Friday, May 02, 2003

Printer woes

Due to a pressing need to print out many copies of high quality images (for my dissertation) I decided that it would be cheaper and easier to buy my own photo printer. To tell the truth I have wanted one for a while. I own a digital camera and though I don't mind looking at images on the web others keep requesting pictures I've taken as hard copy. Anyway I digress yesterday on finding a massive queue for the colour printer at uni I decided it was time to take the plunge and buy a printer.

On my way home I stopped at Micro Direct and purchased a brand new HP 5500 photo inkjet printer. Got home to find it wouldn't work, spent an hour on the phone to HP Technical support who gave me a reference and suggested I return it to the store. So I got my dad to give me a lift back to Micro Direct where I waited for nearly an hour in a queue. Only for some little tech-monkey to tell me it was a driver related problem. I thought this was a bit odd as the HP tech (who was really helpful) seemed to blame the printer mechanism. After much arguing a more senior bod tested the printer and confirm it was b0rked, half an hour later after filling in various return forms I had a replacement and was on my way home.

Once I unpacked the new printer I noticed that it had much more packaging, than the previous one. Firstly there were lots of bits of tape securing bits of the printer. The other one didn't have any of these taped pieces. It then dawned on me although the box was new the previous printer was not, I wonder how many other people it will be sold to or how many broken items are re-boxed in this manner? I don't know whether it was Micro Direct, or one of there importers but I was not happy to have wasted most of the day buying a printer. At least I managed to get everything printed off in the end, actually its quite a good printer if you get a working one!

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