2025-08-24 -- Printers
======================

Printers get a lot of hate, but I think many of us actually love them.

When I write a letter (which is rare) in LaTeX and then print that on my
laser  printer  (which  is 20 years old!), I can't help but be amazed by
the result. It's fast, very reliable, and the print quality is great.

The problem isn't *printers* -- it's that they are a  prime  example  of
deliberately *sabotaged* devices.

Oh, you can't print your b/w letter when yellow is empty? Too bad, haha.
Oh,  you  want to print over USB? Okay, you can try, but our drivers are
really bad -- look over here, we have an easy-to-use cloud  service  for
printing  (which  you can only use until we turn it off, haha)! You want
to refill ink cartridges? Oops, we built them in a way that  makes  that
impossible/annoying, oh and btw, our cartridges are DRM'ed now.

Sometimes,  it  feels  like  we're  saying  "all printers are crap", but
that's not the point and it's not true for many older models.

The problem is with printer *manufacturers*, because they screw us  over
and somehow get away with it.