Over the years, I’ve had a number of conversations with friends concerned
about how disposable (and wasteful) technology has become. Case in point — the
new printer I bought for less than the price of ink cartridges.
Until last week, I had three printers — a fairly modern HP all-in-one unit,
a Brother laser printer and my old HP all-in-one, a G95.
The first two we shipped, since we use them routinely, and they’ll work in
the US just fine. The G95 I figured we’d use until we moved for the odd print
job or copying we might need.
Unfortunately, I failed to check if the Mac supported it. Mac running Leopard
does not. Oh, HP will lie to you and say that Gutenprint makes it work. I bet
no one from HP has actually tried it. I know that
many report the same issue
I had. It would send the print job out but nothing would come back.
Annoying. I couldn’t believe I’d need to buy a new printer with weeks to go
here. But, I did need to print something. So, I started checking prices.
The local Argos had an HP printer for 19 pounds — about $40. Really? So cheap?
Absolutely, and complete with two regular print cartridges, too. I snapped it up
– it’ll get donated before we go.
It’s so cheap because it’s discontinued. Discontinued no doubt because some
other model with some incremental change has replaced it. And that model will
probably be cheaper than the print cartridges that go into it, since that’s
where the makers get their money. And it all seems so wasteful.
In about a week or so, the new 3G iPhones everyone is expecting will come
out. Suddenly people will want to dump their old phones, and plenty will. There
was probably no good reason a 3G iPhone couldn’t have come out last year — so
more waste. And no doubt in six or nine months, Apple will roll out some
slightly updated iPhone designed to make all the accessories that worked with
the old ones useless. And more iCrud will become iPollution.
A friend of mine said a few months ago that they "want to take better care of
my gadgets I’ve got." I loved that phrase. I especially love it after going
through an office full of outdated gadgets.
Do I really need that new thing? Do we really need to be so consumer-driven
that perfectly good stuff just gets tossed out. Why does everything have to have
a different power supply? Why do we need so many memory card formats?
Sigh.
I know, it’s nothing new that hasn’t already been said and better by others.
I just feel lost having no control over it. I can refuse to buy stuff, sure –
but then a Mac upgrade or something else makes it a necessity. Still, I’m going
to try.
