Printers suck.

I hate printers. I hate the act of printing. I hate setting them up, I hate proprietary drivers, and I hate getting ripped off for ink cartridges when I know damn well there’s still ink in them. After all of the advancement in technology, we should be able to somehow bring things from the digital realm to the physical one easier than we can.

But I especially hate the waiting.

Not the waiting while the document prints. At least that I can mostly get behind. It’s the waiting before the document even starts that drives me up the wall. Every inkjet printer I’ve ever owned has to go through this repetitive OCD ritual any time I press print. They all vary slightly, and each has its own rhythm, but all printers have the pre-programmed need to do the digital equivalent of counting the dots in the ceiling tiles and not stepping on sidewalk cracks.

Ka-chunk. Some piece of plastic is springloaded onto another. Whirr, as the paper slides partially in. Pause. Whirr, as it spits it back into the tray again. Then there’s a horrible squeaking noise as the paper is loaded again, even more slowly. An ultrasonic tone, and a ratcheting as some other mechanism moves into place. Fzt, fzt. The print head moves tantalizingly close to being the job, but then retreats, before hesitantly sliding back out over the paper again.

And then, if you’re lucky, your document will begin printing. If you’re not lucky, it’ll start printing that job from last week you aborted. Or if karma is being a particular shade of bitch, then it’ll spit the last piece of paper in the tray out after printing one line, and then tell you you’re out of paper.

In that vein, CollegeHumor.com had the perfect video: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1902102