Printer, you're the devil

I still have a printer. It's a cheapo black and white Brothers something or other. Whatever was on sale at Staples when I bought it a while back. 

I can't remember what I had before the Brothers, but it was a colored printer, maybe an HP, which meant those expensive colored printer cartridges. Back when I was making my living as a marketing writer, I sometimes goofed up and printed out a colored version of a brochure I was working on, and it would suck that expensive colored printer cartridge dry. An avoidable business expense. Could have printed in b&w, and not printed the pages that were all illustration. 

Anyway, when that colored printer crapped out, I just went with black and white. 

It's fine, but I barely use it. Mostly to print out invoices that our condo association receives online, but that we need to pay by check. (Don't ask why we can't do online pay, but we can't.) We recently went to self-manage, and I'm the keeper of the books. So every month, I have to print the invoices that come our way electronically.

Other than that, I don't really print much of anything.

I used to print out baseball tickets, but now I use the MLB app.

I used to print out concert tickets, but now I use the Ticketmaster app.

I used to print out boarding passes, but now I use whatever airline I'm flying's app. If something seems a bit funky there, I print an oldish school boarding pass out at the airport kiosk. 

I'm in a writing group, and I used to print out the stories to read and review. But since covid, most of the members participate virtually, so I do all my commenting and copy editing on the word.doc or pdf the writer submits.

I've read full novel-length manuscripts for a couple of my friends in the group, and I print them out at FedEx-Kinko's. 

Once in a blue moon, I have to print out a shipping label for some item I'm returning. 

But mostly I don't use a printer, and I doubt I'll replace my current one when it bytes the dust.

And if the Washington Post's any indication, I'm just keeping up with the times, as Americans are increasingly ink jettisoning. 

They recently devoted a week to articles on how costly and terrible printers are, and capped their series with a cri de coeur entitled We must end the tyranny of printers in American life.

Aux barricades - or at least aux landfill - with these suckers, these "soul crushers," these "parasites," these "nightmares."

I don't exactly love, or even like, my printer, but I'm not all that made maddingly miserable by it. But WaPo? 

Each document, photo, homework assignment, tax return and package return label we avoid printing is one step closer to a blissful future in which printers are nearly obsolete.

You might need or want to print stuff. Fine! Stick with your printer. Fax machines are horrible, but they’re still around.

Our collective ambition is to slowly kill off the parasite of printers. We can do this.

...Let’s send printers to Hades where they belong. (Source: Washington Post)

Yowza!

I can't remember the first printer I had, but I believe that, as long as we had PC's in the house, we had a printer. So, from the early 1980s. 

I do remember an early printer that weighed a ton and sounded like a jack-hammer when you were printing anything on it. And the very nice, expensivo, office-quality HP laserjet that succeeded it. 

That HP was a workhorse. Until it wasn't. And when it wasn't, we never got around to getting it fixed. We hung onto it for years, taking up precious storage space in our only decent-sized closet. A couple of years ago, when I decided to have Earthworm come and haul away all the old desktops and laptops that also crowded that decent-sized closet, the printer went with.

That high-end printer was replaced by a cheaper HP. Then something else. Then the Brother that sits on the file cabinet in my office. 

Hmmmm. One of these days, I'll have to see what all is in that file cabinet, given that I don't get paper bills and statements, and rarely print anything out.

My husband was a different story altogether. A regular old devil of a printer.

He'd see articles online that were interesting and print them out.

He took MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and printed out syllabi and readings.

He was a consultant who'd print out multiple versions of the reports he did for his clients.

He printed out the menus of restaurants we might want to dine at in another eight months or so when we traveled to Paris. (Multiple copies of the menus: one for me, one for you.)

After Jim died, I started to go through all the print outs he had stacked in the den. At first, I actually looked at what was in all those printouts - on the off-chance that something would be useful or important - but I soon realized it was all crap.

Jim wasn't a hoarder, but there was a surprising amount of room in the credenza, in the bookcase in the den, in that one and only decent-sized closet. For weeks, I tossed out a couple of recycle bags full of miscellaneous documents.

Then I sat back and relaxed, only to spy more piles o' paper under a dresser.

Even back then, in the heyday of printing, I didn't print all that much. These days, my printer barely gets any use.

Sure, printers aren't as useful and necessary as they used to be, but I  still can't bring myself to feel the antipathy that the Washington Post does. But what do you expect from someone who's still got a landline and a CD player...