{"id":16327,"date":"2019-02-23T10:45:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-23T15:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=16327"},"modified":"2019-02-23T10:45:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-23T15:45:15","slug":"thoughts-on-printers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/thoughts-on-printers\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Printers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on Printers<\/span><\/h1>\n

It’s Saturday. It’s a day I use to catch up on things. Today, I’m going to set up a new printer. <\/span><\/p>\n

The other day, I ordered a printer (free delivery) to replace a 2-year-old printer that says it has ink, but prints illegible things. It’s my 6th or 7th printer. I’ve had so many, I have lost count. Oh, don’t worry, I don’t have 6 or 7 printers sitting around my house waiting for me to issue the print command – I only have one printer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me back up. I had no working<\/em> printers at all, until UPS delivered my new printer yesterday – and hopefully when I get it set up today, I’ll have one that works. <\/span><\/p>\n

The printer I was using (an HP by-the-way) was two-years old. I replaced the ink in it twice, but it was haunted. It was haunted right from the start. My travails started on Wednesday, I needed to print out a bank statement to see why the bank showed I had $61.26 less than what I showed I had – I hate it when that happens. Much to my chagrin when I punched the print button, my printer responded by printing 4 illegible pages that may as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yep, I did all the usual stuff you’d guess I’d do. I ran the print-head alignment thing, I did all the “Troubleshooting” things, I ran the HP Doctor. And, of course, I checked the ink levels. The ink levels were low but not empty. I thought I’d try putting in new ink cartridges and see if that would fix things. I hopped in the car and drove to Wally World (Walmart).<\/span><\/p>\n

Wally World just “modernized” our local store, which means they moved things around -didn’t add anything new or exciting. It took me ten minutes to figure out where they moved the printer ink section.<\/span><\/p>\n

After sorting though hundreds of different brands and model numbers, I found the correct ink cartridges for my printer. What to my bloodshot eyes should appear – the newer higher prices.\u00a0 The black and white cartridge was $18 and the color cartridge was $29. In my limited world of math, that equals $47 not including 7.5 % tax. With tax included, even with my limited math skills, I could figure the total cost was going to be slightly more than $50.\u00a0 For INK?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u00a0 was standing there surrounded by printers. Some of them were selling for LESS than the cost of ink for my cheap HP printer at home.\u00a0 For instance this Canon Pixma printer<\/a><\/span> for $35…or this HP DeskJet wireless printer<\/span><\/a> for $34.\u00a0 And they come with ink.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was not the first time I have tossed a printer because it cost more to replace the ink than it cost to buy a new printer.\u00a0 Big wheels kept on turning, my mind kept on burning … if I spent $50 for new ink cartridges and then my printer still printed hieroglyphics — I’d be out $50. I don’t have $50 to throw away.<\/span><\/p>\n

I left Wally World without the ink cartridges.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I got home I decided to do some online shopping – for a new printer. After searching Best Buy, Amazon, Target, Staples, etc. I ended up ordering an HP printer from Wally World – online – for $54.73 including tax and free shipping. It is a much better model than the cheapie I’m about to toss. For about $4 more than it would have cost to replace the ink for my HP DeskJet 2600 El Cheapo printer, I bought a new HP 5200 series – not-so-El-Cheapo printer – complete with ink.<\/span><\/p>\n

I removed the El Cheapo and set up my new HP 5200 series printer – which promised easy 1-2-3 setup. Ha!<\/span><\/p>\n

I finally got it set up — only after I realized that I had to turn down the “Smart Ink” offer that was on my screen, before the printer would actually work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of spending $50.53 for two ink cartridges for an old, genuine El Cheapo printer, I’m happy to tell you that for $54.73 I have a brand new, not-so-El-Cheapo printer, complete with two full ink cartridges.And it prints pages in English that I can actually read.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why does ink cost as much or more than a new printer?<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for reading my RANT.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thoughts on Printers It’s Saturday. It’s a day I use to catch up on things. Today, I’m going to set up a new printer. The other day, I ordered a printer (free delivery) to replace a 2-year-old printer that says it has ink, but prints illegible things. It’s my 6th or 7th printer. I’ve had so many, I\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1433,1,2501,1681],"tags":[434,2958,2959,1203,1735],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16329,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16327\/revisions\/16329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}