• @Lost_My_Mind
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    103 hours ago

    Quite honestly, back in the 90s I thought it was essential to have a printer. Back then I used to buy a binder, and a bunch of those plastic paper holding sleeves. And I’d print out entire gamefaqs which were sometimes 300 pages.

    Then ink started to get expensive. So I stopped. Then now these new printers have DRM. So I just never bought a printer since the 90s.

    And I feel I’m not alone. I bet there are millions of people who would be printer customers if printer ink weren’t the most artificially expensive substance on the planet.

    If I could go out and buy a printer replacement ink pack for $5.00 and have it last a few months, I’d just buy them regularly. Instead I haven’t paid one dime in close to 25 years. Gee, guess that financial decision paid off for them…

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
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      31 hour ago

      You might want to look at laser printers. If you’re just doing black and white documents, whatever the latest Brother printer is will do a good job, do it fast, and not screech at you about your cyan running out.

      It’s a few hundred bucks up front, but the toner cartridges print a ton of pages and don’t dry out if you don’t use them. I can’t recommend it enough if you have even a passing desire to make hard copies of documents.

    • noughtnaut
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      32 hours ago

      I went directly from a dot matrix (ImageWriter II ftw!) to a laser. Except for photo prints, I find it immensely practical to be able to print stuff at home.

    • @dandu3
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      22 hours ago

      Nowadays you have tank printers. They’re more expensive upfront but the ink is much cheaper. It’s even cheaper if you go for aftermarket ink. I have an Epson and it’s great. Don’t think I’ll go with the cheap ink however, I just don’t use it that much to justify the savings