[syshum]

>>Is there a reason consumer printers haven't been disrupted by some bored billionaire?

Because it is dying technology where innovation resources are put into paperless conversation of things that still require paper today.

Personally I believe we are already there, a person and business can be 100% paperless today if they choose to, many have chosen not do for some reason.

However people choosing to keep their horse and buggy does not mean a billionaire should invest money on making a better buggy

[betterunix2]

There will always be some demand for printing, even if it is reduced over time. For example I and several my teammates routinely print research papers so that we can take pens/highlighters and mark them up or put a post-it note on some page of interest. Sure, you can theoretically do all the above on a computer, but even with the highest-end tablets I still find it cumbersome to do something as simple as drawing a big circle around a paragraph of text.

That said, printers are certainly a mature technology at this point and I doubt there is much room for disruption.

[syshum]

But here you have even indicated that you have a personal preference for the "horse and buggy" vs the "car" in this analogy the Paper would be the buggy, where as the car would be something like a Remarkable, SuperNote, or iPAD...

So the paperless technology is there, people just choose not to use it, so if I was a billionaire looking to invest in something I would choose to invest in making this technology better, more appealable, and more accessible to more people than I would in disruption of the printer market

[betterunix2]

Paperless tech is not there. If it was there it would not be so inconvenient to do simple things like underlining some text or crossing out a word. I have tried all the above and it is still too cumbersome to really be comfortable. It's not just me; despite the widespread availability of these devices and the technology generally, people have not really made the switch.

When cars first came out their technical advantages over draft animals were so obvious and undeniable that the world rapidly switched from animals to machines and has never looked back. We have had tablets with styluses and other paper-replacing technology for decades now, but thus far the advantages compared to just using paper have not clearly outweighed the disadvantages and the world has not rapidly switched. To put that in perspective, I have not had a desk phone for more than a decade now, because cell phones are clearly a better thing to give employees; at the same time my desk is within 100ft of a heavily-used printer/scanner/copier.

[syshum]

Seems like personal bias at play here

I have no problems using paperless tech to mark up documents, I do it every day. Highlighting, scratching out text, making notes, etc all on Manuals, Specs sheets, maps, etc. I use (or have used) Android Tablets, Windows 2n1 systems, Remarkable, Remarkable2, and Supernote's for these tasks

Similarly you talk about cell phones being better than desk phones yet thousands of desk phones are still sold every day and when new communications platforms come out targeted to business there is a clear drive to have "certified" desk phones in additional to mobile clients and other soft phones (see MS Teams Certified Deskphones)

So you say the technology is not there to switch to paperless tech but thousands have done just that, and you claim the technology is there to move away from Deskphones yet thousands have not...

So.....

[mattkrause]

I don’t think that’s the right analogy here.

I also rely on a printed copy for making sense of dense research papers and it’s not an affectation. Rather, it’s just that the electronic alternatives are not as good: the markup isn’t as flexible, they’re harder to share, they take up screen real estate I need for other things, etc.