Rant: Why fixing printers is shit

[Dave S]

Hi all,

Time for a rant!

I haven't posted any rants here for a looong time, but I really need
to get this one off my chest, and I hoped some within the 'bar might
understand where I'm coming from.

A friend of mine has an Epson Stylus DX4850 printer / scanner /
all-in-one. It does just about everything, and costs about £85 new.

When changing the cartridge, she accidentally left one of the small
plastic tabs on which you are meant to peel off before inserting the
new cartridge.  She loaded the new ink and the printer did it's thing,
but the little tab of plastic film got ripped off somehow, and has
jammed up the works.

Now, you'd think it might be a simple task to extract a small piece of
plastic film from within the workings of a printer, but no.

She asked me to take a look, and I said I would.

It took me over two hours to even find a way into this thing - there
are no screws on the outside which you can use to undo any major
panels.

So I took to the web, and searched for service manuals.

But of course, they aren't available from the manufacturers website.
They aren't even leaked on Bittorrent or Rapidshare as far as I can
find. Some tight bastards are selling them (yes, selling someone
else's copyrighted work) from a few websites for about $10-12 USD, but
this being a favour I'm doing for a friend, my budget is basically
zero.

I don't want to shell out on one of these service manuals (which
should be free anyway) for something I may not be able to fix anyway,
for a job I'm trying to do as a favour for a friend.

So, eventually, I managed to find a service manual on Rapidshare for a
similar enough printer model (Epson CX3100-3200) that I can find a way
in to the printer.

At this point, it has already taken me about three or four hours -
just to remove the first proper piece of outer panel.

I managed to undo one more screw inside, but that's only a cable grip,
and nothing else seems to be coming away.

So I'm forced to admit defeat - I just can't open this f*$king thing
up, which is a first for me (although to be honest, I haven't tried
fixing much in the way of electronics goods in the last decade).

I guess manufacturers just got to the point where they automatically
assume that most end users are such inept passive consumers that
nobody would want to even bother trying to fix a device themselves.

Is that really the way it is these days?

Tepis only knows how many resources it takes to make one of these
printers, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the average amount
of oil (and that's just one resource) consumed to make electronic
goods is about ten times the final weight of the item.  So this 7kg
printer has perhaps used 70kg or so of resources in it's manufacture -
meanwhile, I myself weigh 62kg.

We have found somewhere that would service the printer, but it's
undoubtedly going to cost at least £50 or more.

More than half the retail price of a newer model?  That's a write off
as far as many people are concerned (my friend included).

So for the sake of a silly mistake, a stupid little piece of plastic
film, a lack of a few exterior screws, a lack of free service manuals,
and some guy trying to make $10, I am unable to fix my friend's
printer, and thus she's off to buy a new one.

Meanwhile, this high-tech commodity - which contains about a million
times more processing power than landed humans on the moon - is
perhaps off to landfill (if my friend is irresponsible) or at best (if
I get my way) will end up on Freecycle, where someone else will
probably waste five hours trying to fix the unfixable.

(Maybe they'll shell out for the service manual, as $10 is definitely
economically viable if you get a free printer and scanner in the
bargain.)

But for me, the moneyless amateur, who is pretty good with a
screwdriver and has taken loads of electronic items apart in his time,
who just wants to do a friend a favour... this is just about the end
of the line.

I can't believe I can't fix a printer, and that this scenario has
undoubtedly happened tens / hundreds of thousands (more?) of times
already.

I really feel a great deal of sadness when I contemplate the mountains
and mountains of electronic crap lying around in landfill sites,
simply because it's cheaper (and more profitable) for the
manufacturers to make things unfixable.

It doesn't even matter if you boycott the one company, and buy your
replacement printer from a different one.  Someone else is probably
doing the exact reverse on the very same day!!!

So it's win-win-win for the lazy manufacturers, and lose-lose-lose for
the planet and for the human nature to use your skills to help your
neighbour.

Is it any wonder people lose the plot and go out of their minds!?
(I'm pretty fucking close to that sometimes!)

But hey, that's a win-win-win for the pharmaceutical companies who
sell anti-depressants, isn't it!

Sometimes, I really have to remind myself that the world isn't quite
as shitty as it can often seem.  Because a great many societal
structures can indeed give "the entire world" a seemingly impenetrable
veneer of extreme shittyness.

Lesson learned: I can't volunteer to help fix my friend's printer -
not because I can't fix things like that, but because the item in
question has been designed to make it impossible.

This is one of the many, many reasons why I basically no longer buy
any electronic gadgets (including computers and synths), and on the
very rare occasions when I do, I always buy second hand.  My G.A.S.
has been cured once and for all!

Anyone care to join me there, in the land of former electronics and
gadget-o-philes who now no longer partake in the insanity of
consumerism?

Cheers,

~Dave