printers replacing typewriters: THE GREATEST CRIME IN HISTORY

[CanuckAmok]

When I used typewriters, I ribbom usually lasted about a year, and when it ran out, a new one was about $6.00.

Now I use about ten black cartridges a year for the same amount of printing. Each cartridge isa bout $20.00. That's $200 a year to do what cost me $6, before. Over thirty times original cost.

I just had to print some photos for work; cost of the THREE colour carts required to mprint 50 photos? $30.00 each.

90 fucking dollars. It would have been cheaper to hire Jeff Koonz to come over and render the photos in gilded porcelain.

Plus, typrewriters are built to last. Iron. Steel. Bakelite. Sturdy enough for Hemmingway to beat his mistresses with one. Strong enough for William Burroughs to use one to knock an apple off his wife's head. Tough enough to endure all of Margaret Attwood's angry pounding, or the futility of Norman Vincent Peale's ideas.

Bennet Cerf wrote on a typewriter, not on some pissy little series of plastic boxes.

Printers are built for shit, basically out of old sneaker parts. I'm lucky if a printer lasts me two years before the mechanism fucks up, or the whoozit jams every time it goes on-line. So that's another one or two hundred every couple of years.

And that is why the conspiracy to replace typewriters with "word processors" and computer printers is THE GREATEST CRIME IN HISTORY.

[qnr]

1. Yeah. You can work things though. For example, I have a Samsung

Scanner / Copier / monochrome laser that works perfectly with my Linux distro. It cost me US $49 brand new. It also uses the same toner I was using for my earlier laser, which I buy from a store on ebay for an average of about five dollars, instead of the $40-$80 range seen elsewhere.

[GirlinContempt]

2. Take your pics in to get printed.

[CanuckAmok]

3. No, You take YOUR pics in to get printed.

[GirlinContempt]

4. Just what I expected from the likes of you

FOR SHAME

[Rude Horner]

5. Greatest crime in history?

Wow. To hell with Nazi Germany, huh? Yeah, that typewriter thingy is up at the top of the list.

Ok, I'll agree that the cost of ink jet print cartridges are WAY overpriced, however you're only telling one side of the story. First off, those pictures that you printed for work...you wouldn't have been able to print those on a typewriter, so you're comparing apples to oranges. Ink jet printers are WAY more versatile than typewriters. With a typewriter, you had only one type of out output - whatever you typed. With my inkjet printer, I can print out letters that I've typed, but I can also print out all sorts of other things - greeting cards, web pages, etc....

And secondly, I dunno if you're perfect or not, but I HATED having to use the little bottles of White-Out when I had to type stuff. Pain-in-the-ass!

My advice - if you had to print those photos out for work, submit an expense report. They should pay for it, not you.

[Scooter24]

6. You could have just...

emailed them to your nearest Kinko's and have them couriered over.

[Richard Steele]

7. What, and let this fine rant go to waste?

Now THAT would have been a real crime!

[ContraBass Black]

8. Your black ink must come in gallon cartridges if you're paying $20

for them.

[CanuckAmok]

14. No, I live in Canada,

Everything is more expensive here.

[Gold Metal Flake]

9. Extra points for knowing what Bakelite is.

As noted, Kinko's is your friend.

[politicat]

10. While I do miss typewriters....

Printers have their advantages. However, inkjets are the biggest ripoffs on the face of the earth; if you don't print a lot or if you do, then the ink is way overpriced.

For BW printing (and we do a lot - I have a ton of manuscripts out at any given time) I have a Brother laser printer. A toner cartridge costs about $40 and lasts me about 40,000 pages. That's pretty much the same as my typewriter ribbons cost me back when I still could find them for my Smith Corona. (I'm really looking for a Selectric, but have yet to find one.) I'm on my third or fourth toner cartridge, and the drum is still in good shape; when the drum goes, I'll probably just replace the printer rather than replacing the drum (the drum is an expensive part.)

For color printing, I have two copy shops that are within walking distance from work/home, and they both have email addresses. I got to know the print managers, and all I have to do is email them the documents, tell them what I need done, and they print them for me for about $.25 cents a page (for full color on matte paper; glossy is $.10 extra, and photo glossy is $.20 cents extra.) Give 'em three hours, take a stroll and pick up the pages, and get my exercise in!

I may buy a color laser printer next spring; the price is coming down and the quality's getting pretty good.

But I do miss typewriters. They're so much easier to use for some things (labels, passport applications, forms) and they do exactly what they're supposed to do instead of trying to "help."

[Rosco T.]

11. You're overpaying for ink...

www.megatoners.com

black for my Epson Photo printer costs $1.25. Used dozens of them with no problem.

[yvr girl]

12. You are such

a talented ranter. :hi:

[CanuckAmok]

15. Hey, I have a lot of shove to give!

:hi:

[jobycom]

13. No. When paper and writing replaced dirt clods and sticks was.

Back in the Middle Ages when you sold a piece of property you didn't write it down. No one knew how to read. So you held a big ceremony and invited all the neighbors, and all the family members who might have a claim to your property, and all the family of the new owners, and everyone you could think of, especially young children. And you transfered the property by giving the new owner a dirt clod, or rock, or stick, from your property to them, to symbolize transfer. Then you swore a vow before the priest and the lord of the land, or his representative. Then you smacked each of the young witnesses very hard across the face until they cried, so that they would always remember that day, so they could testify years later if there was a dispute.

Writing changed all that. You just signed a piece of paper and filed it somewhere. Took up filing space, led to the slaughtering of sheep for parchment, cost ink... the old way was better. Of course, for a long time they did both, because no one trusted the new-fangled paper scribble method. Kind of like electronic voting.

[CanuckAmok]

16. AND I totally forgot the environmental impact.

Instead of one cloth ribbon on one metal reel, there's now a plastic cartridge to throw away, and in the case of my (HP) printer, an obscene amount of packaging; not just cardboard, but plastic and foil, too. All the food groups.