Printing Industry
Printers: The Ultimate Masters of Planned Obsolescence and Vendor Lock-In
Printers. They sit quietly in the corner of your office, waiting for the perfect moment to ruin your day. Paper jams, mysterious error codes, and ink cartridges that somehow dry up overnight—it's almost as if they were designed to fail.
Oh wait. They were.
Welcome to the Printer Industrial Complex, where companies have perfected the art of squeezing every last dime out of you, using a mix of planned obsolescence, vendor lock-in, and some downright evil business practices.
1. Planned Obsolescence: Your Printer is Designed to Die
Ever noticed that your printer works fine for exactly three years, then suddenly decides to give up on life? That’s not bad luck. That’s planned.
🔹 Built to Break – Some printers come with a built-in "page counter" that hard stops the machine after a set number of prints. You thought it was a hardware issue? Nope. It’s a software kill switch.
🔹 Ink Expiry Dates – Even if you barely used your printer, the cartridges will "expire," forcing you to buy new ones. It’s ink, not yogurt. But somehow, it has an expiration date.
🔹 Unrepairable Designs – Older printers could be serviced. New ones? They’re designed to be cheaper to replace than fix.
2. Vendor Lock-In: The Ink Mafia
The real scam isn’t the printer itself. It’s the ink.
🔹 Printers Are Cheap, Ink Costs More Than Blood – Companies sell printers at a loss so they can trap you into buying their ridiculously overpriced ink. Printer ink is more expensive per ounce than luxury perfume, and no, that’s not a joke.
🔹 DRM-Protected Ink – Ever tried using third-party ink? Many printers detect and reject non-branded cartridges. Some even send firmware updates to make sure you can’t use cheaper ink.
🔹 Subscription-Based Ink Services – Some companies now want you to subscribe to ink, sending you refills automatically while monitoring your print usage. Yes, Big Brother (Pun Intended?) Printer is watching you.
3. B2B vs. B2C: The Two-Class Printer Economy
There are two kinds of printers in this world:
👨💻 The Consumer Printer Experience (B2C):
- Cheap plastic garbage that dies after 3 years
- Ink cartridges cost more than the printer
- Random, cryptic error messages that no one understands
- Wireless printing that never works when you need it most
🏢 The Enterprise Printer Experience (B2B):
- Costs more than your car ($10,000+ industrial printers)
- Built like a tank to last for years
- Comes with on-site repair contracts
- Ink tanks the size of your head that never seem to run out
Business customers get the real printers, while the rest of us are left with plastic ink extortion machines.
4. Printers and War Crimes (Wait, What?)
In a bizarre twist, some printers are banned from being sold in conflict zones. Why? Because people have figured out how to repurpose printer parts to build explosives.
Also, modern printers have IoT connectivity and cloud-based controls, meaning that in theory, someone could trigger a device remotely. You thought you were sending a print job? Boom.
5. The Future: What Happens If Printers Die Out?
Despite everyone hating printers, the industry refuses to die. Even COVID-19, which forced people into digital workflows, barely put a dent in the printer economy. Why? Because businesses still print things—contracts, invoices, reports—while consumers get scammed by ink subscriptions.
Printer companies are also trying to pivot into office technology like projectors and smart meeting systems. But until they find a new revenue stream as evil as ink cartridges, they’ll keep making sure your printer is the most frustrating device in your life.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve ever screamed at a printer, just know this: it was never your fault. It was designed to fail, designed to make you buy more ink, and designed to make sure you’ll never escape the clutches of Big Printer.
And if you ever get an error message saying "Cartridge Not Recognized"…
…just remember, that’s exactly what they want.
