Today is my printer's 20th birthday.
I might celebrate with a glass of champagne, on the basis it's cheaper than the ink.
I bought it from Staples in Ipswich in March 2001. It replaced a black and white printer with a ribbon, and doubled up as a scanner which I thought might come in useful. It came recommended, which was good because I didn't want to end up with a duff plastic box sitting on the floor beside my computer. And it only cost £279, which I must have thought good value at the time despite the fact that 20 years later you can buy something better for a fraction of the price.
Initially it didn't work. After I'd unwrapped it and trailed the cable across the carpet an error message flashed up complaining about the cartridge which had come with the machine, so I had to go back to Staples and plead for another one. It then worked fine, my Hewlett Packard OfficeJet G55, and has continued to be a reliable accessory ever since. It's just a shame the same can't be said for the things plugged into it.
The first thing I did with my new printer was scan a cartoon in a newspaper in the hope of emailing the image to a friend. It was a faff orienting the newsprint and keeping it still while a bright light moved across the glass, then working out where the resulting image file had ended up and how to save it somewhere so I could upload it as an attachment. But I was terribly excited by all the possibilities that digitising words and pictures might offer - something we in the smartphone age now take totally for granted.
This was also my first dabble with colour printing, something that previously I could only have done on the special photocopier at work or by taking hard copy down to Prontaprint. I probably used this feature too often before I realised it made the tiny colour cartridge run out sooner, so switched to default black and white unless the context required it, and then to 'draft quality' to preserve monochrome stocks even further. Nothing made me cringe more than accidentally printing out an A4-sized black rectangle, except perhaps wasting multiple sheets of paper on unnecessary gibberish.
One of the things I used to print most often was maps. Initially I had to wrestle the relevant section of an OS Landranger onto the glass so that I could take a copy with me rather than the real thing. Then I worked out it was possible to print maps I didn't own off the internet and this was transformative in terms of going out exploring. A heck of a lot of my early blogging adventures only happened because I had a folded-up printout of an unfamiliar neighbourhood in my pocket.
"Print this out and bring it with you" was a staple instruction for much of the last 20 years. Receipts, tickets, airline gate passes... all sorts of events and journeys relied on my printer spewing out a sheet of paper. Other useful lifestyle functions included 'copying old photos', 'downloading a leaflet' and 'sending a letter' (neatly signed at the bottom in fountain pen). I'm not quite sure when printers had their heyday but 2001 probably falls within the timespan and 2021 probably doesn't.
Things started going wrong for me when I was forced to upgrade to a new computer. My 2006 upgrade was fine because the printer driver on the original CD-ROM worked fine. My 2009 upgrade was fine because although the original printer driver no longer worked, a new one automatically downloaded when I plugged it in. But when I tried the same trick in 2015, sorry, no compatible printer driver was available. Fourteen year-old printers aren't readily supported when the manufacturers would rather you bought a new model, dammit.
I soon worked out I could use my home network to transfer files from my 2015 laptop to my 2009 laptop and print things out from there. This ruse immediately extended my printer's life, and my good old G55 struggled on. Alas my 2009 laptop is now somewhat temperamental so can't be relied upon, plus the last time I used my printer the ink showed every sign of running out. I didn't want to fork out for a new cartridge I'd probably barely use before the entire system broke down, not given the extortionate cost of ink, so I've now stopped printing things altogether.
It hasn't been too bad. Nothing urgently needs printing. There haven't been any ticketed events to go to, and my smartphone generally doubles up there anyway. And even before lockdown my inability to transfer words and pictures to paper hadn't been a problem, merely a minor limitation. I know that if I had a functioning printer I'd definitely use it, but I don't and I now know I can do without.
You might be thinking I'm missing out. There are so many creative things a printer can do, so many avenues that being printerless closes off. You might not be able to get by without one, for example if home schooling has required the generation of reams of worksheets. Or you might be thinking yeah grandad, nobody needs a printer any more. Paper's old school now that everything works via a screen, indeed there's an entire younger generation who wouldn't dream of having a superfluous output gadget in the house.
I ought to dispose of my redundant printer now it no longer connects properly, or I should stop being stingy and buy another cartridge, or I should take the plunge and buy a decent modern replacement. I know the price of ink's extortionate, a means for the manufacturers to bleed us dry long-term, but by not having a printer I'm only limiting myself unnecessarily.
The trouble is I've learned to live without for so long that I suspect I could carry on living without permanently. And anyway, my 20 year-old printer still works perfectly, it's only the connections and the cartridge that are letting it down.
Today is my printer's 20th birthday.
