The business printers in 2000 had slow processors and more ram. It was significantly bad that printing PDFs spent more time processing the file than putting toner on page.
Finally, the interfacing for printers today is fantastic. I know this isn’t about toner on page, but having wifi connection, an LCD touchscreen interface, and them generally being a little smaller has made the experience better.
The only thing that was better about printing in 2000 is that back then printing was more useful because so many people wanted paper copies.
The impression I get from HN comments is users of monochrome business laser printers from 2000 are the only people who are happy with their printers :)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2016/11-...
At least for the fun factor it might make sense to start with dot matrix printing. (I think it's still far superior to thermo printers ;-))
Really no comparison to modern printers in terms of reliability. I bought my last printer with 5 years guaranty upgrade. I'd ditch the printer completely if it wasn't still required for some official paperwork :/
* an anime character printed with a thermal receipt printer * a 4x6 card with an information graphic I rendered with CSS Grid * a shutterfly envelope to family in New England, etc.
most of the time I am starting with an image somebody else made, but there is a lot of judgement involved with fitting the image to paper and process -- it is a bridge between the world of digital images that I work and play in and the real world.
I go through printers the way rock stars go through guitars and what to do with the e-Waste is already part of the product.
I am amazed the the HP Officejet 6600 which just failed on me -- despite the expensive ink, the quality of the work it could do is astonishing.
It stopped picking up paper because something (like a little plastic gear) broke in the drive chain for the pick roller. To be fair all the rollers looked pretty worn -- the printer had been heavily used by a college professor. It's possible we could have fixed it but considering the cost of the next ink refill, I chose to get another printer.
If I were going to salvage the old printer I think I would go for the stepper motors, which would be great for robotics and other mechatronic projects.
---
I badly want to hack an inkjet printer to print white ink onto transparencies and then put it into a second printer to take a PNG with alpha like
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:793Nihilego.png
and make a sticker that could go in a window. Commercial kits to do this cost about as much as a good DSLR lens and they are a business expense to people who are making large quantities of swag.
It's a good market case for the "open source 2d printer" however. It's one thing to get white ink compatible with the printer, it's another thing to get the transfer function between "75% transparent" and a certain amount of ink into the printer's brain.
Assuming the printer has sufficient color resolution/depth, you could do gamma correction as a preprocessing step on the host computer. Still obnoxious, though.
All of that, including the interfacing are not related to patents.
It's not like there's some patent issue for using USB or wifi in your printer over whatever interface used in 2000 compared.
Or like there's a patent on using faster processor or more RAM in your printer (two things you've mentioned also).
Because as a layperson, I would not have thought a company could get a patent on clicking a button to purchase an item online.
Do you really believe "researching" is needed?
Like, in every other domain and product category, a company can slap a faster processor and more RAM to the next iteration - as they do -, but this is somehow prevented in printers by patents?
I'd say the extraordinary claim that needs extraordinary evidence is not mine...
> All of that, including the interfacing are not related to patents.
This seems like a pretty strong statement, can you elaborate as to why solving paper jams wouldn't involve patented IP ?
Yes I do. No there were no "literally every printer was suffering".
1995-2000 was a perfectly fine era of B&W desktop laser printing (others can chime in about how it was before 1995). Go get some computer history education, or ask an adult in the room.
Ok, I don't know what PC stands for, but load letter means you're out of paper, please fill me up. It's not a blinking clock on a VCR.
That's just not accurate. I've personally dealt with truly unreasonable numbers of service calls for high end business models over the last 8 years, jams aren't frequent but they are definitely not rare.
Still in the year of our Lord 2020, once a document hits the Windows Printer Spooler, good luck trying to cancel/abort it.
net stop spooler
cd *:\windows\system32\spool\printers
(remove all files in this directory)
net start spooler
A cheap consumer printer will jam on you and tear the paper to shreds, yet the drivers are still proprietary and you still get ripped off on cartridges.
Yep, it's cheaper to buy a new crappy printer from, say, Fry's Electronics than it is to buy refill cartridges for the last crappy printer you bought that ran out of ink.
We're trained to spent much more money for business laptops and probably we should for printers, too? Well handled ThinkPads last for many years and when the hardware struggles to execute the software in decent speed they - remain to work. Lenovo (and IBM) make money with reliable hardware.
Yes, and?
> Literally every printer was suffering from constant paper jams and other mechanical malfunctions.
No. I have gone through 7 personal printers and used countless business printers. Total number of jams I've cleared from my personal printers are probably less than 10 in 20+ years.
I've cleared much more paper jams from top of the line printers regardless of their build year. Reliability of a business printer is a function of its maintenance quality it seems.
My most stubborn printer wouldn't feed some papers since they're too smooth but, it started to happen after 7 years and its feed rollers were dry and worn down at that time.
One of my HP printers started to lose cartridge calibration, made funny noises and gave strange error messages after 6 years. Looks like I've worn down its internals. It was a "disposable" model it seems. I've probably used it three times its expected lifetime.
> The only thing that was better about printing in 2000 is that back then printing was more useful
It's still very useful at a personal scale. I've also cut back my printing to save the trees but, reading articles, academic stuff and a good old technical documentation is vastly better on paper, hands down.
I remember printing on my NeXT Laser Printer in 1992 or so. Great experience, fast, reliable, high quality output.
Rare the pages that did not come out at rated engine speed.
Canon engine, tweaked to 400 dpi instead of 300, with the host doing the rendering in DPS (anyone remember machportdevice?) and a custom DMA interface delivering the bitmap directly to the engine IIRC.
No interfaces on the printer itself, no ports, no Wifi, no LCDs, no memory, nada. And none needed. Printer is for printing.
The best part is, the ink tanks for it are dirt cheap. Like $20 for 4 complete sets of ink tanks on amazon.
Where's my open source dot matrix?
Paper has a right-side-up, and your printing life improves drastically if you just look at the little arrow before putting the paper in the printer.
https://www.xerox.com/downloads/gbr/en/p/Paper_Guide.pdf
> As the front and back surfaces of the paper, as determined during the papermaking process, differ slightly, one side is preferred as the side to image first. The primary determinant of which side to print first is the paper’s curl characteristics.
> If you are using a quality paper intended for digital printing, the ream wrapper will be marked with an arrow that points to the preferred printing side. Print on this side when printing one side only; print this side first when printing on both sides of a sheet.
> Whether this side is to be loaded UP or DOWN in the paper tray has to be determined for each machine (and sometimes for each paper tray) by reading the system's operator guide. Once you've determined the correct orientation, marking each paper tray with a label indicating the correct loading direction helps avoid operator error and lost productivity.
> Determining Curl
> In the event a paper ream is not marked for correct print-side orientation, it may be necessary to determine the curl direction yourself. Do this by holding a 1/2-inch stack of paper by one of its short edges (refer to figure 4-2). Let the paper hang with the long edge parallel to your body. Either the lower edge or the two side edges will be curling slightly toward the center. Observe which way the edge(s) curl. This is the curl side. Load the paper into the tray such that the side opposite the direction of curl is imaged first.
> Note: If the ream had an arrow marking, it would point to the OPPOSITE side. Load into the paper tray in the appropriate direction
> Built-in Curl
> Xerox papers are manufactured with a small amount of “reverse curl,” so that they will be very close to flat after processing – this will facilitate any post-processing that needs to occur, such as binding, trimming or folding. Load according to the arrow direction for best results.
> Loading The Paper Tray
> Carefully unwrap the reams of paper to be loaded, taking care not to bend any of the sheets or otherwise damage the paper. Inspect the paper for any obvious signs of damage (bends, folds, crumpled or wavy edges, tight edges), or defects. Fan the paper as necessary to avoid sticking edges. Do not handle the paper any more than necessary.
> Load the reams into the paper tray one at a time, taking care to observe the correct orientation, as indicated by the ream wrapper arrow.
> When more than one ream is being loaded, it is important to make certain the reams are aligned atop one another. It is easy to wrinkle, bend, or otherwise alter the top sheet of a lower ream when placing another one on top of it. The interface between reams in the paper tray is a frequent source of jams. It is particularly important to avoid loading successive reams inconsistently (some arrow up, some arrow down).
> Observe the paper fill line marked on all paper trays and do not load paper above this line.
There's a bunch more there about correct storage.