Transcript
A piece of paper on an old printer (a laserjet 4050 to be specific. It says: "Hello, My name is LaserJet 4050 and I was made in 1999. I’ve been doing my job printing your documents for many many years, however I think the motor that powers my paper feeder is bad. This makes me sad because I’m not able to do my job very reliably. As such, I am formally presenting this document as a letter of resignation. IT is working on finding a replacement for me, but for the time being, I apologize if I tell you I have a paper jam. Please allow me to refer you to my coworker, LaserJet 3390. 3390 resides outside of Ray’s office and can be reached at: Please accept my sincerest apologies for failing. Thank you for replacing my toner and restocking my paper tray. It’s been a wonderful 14 years of working together. Much love, LaserJet 4050
Is this is repost from 2013?
I was kind of surprised to see one of those still running for 26 years until I reached that part of the letter, although in my experience those old LaserJets were pretty robust compared to the more consumer-oriented devices of that era, let alone today’s models which mainly exist to lock buyers into ink subscriptions.
What's the point of selling a good printer when you can sell a much worse version for a little cheaper and with bigger margins, replacing the models at ever increasing rates but never improving them?
Or discontinue ink for printers that do run for years trying to not piss off too many enterprise customers and vendor locking them with service contracts in the meantime?
What about hoarding patents so no new companies can compete without the fear of litigation by billion dollar companies?
Every school district IT department has like dozens of these 4050s in service that WONT DIE, and it’s amazing. I wish they still made them.
i have one of the early 'consumer oriented' mass-market models, a 4L. only recently retired due to finally running out of consumables and parts for it.
I still have a 4100 or maybe a 4200 (one or two revisions up from the one in the pic) that works just fine although it could use a new fuser that I don’t want to spend the money on. The HP laserjets of that era were absolute bulletproof monsters.
I have a deskjet 990 (i think) working fine in the attic. Just plug in the cable and it works.
Most likely, yes.
edit: its from 2022.
So what was it doing for that nine year gap in its resume?
Printing, I'd assume.
For other people?
For a business. Originally freelance, but it eventually got roped into a full-time job.
Possibly 2014, to account for LJ's traineeship.