Tall tales...

It's largely about engineering complexity, about what you expect at a certain price point, and how scummy the brand is.

People thought for a very long time that it's a great idea to spend $30-50 on a full color inkjet printer as a method to get your digital photos on paper. It's not.

On the other hand, I had a small $200 Brother black toner printer at home for a long time. Smartphones weren't ubiquitous yet, and I needed to read a lot of documents while traveling.

That printer had a comprehensive manual. It didn't need any software or drivers, it was plug and play on both Windows and Linux. The toner cartridges were very cheap, and printed over a thousand pages. It never jammed.

But in 2021... printing at home or even at the office is absolutely retarded. The only reason to print is decorative posters or promo materials, which is better left to professional print shops.

@bittersweet the last part is wishful thinking at least in Germany where bureaucracy with tons of printed papers is a thing and the internet is still a new territory.

I would like to go deeper, but it would get political. Thus I'm just barely scratching the surface here.

@-ANGRY-STUDENT- Saying governments (and schools, and corporate offices, and ...) are bureaucratic, slow-moving hellholes isn't political. It's just a universal fact.

Doesn't even matter whether it's progressive or conservative, left or right, secular or religious -- Governments love over-complicated protocols, giant shelving units and binders full of tabbed meeting records and proceedings.

@-ANGRY-STUDENT-

When I was part of the city council, we once had a 6-hour long meeting about the acquisition of a new large consolidated building for the city archives, during which an archivist arrived with a cart with stacks of reports and binders documenting all previous procurements of city archive buildings throughout the history of the city.

I was the only one who found that funny.

Get a laser printer, "it just works ™"