I hate ink jet printers. Must. Vent. Now.

I have 2 of them. A Canon large format and a Brother print/scan/fax, set up about 40 ft apart at different workstations in my home office, 2 macs and 2 printers, that in my dreams may someday actually connect to one another. They sit away out of plain sight and don't mess with the zen-ness of my home studio -- I don't want a gray plastic inkjet printer to occupy the same space as my Noguchi coffee table damnit! Both inkjets are supposed to work wireless but seem to forget about that function if they go into sleep mode or get shut down. So now they stay tethered by USB for a direct hardwired to each nearby mac, and maybe if the gods are smiling down they'll tempt me by letting them connect to eachother to share wirelessly for a moment, then decide to taunt me and become unconnected 5 minutes after I've been able to be connected and print to the one in the other room … deleting and reinstalling drivers and preferences only continues the game. A new Airport Extreme perhaps? No luck with that either.

The Canon has decided it's going to print everything 1.25" shifted to the right. There is no preference or page setup function that says to do that. It also likes to devour Photo Cyan, even when the "clean print heads" option is turned off …. otherwise the thing would do that unneccesary ink-wasting action 10 times a day. $16 a cartridge …. this really digs deep in the hurt when I have to go replace a dry red ink cartridge so I can print black text pages …. when did I print anything red?? Run to Staples and they have the CMYK value pack (saves about $5) and green and PM and PC but out of stock of the red.

So I'll spend some time this weekend and delete, download and reinstall all of the current printer software (again) . Rework my network to see if maybe they'll want to connect. The Brother multifunction likes to spool a whole lot, maybe the Brother engineers think this is funny because I don't think the little whining noise it makes is something actutally mechanical happening as data is flowing … I think they engineer the thing to make that noise as a feature. Like the Canon engineers thinking they might create binge-buying of Canon 8Red ink … just because they can.


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Both of my networked printers (HP7500 inkjet and HP CP2025 color laser) will occasionally lose the connection over night. Sometimes just turning the printer off and then back on is the fix, and sometimes restarting the computer is necessary. Last month I was having all kinds of ageda with the laser. Jim helped me delete virtually every shred of code related to the printers and then I reinstalled the drivers again. Since then, no problems (except for the now very rare dropped connection in the morning).

BTW, 40' apart. 40? Where's your home office — in a f'n football stadium?

I've always stayed away from the high cost of a color laser printer that can print 11x17, but I bet if I added the cost of all the damn inkjet cartridges at $16 to $18 a pop then the price may be more comparable.

I am sick of inkjets, and actually find myself using them less and less because of the pain it inflicts. I do my creative stuff in one side of the the house, my wife does her business stuff in the study on the other side. The cable modem is in my workspace and everything is wireless to her space. I'd like to the Canon printer in her workspace but the wireless snafu won't allow that. Even with the Canon USB-connected to the iMac in her study I must pray to my tiki gods and draw blood to have any hope that a file will actually print "through the air". One moment it works, the next it doesn't. Everything else on our network is flawless and speedy, but printing maybe just isn't my thing.

How about setting up printer sharing on her iMac for the Canon and print to it that way? Set up the shared printer in your Print and Fax prefs.

I don't have a wide format laser. My 7500 will print up to 13" x 19". The XL ink carts are only $14.99 each ($29 for the XL black), and the HP utility allows me to control ink usage. The color laser has auto duplex, so I save on paper, but a full set of toner carts can cost up to $500!

HP does have a really sweet wide format duplexing color laser (prints up to 18" x 24") for $1600. Not bad, considering. But those toner carts cost twice as much — and the f'n thing weighs over 100 lbs.

Been there done that. All printers are shared on the network prefs on both macs. Both macs are set to wake for network access.

Sending to Brother@imac from the available connected printers on the network does nothing, spools for an hour, or decides it's not connected. Sending from the iMac to the connected AirPrint Canon sends the file, then decides it too is not connected. The wireless connection has full bars to the iMac, the microwave is not being used, and if it's a rush to get out the door to a meeting it laughs at me as it spools and whines.

Of course, on whim, sometimes it all works perfectly. Just to tease.

I've undone and redone everything to the point that cocktail hour can occur at any time.

So that's printing from yours through her iMac which is connected to the Canon via a USB cable only, no Airprint?

No, poor typing, sorry. The Cannon is phyically USB connected to my MacPro. My MacPro networks wirelessly to the iMac to connect to the Brother.

The iMac in the other room uses Airprint to connect to my Canon, that's how it shows up as a networked device. The Brother multifunction is physically usb connected to the iMac now that a wireless connection to it is iffy… it worked sometimes but mostly spooled.

I'm taking it all apart on Sunday and going to try this again fresh. I need to get the Canon printing on the page where it's supposed to. The Brother, its a brother from another mother, I just need the thing to print without always the noisey spooling for a looooong time to print simple text pages.

Thanks for asking, I'm ready to Craigslist all of it

I'ma-a-tell-a-youse — replace 'em w/HP.

I wish I had a printer that......would spit out twenty dollar bills rather than eating them