Colorful Confusion

One thing I have never understood is the frequently-repeated belief that long periods of inactivity are bad for inanimate objects. I'm sure you've heard this before - anytime people dig an item out of storage and try to use it they are told not to over work it right away or they could break it forever. The people who say this apparently believe that machines have to be eased back into doing the one thing they were created for. (I also don't think the concept of giving a machine a break makes much sense because rest shouldn't matter either way since they have no concept of time.) The reason I can't understand this theory is that I think it has nothing to do with the machine but everything to do with how it is being powered. Batteries lose their power over time and you wouldn't want to take a car on a roadtrip after it had been sitting for years, but that has more to do with the fluids inside of them than the actual pistons and gears. Pretty much every other machine should not be impacted by the last time it was used. I know computers are getting smarter by the day but as far as I know they haven't unionized and gotten paid time off yet. If I go away for a vacation for a couple weeks as near as I can tell there is no reason my computer should work any slower than it did on the day I left. I am familiar the concept of muscle atrophying due to lack of use, but when did motherboards gain muscle tissue? The point is, it is very frustrating when something is only called upon to work every once in a great while and then fails to perform as requested when that time finally comes.

The other day I needed to print something out. This is a rare occasion because thanks to inventions such as email and scanners, the number of days in which I need to print out a physical copy of something in a given year could be counted on one hand. Despite this, I actually have a very nice, sophisticated printer - the kind used to produce high-definition, professional-quality photographs. Sure, it may be a touch of overkill but I happen to believe that just because you do things infrequently it doesn't mean they should be done poorly. Anyway, all the other instances in which the printer has sat for long stretches of time it has always fired up and done exactly what I needed it to without complaint. Not this time. No, on this occasion a strange light which I had never seen before came on and then started blinking at me. This was accompanied by a pop-up window on my screen letting me know half of my ink wells were empty. Once again, I would remind you I have a high-end printer, which is why it has six separate ink cartridges. Gone are the days of one container for the black ink and another for every other color of the rainbow. Not only do I have many colored cartridges, they have fancy names. According to the read-out my yellow, magenta and cyan cartridges were not in place (these were not to be confused with the light magenta and light cyan containers). Sure, because a guy like me knows what the hell cyan is. (For those wondering, it's a blue. This once again confirms my theory that giving something an unnecessarily fancy names makes it automatically become high-maintenance.)

Obviously empty ink cartridges come with the territory and making customers frequently replace them is how most printer companies make their money. (Ever notice how Dell is only too happy to give you a free printer? That's because only Dell cartridges will work in their printers and those are twice what you would have to pay for another brand. Remember, huge companies didn't get that way by giving things away.) But like I said this printer doesn't have a heavy workload and I can almost guarantee those colors wouldn't get much of a workout. Taking the cartridges out and shaking them confirmed that they still had plenty of ink in them. So, I went with a method which has worked since the days of the old Nintendo - I blew into the machine. This seemed to fix the problem somewhat as the printer now recognized the existence of yellow, but not the other two. I then tried cleaning the heads of the machine and the cartridges but that didn't fix the remaining problem. I then checked various message boards to see what they could tell me, but they were also not helpful. Finally I contacted the company directly, who basically told me to do all the things I was already trying to do and if that didn't help I should contact them again. Since it obviously didn't, I emailed them back at which point they informed me that the cartridges are only guaranteed to work for six months and I have had the printer for over a year, so I should just buy new ones. (And when that fails I am sure the next step will be buying a new printer.) I thought about writing a snarky response questioning whether or not cartridges should be guaranteed for more than four uses, but figured that wouldn't get me anywhere, so I didn't send it (opting instead to share my feelings with you guys).

The only reason this whole thing is so annoyingly post-worthy is that I don't even need these colors for what I am trying to print out. It's a fairly simple document which is 95% various shades of black and white, just like almost every other thing I ever print (if the cartridge with the black ink was empty I would understand). But despite this fact the printer refuses to work until all the colors are in their proper place, not offering me any way to work around the problem. This seems like a pretty huge design flaw to me. It would be like if you wanted to drive to the store alone only your car won't start because two of the backseat seat belts aren't buckled and then when you buckle them the car still isn't happy and refuses to move. What happened to the concept that should one aspect of a machine started to slip the another one compensated for it? I mean, do I really need a splash of magenta to make black and white? I'm pretty sure that when I eventually print this thing out the levels of that cartridges will be the same as when I started, so why not allow me to bypass it in some way? It's just very strange because we are in a world in which versatility is prized and yet all we seem to produce are machines which can only do one thing at a time and even then conditions need to be absolutely perfect for them to perform the one duty they were designed for. You would think a company with the attention to detail to work all the way down the color wheel for colors like magenta and cyan would have worked on the design a little more, especially when they had all that extra time while their computers took an afternoon rest.