I was thoroughly ecstatic when, about fifteen years ago, my father walked into the room and announced we were going to buy a printer. I must’ve been in my third or fourth standard and I was in raptures on hearing the good news. Back then, if you were a schoolkid with your own home computer, you were already pretty cool. And I was having the whole works - a personal computer (replete with oodles of games on it), internet connection (I was already communicating with emails then), and a CD writer (floppy disks were passé even back then), soon to be joined by a colour ink-jet printer.
Our first printer then, was an Epson Stylus C41UX - a petite four-colour inkjet. To the rest of the world, it was a run-of-the-mill economy home printer, but to me, it was witchcraft - the right combination of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks could create just about any colour I wanted? No way! And these minute droplets of ink would be squirted on moving paper using tiny piezoelectric nozzles on the print-head that rapidly dashed from side to side? Get out!
I spent the first few months wearing the printer in how a ten-year-old with computer access should; I would print photos of my family, pictures of my favourite cartoon characters (Tintin and Gohan, to name a couple), and recipes for homemade pizzas and whatnots. And if I got bored printing those, I'd waste more ink printing jewel case labels for my mixtape CDs and outlines for paper cut-outs of Japanese hatchbacks and Airbus aeroplanes.
That Epson went on to serve us for over five years. During its final years of commission, the printer would use the better portion of every ink cartridge installed to clean and align its print-head. If the printer seemed to be in a good mood, it would use two out of its four available colours to present us with a dull, pink or bluish image of a beautiful green leaf. And if it didn’t feel like it, it would refuse to feed paper until one of us forcibly jammed it in, and would then continue to be adamant by simply squirting an amorphous blob of ink on paper instead of printing what was commanded.
Our second printer was an HP F4185 All-in-One, a boxy multifunction printer that could not only print, but also scan, and make copies without requiring a command from the computer. I liked how HP’s thermal inkjet technology felt so ahead of the curve and how it was capable of consuming ink in picolitres, unlike the Epson, which always gave us the appearance of a child that constantly wet its pants and asked for more water. The fact that it was a lot quieter while printing was something I both liked and disliked; I guess it was like using a modern, refined fuel-injected car, but missing the bangs and whirrs of the old one.
I was in high-school when the HP came along, but I was just as excited to fiddle around with it. I would print innumerable custom-designed CD labels and posters on expensive specialty paper. I would also slide documents onto the scanning glass and hit the copy button blithely to save myself a walk to the photocopy shop, a lazy habit that would occasionally end with me being severely reprimanded. I’d impress my teachers regularly with full-colour printouts of project work while everyone else submitted black and white. This lunchbox of a printer was also a trooper that survived over five years.
Feeling confident about the brand and an itch to go wireless, we replaced the F4185 with yet another HP - the 3515. Boy, were we wrong. This was a dreadful All-in-One printer. It was plagued with a litany of faults right from the start; the paper never once fed correctly without manual intervention, the page alignment was always off, it was utterly incapable of duplex printing (manual or otherwise), and worst of all, the scans all showed up with black patches on them.
I was in college when this foul contraption from hell landed, and I’d already lost much of my interest in playing around with a printer. I remember wanting to gift my friends and family 4x6 photo frames with some old photos on more than one occasion, but the only thing I managed to get out of the printer every single time was a bunch of long error codes. So, I can’t really say I designed and printed anything creative on the 3515, save for a greeting card or two.
I wouldn’t be overstating in the least if I called the 3515 HP’s worst product to date. The very first set of ink cartridges that came with the printer died long before they were fully depleted; the printer simply refused to use them after a few months. It was the same case with the next set of cartridges as well, and the ones after those. And that’s why all of the photos I ever printed were through a Kodak instant photo kiosk from a nearby Printo. The HP was shunted aside and used mostly for printing boarding passes and movie reservations in black and white.
And there we have it. The three printers we owned so far, and my slow passage from childhood to adulthood, mixed with a waning sense of energy and playfulness, and my thickening need to be critical, with a gradual realisation that paper and ink are precious resources.
There’s a special feeling I get when I see a sheet of paper emerge from the printer’s output tray, especially when it’s something I’ve worked on for hours; it’s a mixture of excitement and apprehension, where I’m constantly wondering if all the shapes, the fonts, and the colours will appear the way I imagined it during design. As a schoolboy, this was the feeling I got when I printed my cassette case labels and fridge stickers. Today, it’s the same feeling I get when I print my CVs and project reports. I suppose that’s one nice bit of the experience that doesn’t get lost in the transition to adulthood, and it's probably worth a good printer.
Which is why we bought a new one last week - an HP DeskJet 4535, and I’m happy to report that it’s nothing like the dreadful 3515. It’s a fine piece of machinery that, of course, does everything - scanning, copying, and automatic duplex printing. The input tray is fully concealed and paper is automatically fed, so when I give the print command on my phone, my document appears magically from inside the printer and lands on an automatically-protracting arm. Just splendid. Buying it is probably what triggered me into writing this rather nostalgic post. I’m looking forward to the next five years with this one.
Until next time…
Vignesh
PS - Speaking of replacements has just reminded me that my phone’s transparent case could use a nice new picture. What better time to start creating one than now?
Our first printer then, was an Epson Stylus C41UX - a petite four-colour inkjet. To the rest of the world, it was a run-of-the-mill economy home printer, but to me, it was witchcraft - the right combination of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks could create just about any colour I wanted? No way! And these minute droplets of ink would be squirted on moving paper using tiny piezoelectric nozzles on the print-head that rapidly dashed from side to side? Get out!
I spent the first few months wearing the printer in how a ten-year-old with computer access should; I would print photos of my family, pictures of my favourite cartoon characters (Tintin and Gohan, to name a couple), and recipes for homemade pizzas and whatnots. And if I got bored printing those, I'd waste more ink printing jewel case labels for my mixtape CDs and outlines for paper cut-outs of Japanese hatchbacks and Airbus aeroplanes.
That Epson went on to serve us for over five years. During its final years of commission, the printer would use the better portion of every ink cartridge installed to clean and align its print-head. If the printer seemed to be in a good mood, it would use two out of its four available colours to present us with a dull, pink or bluish image of a beautiful green leaf. And if it didn’t feel like it, it would refuse to feed paper until one of us forcibly jammed it in, and would then continue to be adamant by simply squirting an amorphous blob of ink on paper instead of printing what was commanded.
Our second printer was an HP F4185 All-in-One, a boxy multifunction printer that could not only print, but also scan, and make copies without requiring a command from the computer. I liked how HP’s thermal inkjet technology felt so ahead of the curve and how it was capable of consuming ink in picolitres, unlike the Epson, which always gave us the appearance of a child that constantly wet its pants and asked for more water. The fact that it was a lot quieter while printing was something I both liked and disliked; I guess it was like using a modern, refined fuel-injected car, but missing the bangs and whirrs of the old one.
I was in high-school when the HP came along, but I was just as excited to fiddle around with it. I would print innumerable custom-designed CD labels and posters on expensive specialty paper. I would also slide documents onto the scanning glass and hit the copy button blithely to save myself a walk to the photocopy shop, a lazy habit that would occasionally end with me being severely reprimanded. I’d impress my teachers regularly with full-colour printouts of project work while everyone else submitted black and white. This lunchbox of a printer was also a trooper that survived over five years.
 |
| One of my old CD labels for a CD with songs ripped off the radio I think. |
Feeling confident about the brand and an itch to go wireless, we replaced the F4185 with yet another HP - the 3515. Boy, were we wrong. This was a dreadful All-in-One printer. It was plagued with a litany of faults right from the start; the paper never once fed correctly without manual intervention, the page alignment was always off, it was utterly incapable of duplex printing (manual or otherwise), and worst of all, the scans all showed up with black patches on them.
I was in college when this foul contraption from hell landed, and I’d already lost much of my interest in playing around with a printer. I remember wanting to gift my friends and family 4x6 photo frames with some old photos on more than one occasion, but the only thing I managed to get out of the printer every single time was a bunch of long error codes. So, I can’t really say I designed and printed anything creative on the 3515, save for a greeting card or two.
I wouldn’t be overstating in the least if I called the 3515 HP’s worst product to date. The very first set of ink cartridges that came with the printer died long before they were fully depleted; the printer simply refused to use them after a few months. It was the same case with the next set of cartridges as well, and the ones after those. And that’s why all of the photos I ever printed were through a Kodak instant photo kiosk from a nearby Printo. The HP was shunted aside and used mostly for printing boarding passes and movie reservations in black and white.
And there we have it. The three printers we owned so far, and my slow passage from childhood to adulthood, mixed with a waning sense of energy and playfulness, and my thickening need to be critical, with a gradual realisation that paper and ink are precious resources.
There’s a special feeling I get when I see a sheet of paper emerge from the printer’s output tray, especially when it’s something I’ve worked on for hours; it’s a mixture of excitement and apprehension, where I’m constantly wondering if all the shapes, the fonts, and the colours will appear the way I imagined it during design. As a schoolboy, this was the feeling I got when I printed my cassette case labels and fridge stickers. Today, it’s the same feeling I get when I print my CVs and project reports. I suppose that’s one nice bit of the experience that doesn’t get lost in the transition to adulthood, and it's probably worth a good printer.
Which is why we bought a new one last week - an HP DeskJet 4535, and I’m happy to report that it’s nothing like the dreadful 3515. It’s a fine piece of machinery that, of course, does everything - scanning, copying, and automatic duplex printing. The input tray is fully concealed and paper is automatically fed, so when I give the print command on my phone, my document appears magically from inside the printer and lands on an automatically-protracting arm. Just splendid. Buying it is probably what triggered me into writing this rather nostalgic post. I’m looking forward to the next five years with this one.
Until next time…
Vignesh
PS - Speaking of replacements has just reminded me that my phone’s transparent case could use a nice new picture. What better time to start creating one than now?
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