[soneca]

Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market?

I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects.

Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?

[takeda]

IMO it's mostly inkjet printers. The whole market was made so they can make tons of money on ink.

To make this work, the printer needs to be cheaper than alternatives (I even had situation when I was buying a computer that came with printer, when I told them I don't want the printer the price was higher!)

Those printers are made as cheap as they can make them, they don't bother about their quality, because it cost to you as much as one or two cartridges.

Also the issues the author of the article has are simply are to force you to buy more ink (the printer doesn't need color cartridges to print black, but still requires them, and once you put color cartridges in and don't use they'll dry out)

[johnminter]

They are quite complex and the consumer versions are commodity items. There are printhead - ink - paper interactions and the electrophotographic process for laser printers requires optimization to print on different media. There are lots of things that can go wrong - and do. I have spent much of my career in an analytical lab analyzing these problems. Such problems raise costs and with commodity items, very high yields are required to be profitable.

Years ago we had a professor (I forget the name) from MIT come to our Research Labs and give a talk on his research. He was using game theory to study product research, development, and manufacturing. When all was said and done, he concluded that if you were not first or second to market, you spent significantly more money to enter the market and your probability of being profitable was much lower.

[tdicola]

It's a race to bottom of costs, not some market teeming with innovation. Sure you could build the most amazing printer in the world but no consumer is going to spend $1000 for it vs. the $50 special at the big box store. Think of them like razors and razor blades--they'll throw an extra blade on to amp up the marketing but in the end it's all about selling some plastic and electrical bits for a few pennies less than the next guy.

[washadjeffmad]

I didn't get your razor analogy at first because you can have inexpensive and high quality with safety razors (eg - Feather blades).

The ones you reference are aptly called disposable razors and electric razors. Disposables are sham products through and through, but a large portion of the electrics market is high utility, fairly inexpensive basic function devices, like trimmers.

A Fill-ups(tm) that pre-warms the lotion it squirts on your face and starts your car for you on cold days for an extra $150 over the previous model is a bit of a gimmick, but there are plenty of standard models that are low cost, long lasting, and well priced if you know what you're shopping for, which was part of your point about cheap vs quality printers.

[Spooky23]

People and most businesses are dumb and overweight procurement cost over TCO.

You can get a good printer. It just doesn't cost $79.99.

[capote]

How much do people still use printers? It's gotta have declined lately—I honestly can't remember the last time I printed physically.