it and changed it only because of unsupported drivers for new Windows systems. The worst one we had at home was some Kodak inkjet printer which I think didn't last longer than 3 months, utter crap.
Current one I have for last three months is Epson ET-2500 and it is surprisingly good and so far reliable. After nearly 2700 paper feeds it is still running smooth and strong. It uses Epson bottled refill ink which is not so expensive, even it's genuine and is DIY-able.

 

[Ted]

You forgot to mention the black hole that is the printer spooler, Bruce.
Failed to print? Send the job out again ten times. Bound to print out if you do that. Still not printing? Ooooh, change the paper size and try a few more times. No joy? Try a different editor and resend the job another ten times just to be sure.
Nope. Still not printing? Send a group email and Get everyone in the office to send it three times just to be on the safe side. Still nothing? Oh, the cleaner has kicked out the plug on the printer!
Plug it in and await the three thousand copies of your fifty page powerpoint on how you are going to make the office greener.

 

[Trickythemerc]

Then of course the business of printing envelopes.......... You can't print self seal in a laser printer,,,,,,,,,, I once put an envelope through a printer and a tiny piece of the flap became detached and stuck deep in the feckin thing......... Two hours later with bits of printer all over the desk it was finally liberated. Amazingly the printer worked fine after I rebuilt it.

 

[James Copeland]

With all these problems is anyone old enough to remember 'The Office Duplicator' or Roneo Machine?
You don't know what problems sre until one of these babies played up.
Youngsters you don't you're born.

 

[st13phil]

With all these problems is anyone old enough to remember 'The Office Duplicator' or Roneo Machine?

Oh yes, I remember them. We complain about office equipment that fails to function instantly on command today, but things were very different a few decades ago.

True story #1: The firm I worked for had two large Xerox photocopy machines in the office. Big things they were, with large document handlers and in-built staplers (more on that later) and one of them had a "mask drum" that allowed you to create documents with a variety of borders. Very swish! I'd worked for the firm for at least 4 months before I realised that the bloke who was always (i.e. every day) fixing at least one of these behemoth machines was actually a Xerox service engineer, and not a full-time employee of the firm...

True story #2: The stapler on these machines had a number of options as to where it would staple your document: top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. This was fine, except that the machine would copy in both portrait and landscape modes, and it was a mystery where the staple would be positioned in landscape mode. Somewhat intriguingly, the machine also offered an option to staple in the top left and top right corners of the document simultaneously - a feature I had always considered worthless until I watched a colleague select it one day and press the Start button. When I asked him why he'd selected that option he replied, "I can never work out where the staple will be, so I always select that option and remove the one I don't want after I've retrieved the document from the finisher"

 

[MancMike]

Somewhat intriguingly, the machine also offered an option to staple in the top left and top right corners of the document simultaneously

Isn't it to create a flip book?

 

[ss201]

I had a brilliant Canon laser printer which never let me down......until I replaced an ageing version of Windows with a later version.....which would not recognise the Canon's printer driver. No amount of searching by my computer whizz pal could find a compatible printer driver, so bye bye Canon. What a waste - and they call that progress!

 

[Deleted member 131833]

Roneo? My grandmother sat me on her knee and told me about them and comptometer machine operators too

 

[st13phil]

Isn't it to create a flip book?

Sorry, just re-read my post and it should have said "top left and bottom right corners". If you selected both, you couldn't open the document at all!

 

[MancMike]

Oh!

 

[Deleted member 131833]

What about the printer that you buy and install, works perfectly scan print copy- great

Six months later upgraded software available download now. Ok so I download new software.

So no matter what I do I cannot get the thing to scan

 

[Deleted member 65149]

My HP All-in-one (inkjet printer, scanner, copier, fax) machine served me well for over 15 years providing everything from excellent photos to draft documents. It wasn’t even phased by being ignored for weeks at a time, responding immediately to every request. But then a couple of days ago it made all the noises so colourfully described by Bruce at the top of this thread before spitting out the shattered remains of one of the cartridge holders.

It was clearly time to retire old faithful and raid my piggy bank for a new machine. An hour or two putting Google to work examining recommendations resulted in a short-list of about a hundred different makes and models! Stuff it, I just ordered the nearest direct replacement for the one I had. It cost about the same as half a tank of petrol and if it lasts half as long as the old printer I’ll be delighted.

 

[brucemillar]

When I started out in the IT industry in 1981 working DEC, I used to repair all sorts of 'printers'. I once managed to get my neck tie caught in a 'teletype' that started to munch it's way up my tie, just like a bloody Pacman. I only avoided having my face eaten off, by the young lady sat nearby cutting through my tie with a pair a desk scissors.

 

[rockits]

Indeed printers are fickle things sometimes. You can't beat a nice old HP LaserJet 4. I remember doing some work at Daimler Chrysler in Milton Keynes on a few macs admittedly maybe 5+ years ago but they still had half a dozen HP LJ4+ that had done a million prints each still going strong.

I bought 10 HP OfficeJet Pro 8710's into stock recently for 70 quid each with 50 quid cash back each. Then 10 Canon MX all in one things for....wait for it.....17 quid each....including inks.

If anyone wants a free Canon MX something colour all in one inkjet they can have one free if they pick it up from me in AL9 7 or maybe SG5 2DF at the office.

I've still got 8 left I think so any forum members who wants one free drop me a PM.