There is a printer sitting in my office, but the last two times I've gone to use it I've found that the ink cartridge isn't working. The ink clotted in the print-head from lack of use, since I only can work up the courage to power it up about once every four months. I'm not sure it will ever get another chance.Just the mere thought of using printers raises my blood pressure. You want a few reasons? It seems that what you see is never what you get, at least not the first several times the page is printed. The driver doesn't work right, the layout is outside the printable area of the paper, the printer misfeeds or jams, there's no ink, or there's no paper since the tray holds a measly 50 sheets or less.

Printer software usually makes the experience even worse. My printer will sometimes warn that a cartridge is running low and that I should immediately buy another one -- at a cost per ounce that exceeds human blood. My wife's old printer even refused to work document if any of the cartridges were empty. This is particularly annoying if we were headed out the door and needed to print out something that we can't take with us in computer form. I would prefer to have an off-color document than no document at all. That's not the way the printer company saw it though.

Now that I have a smartphone, I just don't print out documents anymore. Instead, I'll use Google Maps, email myself a copy of the document that I can refer to on the phone, or use some other method to read documents while on the move. The biggest downside I've found is that my printer inevitably has problems when I use it so infrequently. I've even had problems using brand-new ink cartridges that have been sitting in my office unopened for six months, and have had to return them.

Am I alone here? Does anyone else dread even dealing with printers?