> The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong
I'd go further than cars and say, "in most things". Smart-anything, washing machines, printers, sewing machines, thermostats, appliances in general...
My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?
I'm not arguing against electronics, here-- many of these things are no doubt improved by electronics to such a degree that the tradeoff is worth it, but it's good to at least acknowledge that there is a tradeoff. It's also good to try to minimize the impact of electronic failure. Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.
If something like that needs to be smart the smart part should basically be extra interface. Old printers did it right - separate extra box for all the connectivity working as print server. That breaks ? just connect it directly.
But hey, feeding everything from single microcontroller is $2 cheaper...
I went to a "tech school" to learn computers while in High School in the 90's. The tech school also had classes for 'the trades', it was set up to prepare Michigan kids for careers (Careerline Tech IIRC).
Anyway. A big part of that class was learning to clean, repair, and manage printers. Again, it was the 90's, and we were high school kids. We came out quite capable with many computer skills but the printer stuff really stuck with me. I've done technical support throughout the years and have setup hundreds of printers.
The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's. Pure simplicity and speed vs FULL COMPUTERS, with scanning, faxing, and every other imaginable feature crammed in with zero hope of doing anything other than replacing the toner.
> The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's. Pure simplicity and speed vs FULL COMPUTERS, with scanning, faxing, and every other imaginable feature crammed in with zero hope of doing anything other than replacing the toner.
The first Laserwriter in 1985 had more processing power than the Macintosh it was sold to accompany.
Printers have been full computers for a long time now. As we expect them to do more and more, the computers in them get more and more complex.
Who does? Who asked for updates blocking third-party ink, 1GB "drivers", full-color "test prints" each time you switch it on, ...?
Printing reliably doesn't sound too demanding, manufacturers reached that point long ago, and since then I haven't seen all that much groundbreaking innovation. Sure, things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago, and more reliably than the printers I've used. I also haven't heard of anyone being excited about NFC in printers, and from experience I can say it's not nearly intuitive or frictionless enough to warrant the integration.
The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi, and needs to be able to reliably print from Android and iOS.
Accordingly, it needs firmware updates because phones break how they work all the time.
> things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago
Not just wifi, multiple protocol for connecting to printers. Also that wifi needs to be 5ghz so I don't have to switch over to a 2.4ghz legacy network every time I want to print (which I had to do with my previous 2.4ghz only wifi printer!)
The onboard touch screen + embedded OS means I don't need to set anything up through a computer or smartphone app.
FWIW I have a black and white laser printer from Brother, I've never had to install a driver, I just plugged it in, typed my wifi PW on to the touch screen, and after a firmware update on first use it has happily been allowing anyone connected to my wifi to print w/o any hassle.
> The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi
It needs to be on your home network, but it doesn't need to be connected to wifi per se. Ethernet works fine, including ethernet to a wireless mesh AP.
My house came wired for cat5 (the original cat5!) but modern wifi is a lot faster than 100mbps, so I just use wifi for everything.
Latency is higher, but so is the speed.
Also I only own 1 desktop that has an ethernet port, and I haven't plugged the desktop in for 2 years.
I would actually like to have the TV hooked up to ethernet, since its wifi chip crashes every few days and I have to power cycle wifi in settings, but whoever wired the house for cat5 didn't install ports anywhere, although they did install a large patch panel in the basement, but I have better things to do than crimp a bunch of wires to fix one flaky connection.
That's the nifty thing about my second point, with a mesh network - if you put your mesh APs in spots where you have a bunch of wired-capable devices, you can plug everything into the mesh AP and then all the data runs over the mesh AP's high-end radios.
I fixed this by adding a printer server to my NAS and use that for AirPrint and the like. Smart power socket to prevent the printer from drawing power all the time. No need to have a smart printer.
Most people don't have, or want to maintain, a NAS + print server, having the print server software built into the printer is perfectly reasonable for a consumer product!
In my experience everyone that has an old trusted printer that they don’t want to get rid of do have enough hardware running for a server and using it like that. Obviously it’s not for everyone.
People used to buy HP Laserjet 4 printers at auction because they were peak stability. From the look of things the 4 introduced the direct predecessor to the wire protocol printers use today (PCL 5e vs PCL 6 variants)
There were a ton of companies selling refurbished or knockoff toner cartridges for those things too. As good as the LJ was, the fact that they had easy access to cheaper supplies just accelerated the process of selection.
> The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's.
Maybe. But how expensive were they?
I can buy a good laser printer for under $200 these days. It will be more compact, lighter, mechanically simpler and use way less power than older printers. Something has to give.
Some older printers were really overengineered (which in many cases did make them more reliable), but that has a cost. Turns out, consumers didn't want to pay those costs.
My grandma had an original "Montgomery Wards" microwave.. they saved up for months to buy it when it came out. Complete with a rotary dial timer.
Never serviced, always cooked perfectly. She had to get rid of it around 2006 or so, when she got a pacemaker.. They didn't shield them as well back then...
> My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?
There's a bit of survivorship bias and N=1 here.
I'm old enough to remember machines full of relays and discrete components that failed pretty often and required a lot of troubleshooting with schematics on hand. Modern appliances – if built out of decent components – have a much better shot at surviving long term. Less discrete components that can fail, more debugging capabilities, logic that's implemented in a rock solid processor rather than an unreliable mess of digital gates (or worse, analog logic).
There's obviously a point where there are diminishing returns, and probably another one where more complexity actually decreases reliability.
> Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.
If possible, yes. That's only really an option for simple devices.
I'd go further than cars and say, "in most things". Smart-anything, washing machines, printers, sewing machines, thermostats, appliances in general...
My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?
I'm not arguing against electronics, here-- many of these things are no doubt improved by electronics to such a degree that the tradeoff is worth it, but it's good to at least acknowledge that there is a tradeoff. It's also good to try to minimize the impact of electronic failure. Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.