A couple years ago I bought an Epson StylusColor R200. My last Epson printer clogged all the time and I had to spend a bunch of time cleaning the nozzles every time I wanted to print, so I wasn’t going to buy another one, but the R200 made really pretty pictures, had six separately replaceable cartridges and even printed on CDs. For $99 I figured I couldn’t go wrong. I’d just buy a new printer if this one started sucking.

The Epson printer in its natural habitat


Suck it did. Once again I had to make several passes with the “clear nozzle” tool before I could print anything. I put up with it for a while, but as time went on it got harder and harder to get the nozzles clear.

A couple days ago I wanted to print stuff and the printer said it was out of ink. This was no problem as I had purchased a replacement set of cartridges already, so I swapped them out. I “clear nozzle”d a few times and I printed my single page document. Today I wanted to print a map so I started “clear nozzle”ing. One time. Five times. Ten times. Each time one color would get better but a different one would get worse. Finally I clicked the button to clear again and a window popped up that informed me that I couldn’t perform the nozzle clearing action because the printer was out of ink.

What? These were brand-new ink cartridges. Basically I used up an entire $75 set of ink cartridges to unclog a $99 printer. Pwned by my own printer. I should have listened to myself and just bought a new printer when the ink ran out the first time.

(I thought about pulling out the little sponge that now contained $75 worth of ink and selling it on eBay or something, but I figured nobody would want to squeeze it all back into a cartridge.)

I just got back from buying a new printer. I walked right past the Epson McClogsalot section and settled on a nice HP. HP has always worked okay for me in the past. I got my new printer for $30. Yep, that’s right. Less than half the cost of the ink I just wasted in my old printer. Sure, it probably doesn’t print super duper retina candy hi-res photos or print on CDs, but now hopefully when I’m trying to print out a map as I’m running out the door I won’t be late for wherever I’m going because my stupid printer is clogged. And you can bet that when this one dies I won’t even bother buying new cartridges for it.

(BTW, is it even possible to smash a piece of office equipment on the front lawn without “Damn it’s good to be a gangster” running through your mind?)

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