5 Very Useful* Printing Tips

Here are some tips for using a printer, based on my many years of experience being a person who owns a printer.

My assistant, "helping" me print stuff

1. Never ever think to yourself "gosh, the printer has been working great for ages!" This is effectively an incantation that will instantly cause your printer to stop working. (Just like how popping out for five minutes magically summons that courier you've been waiting in for all day). Beware this powerful dark magic.

2. Don't try and fix your broken printer when you're hungry. "I'll just fix this simple problem then have lunch in a minute!" is a decision that leads to disaster - or, at the very least, lots and lots of rage. Printers always take forever to fix and hangriness (anger caused by being hungry) + printer rage = a dangerous combination! If in doubt, equip yourself with some tasty, soothing snacks to fuel you through the frustrations of the printer-fixing process.

3. Try not to leave important printing tasks (e.g. printing out a document you need for a deadline, or some paperwork for submitting your tax return) to the last minute. Some animals can sense fear. Your printer can sense when you really really really need to print something. Upon sensing the important, time-sensitive nature of your task it will choose this moment to break down just to spite you.

4. Buy your ink cartridges on special offer if you can (those things are expensive!) but don't be tempted to bulk buy too many at once. "These will last me ages! This is a great deal! I'm saving so much money!" This is, in my experience, a surefire way to make the printer break down so badly you have to abandon it completely and buy a new printer which, of course, will be a newer model which won't take the same type of cartridges.

5. When you are stuck in one of those frustrating "clean print head! print nozzle check! clean print head! print nozzle check!" loops that seem to go on forever and you are starting to think seriously about throwing your printer out of the window, use this otherwise wasted time to google meditiation techniques that you can employ to (hopefully) achieve a state of Zen-like calm the next time this happens. Or just watch that scene from Office Space a few times until you feel better.


* These are probably not the world's most useful tips. In case you hadn't guessed from reading this post, my current printer (not pictured) broke last week and I spent a long time trying to fix it! Luckily it's working again now, phew.