We'll have Fusion reactors before solid and enjoyable printers.
They are no doubt the best printers in your company's facility. Most printers for enterprises are garbage now without a service contract or managed print deal.
For personal use, the brother laser devices <$100. Are the best bet. Simple, reliable and most of the things that break are either field replaceable or you can ditch the device.
Rarely do I fanboy over a piece of electronic device, but this rings so incredibly true. I get thousands of pages out of my Brother laser printer per toner cartridge, it duplexes, the wireless just works. If you absolutely need a printer, get the sub-$100 brother laser printer.
https://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-L2340DW-Monochrome-Wireles...
It's great... works with AirPrint, Google CloudPrint and standard printer protocols. I think you can even FTP jobs to it.
It's mostly a social problem, maybe it's useless since the printing industry is a remain of the xerox administrative era. The amount of prints is very low nowadays.
I'm sure there a nice void for a more humane printer kit, cheaper ink, acceptable open drivers, and more creative usage.
I don't think there's a market for a more open printer, not at the price you'd have to charge for your small production runs.
What does that mean?
ps: also, and it's a bit off topic, slightly; you said non genericity is how they make profit, maybe (just a thought) it's not the only way. People seems frustrated and disenchanted by printers; it's a cool device if you allow user to take control and not obscure everything in the alleged purpose it's to make it easier. Potential new applications, usages; better ergonomics and repairability, longer lasting things, that's something people would pay for. The trend is around cool device + quick renewal but high freqs are harmful IMO companies should invert this business model.
Industrial/commercial printers qualify at least for the "cheaper ink" part, and you can actually buy individual parts like printheads, complete with documentation; however, they cost at least an order of magnitude more and tend to have much lower resolutions.
I have though about buying a scanner and a color laser and wiring up a copier through the pi (scan then print at the push of a button) --- but finding a stand alone scanner that will do 11 by 17 has been a chalenge
I use it very infrequently, admittedly.
There is an interesting discussion on that exact model here:
http://superuser.com/questions/758561/when-does-a-laser-prin...
I wish I would have known about these problems before, then I might have bought a printer with more ram.
Moving parts are inherently unreliable. We've just got really used to the incredible reliability that you get from solid state electronics.
My point is that you may well be right. Fusion power is an easier challenge than mechanical things not breaking because you can do it without moving parts (give or take a turbine).
While I generally agree, the point is, even when there are no moving parts, there's a lot of failure points (temperature, vibrations) and manufacturers will create faulty devices, no matter what. If device is too good, they will cut expenses, until it'll be "good enough".
That said, environmentals are important. Hot solid state electronics fail.
Do you realize that you're making this comment on a thread about a global problem that involves no moving parts at all?
For some reason we take more care when building mechanical devices, because we can observe and measure the complexities and wear and tear of use.
Software on the other hand, with firmware being a variant of software, can apparently neither be properly observed nor tested.