Requiem for three hateful printers

Today was e-waste recycling day.

It came at an opportune time, since I had just been dealing with Uncooperative Printer Syndrome and had finally given up on getting my Canon Pixma MG2522 to work.

I had actually liked that printer, and it was a workhouse for several years. But the time came when it finally refused to recognize the ink cartridges that it had recognized just fine the day before, giving me an error message that the cartridges could not be identified. Taking the cartridges out and putting them back in (as suggested online) worked a couple of times, but then didn’t.

I would have accepted having to use another device for printing while continuing to use this all-in-one for scanning documents, but it turns out the MG2522 was deliberately designed to prevent the user from scanning anything without having functional, non-empty ink cartridges.

That’s right, if you’re out of ink (or the ink cartridge cannot be identified), the software will prevent you from scanning. This ensures that even if you are not using the all-in-one for printing — only scanning — you will need to keep feeding it ink. Ink which, even if you never print another page, evaporates over time, requiring refills.

What is the benefit to this behavior, you ask? Well, this way, the manufacturer will get a nice steady revenue stream from your printer/scanner, regardless of whether you do any printing. Not much benefit to you, the consumer, of course.

If you think this is obnoxious behavior, you’re not alone. Someone sued Canon for imposing this “feature” on its customers, but sadly they settled the case out of court, so regular folks have no recourse for this unwanted behavior.

So, farewell, Canon Pixma MG2522. Into the e-waste recycling pile you go.

I had a backup printer, an HP Officejet 4622. It, however, had stopped communicating with the computer entirely. Neither a wireless nor USB connection could be established to let it scan.

I redownloaded the installation software, now branded as “HP Smart.” If you try to scan using HP Smart, the software requires you to sign into an account first. Why you should need to do such a thing, I couldn’t tell you. I dutifully dug up the username and password for my HP account, and once logged in HP Smart dutifully informed me that it could not find the device.

So off to the pile you go, too, HP Officejet 4622. The thing I will miss least about you is that whenever there was a power outage in the neighborhood, you would scold me that the printer should only be turned on or off using the power switch, as though I had any control over the electrical grid.

No, I won’t miss that one bit.

Last and least was an HP Deskjet 2652.

It was a hand-me-down of sorts, and when I inherited it, its indicator lights were blinking, alerting me of some sort of problem with the ink cartridges that neither new ink cartridges nor various other troubleshooting attempts had any success at resolving. Its primitive display gave no clue what its actual problem was; not even a “PC LOAD LETTER” message. So into the pile it went.

It felt good to drop these disappointing devices off at the recycling event. Marie Kondo-ing backup printers that wouldn’t actually back me up was quite cathartic.

Nothing sparks less joy than a disobedient printer.