<\/p>\n

Image: Dreamstime: Sergey Tolmachyov<\/span>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n<\/p>\n

Printers are dead. No one buys them anymore and no one even needs them. At least, that\u2019s what you people say. By \u201cyou people,\u201d I mean, you people who don\u2019t buy or \u201cuse\u201d printers anymore.<\/p>\n

Well I got news for you: We all got together last night and decided that your days of freeloading are finally over.<\/p>\n

By \u201cwe,\u201d I mean those of us who still keep a serviceable printer up and running. In my case, I\u2019m down to just one active printer from a high of five\u2014a Canon all-in-one inkjet\u2014while my only other printer, a Brother color laser printer sits offline as quiet as Chernobyl reactor 4 due to an unfortunate off-brand toner accident.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I still carefully track the ink on the Canon to make sure each of the individual six\u2014yeah, six, count \u2018em\u2014color slots is sufficiently full and there\u2019s a spare on hand for when the ink gets low. Sure, it\u2019s annoying and expensive, but I like having a printer available to me at any time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the thing, is so do you people\u2014it\u2019s just that you don\u2019t want to pay for it. Sure, you dismiss the need for a printer with a wave of the hand and make snarky comments about printers and the people who buy them. But every few months I get that ding on my phone and a message that reads: \u201cHey, are you home? Can I print something?\u201d<\/p>\n

Like a pass to a concert, a contract you need to sign, or a government form, and then another government form.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow come you don\u2019t have a printer anymore?\u201d I ask. The response: \u201cI don\u2019t need one.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where last night\u2019s group meeting comes in. I talked to them\u2014everyone who still has a printer\u2014and we have collectively decided to stop enabling your freeloading ways.<\/p>\n

No more Phish concert tickets, no more Braniff boarding passes, and no more passport applications will be printed for you at 10 p.m. on a Sunday.<\/p>\n

Even worse for you people, freeloading off your office is coming to an end, too. You see, you think work doesn\u2019t care or know that you\u2019re firing off 100-page PDFs on the company printer, but those sharp-eyed facilities managers do. They know that those Ikea furniture instructions aren\u2019t work-related and they\u2019ve known it for years because every print job is tracked and monitored. It didn\u2019t matter before, but with belts being tightened and fewer people coming into the office at all, your abuse of the work printer stands out like a sore thumb now\u2014so yeah, you can only print work-related documents at work now. The memo\u2014printed out\u2014is on your hot desk.<\/p>\n

So now you\u2019ll have to fend for yourself and maybe truck your butt down to that 24-hour FedEx Center in the next town over at 1 a.m. and pay them 49 cents to $15 a page to get your hard copies.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t have to end this way, of course. Even though you\u2019ve never so much as given me a buck for the printer use, I didn\u2019t mind it, as helping others is built into the DNA of every upstanding printer owner.<\/p>\n

But all the printer dismissal, all the shrugs and \u201cwho needs \u2018em?\u201d has finally come to a head, and told the rest of us what you think: That we\u2019re either suckers for making our printers available to you, or ancient fossils for even maintaining a printer at home.<\/p>\n

Maybe after you\u2019ve racked up enough printing costs at FedEx, you\u2019ll realize that, yes, you need a printer too. Until then, your printer-freeloading privileges are cut off.<\/p>\n

<\/body><\/div>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\tAuthor: Gordon Mah Ung<\/a>, Executive Editor\t\t<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
One of founding fathers of hardcore tech reporting, Gordon has been covering PCs and components since 1998.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Read More<\/a>
\n Margarete Fetzer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Image: Dreamstime: Sergey Tolmachyov Printers are dead. No one buys them anymore and no one even needs them. At least, that\u2019s what you people say. By \u201cyou people,\u201d I mean, you people who don\u2019t buy or \u201cuse\u201d printers anymore. Well I got news for you: We all got together last night and decided that your<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":619264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29390,35105,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-attention","category-printer","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

\n\t\t\n\t\tAuthor: Gordon Mah Ung<\/a>, Executive Editor\t\t<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nOne of founding fathers of hardcore tech reporting, Gordon has been covering PCs and components since 1998.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n