Paul Jay's Ponderings

Whoever or whatever comes up with the first viable project to develop the kit with hardware and software for a reasonable to use open source inkjet printer, guess what? The world will be beating a path to your door! Trust me on this. The build quality of most consumer-grade commercially made printers can now be confirmed to suck ass. If parts break when clearing what should be a simple to remove paper-jam, then something is seriously wrong with the design. Either somebody cheaped out in the materials used, or the design is flawed and has inadequate access provided for clearing the problem. A paper jam should be user servicable. Also there is still a problem with overpriced ink...

Now I can only imagine an open-source printer with plans available. If you've got the machine shop to make it, great. But also there should be various places where you could order the kit. And I wouldn't care if it costs $300 in kit form from a good distributor. If I know what I'm getting is a fully user servicable product (if I put it together, I should darn well know how to take it apart.) that's cheap to run and made of actual sturdy components, that is money well spent. And I'm sure people wouldn't mind another premium of money on top of that for a fully assembled unit. I think if the right team got on it, HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark, etc. would all get off their complacent and semi-negligent collective arses and finally give the people what we've been asking for.

So, is anyone up to task? An open source printer is really needed in a very complacent and user-unfriendly market. I know I want one.

Labels: inkjet, open source, printer