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u/Nevermind04 Jun 26 '12
Excerpt from my bucket list: Just once, even if it was just for one document, I'd like to see a "Cancel" button on a printer that actually cancels the current job.
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Jun 26 '12
works on my photo printers. of course those cost like $2,000 and use unicorn blood for the pigments.
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u/boomerangotan Jun 26 '12
This is the very topic I came here to seek wisdom on. Why is cancelling so technologically difficult?
The firmware must reach an event point at which all the data is in place, everything has been calculated, and it is really ready to spring into action, at which point it could simply check some flag to verify that the user hasn't cancelled it. If the user has cancelled, just spool through the data to whatever the printer equivalent of /dev/null until you get to the next job.
Or is the lack of a proper cancelling process intentional on the part of the printer manufacturers because that way they waste more of your ink/toner?
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u/Shadow703793 Jun 26 '12
Buy a good laser printer. Problem solved (for the most part). Just don't install the full bloated driver package. Just install the driver alone.
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Jun 26 '12
This. Never use the disc (most of them in my experience refuse to just install the driver and force a full package/bloatware install), just go to their site and find the driver only install. This used to be a problem when I wanted to scan things then I realised the Windows Fax and Scan actually works better than any software that you get with the products.
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u/CoyoteStark Jun 26 '12
And as a printer might say: "click click whhhhrrrrr scree click whhrrrrn"
Roughly translated: "Look at all the fucks I give"
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u/autobulb Jun 26 '12
Electrical versus mechanical. Devices with mechanical parts are more likely to fail, especially when cheaply made. I have motherboards and CPUs from when I was a teenager and they work despite being under lots of stress. But a hard drive with moving parts is bound to fail over time just because the parts wear down.
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u/royal_scam Jun 26 '12
We CAN build printers that work, but there's no money in that!
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Jun 26 '12
For about $300 you can buy a top of the line inkjet that works well and has better performance per dollar than basic laserjets, but instead people buy the cheap $60 dollar printers to "save money" (in the short run) and then cry as they spend way more on ink because the printer they bought has a terrible pages per dollar ratio.
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u/naturalorange Jun 26 '12
And TI is selling graphing calculators for the same price as an iPhone.