This Is Why I Don’t Own A Printer

I don’t own a printer. I haven’t for about three years now. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ll ever purchase another printer again. A lot of people ask me why I don’t have a printer tucked away in my office. Usually I just go on and on about PDFs and the fact that I just don’t need to print anything on paper these days. I was wrong. There’s a completely different reason that I don’t own a printer.

It’s shit like this.

Printer companies continue to screw customers over year after year, increasing prices while scrimping on the ink. Just ask the guy over at HP Ink Cartridges who decided to cut the top off an ink cartridge from HP all for the same printer model, but across multiple years.

Do you feel like you run out of ink quicker these days? Well, it turns out that you actually do. Printer companies have been shrinking the hydrophobic sponge in the ink cartridges so it holds less ink. The difference between 2010 and 2012? Fifty percent less sponge.

From HP Ink Cartridges:

Mmm, I was beginning to smell a rat; as the saying goes… this got me thinking even more and I started to wonder if all the newer cartridges are like this, so this time I chopped the top off of a new HP 301 cartridge to have a look at the sponge, surely it can’t be any smaller…..or can it? Guess what! The sponge inside the HP301 is almost 40 percent smaller than the 2012 HP 350, which means that we are actually getting less ink for our money now than ever before. Why is that? The price isn’t shrinking though, that’s for sure!

Yup, it’s shit like this. I honestly can’t wait until I never have to print another document again. I barely do now, but the odd time I head to a print shop to print out a contract or important documents is still too often. Anyone else tired of this crap? HP sure knows how to treat their customers right. Right?

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld… Full Bio