[ajford]

My dad ran a pet grooming business, and he went through probably a printer a year. I always figured it died because of the amount of pet fur in the air clogging up the printer, so at one point I asked him why he didn't put a door on the office to keep the fur out so his printer wouldn't get jammed up with pet fur.

He told me they weren't replaced because the fur killed them, it just wasn't worth replacing the inks since it was so damn expensive. It was always cheaper for him to replace the printer instead of replacing the ink, and because he never held onto a printer for much longer than a year he never bothered trying to keep it protected from the shop environment.

About the only think he ever printed was the occasional door flyer, checklists and general office paperwork, probably a single ream of paper a year at most.

[Jiro]

They sell you printers with half empty cartridges to prevent [people buying new printers for the cartridges.

[ajford]

They do, but in over a decade that I remember him buying and replacing printers for the groom shop, I think he only ended up buying replacement ink (because he actually used all of it in under a year) maybe twice.

I think that was when the local print shop either shut down or was too backlogged for my dad to get his business cards done in reasonable time so he used print-at-home business card sheets for a bit to tide him over.