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Comment by sunnytimes | Hacker News Reader

I used to fix Lexmark printers , they are "PC load letter" printers. not as bad as HP but lexmark printers stop working for various no reasons. Most of the time the trays would mess up due to a little dust or you would have to get the person to smack the drum over the phone and that would usually help. they never stop working but they will crumble 10 pages into a ball inside the machine ha..

side note . HP printers are the worst for PC load letter. I've fixed HP printers my whole life. I love reading the manuals and they use "might" or "maybe" to describe fixes or errors.

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PC Load Letter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER

PC Load Letter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QQdNbvSGok

Counterpoint: I also used to fix Lexmark printers as a field tech servicing pharmacies. It was routine to see Lexmark MS711dn printers with page counts in the millions. They did not need more than basic maintenance.

no fuckin way .. i used to work for Kroll Pharmacy in Toronto!! where were you!?

>They did not need more than basic maintenance.

The other guy was probably working on ones that didn't get the basic maintenance. People always skimp on preventative care and then are surprised when things break.

When I worked in a computer lab 20ish years ago, being consistent about which side of the paper we loaded when we loaded paper made a huge difference. They are always stacked on the pallet the same way and had a little indicator on the flap of the wrapper around the ream that pointed down.

I'm always surprised when schools want people to donate reams of paper, instead of just ordering a pallet of paper, swapping between a bunch of different weights and qualities is going to cause more way more costs in repairs than just ordering paper by the pallet.

one of the main ones with the tray printers is dusty rollers . the rubber rollers that roll the paper out of the tray will get dirty and the paper will slip and cause jams or miss printing. of course theirs no error code for dirty rollers so the printer would say all kinds of shit because it would end up being a paper jam. we also used labels in the pharmacy and those would peel off and end up stuck all over the inside of the printer, good times haha.

Schools still want people to donate paper? My local school system got rid of most printers/copiers years ago and it takes administration approval to print something on the few that remain. My daughter is a senior and I don’t think she has brought home a piece of paper from school since 5th grade.

The grade schools do, high schools barely seem to use paper.

Grade schools use tons of it unless they buy large amounts of workbooks each year. Cheaper for them to get free paper and photocopy.

The grade schools around here don’t. It takes permission from a vice principal to print or copy anything. Mostly the printers/copiers are for administrative need only. All 2nd - 12th graders have school issued Chromebooks which go to and from school with them. Kindergarten and 1st grade have classroom issued Chromebooks which they use. All worksheets/workbooks are electronic.

Elimination of most printers and restrictions on the use of remaining ones was one of the cost saving measures put in place to offset the cost of issuing Chromebooks system wide. Others include getting rid of physical text books and elimination of most classroom computers. Classroom computers remain when needed for specific curriculum. For instance my daughter”s architectural drawing classes had computers for running Autocad and Revit.

in the US we just generally underfund schools. Asking parents to donate supplies is not that normal elsewhere for reasons like these.

I had a client who had a T640tn with a forms card that did somewhere around 1000 pages a day every day, pretty much trouble free.

It was in a pretty dusty environment too, in the weighbridge office at a fruit juice plant.

Our office printer (6 years) has much fewer pages. It works fine for single-sided printing. For double-sided printing the first 20 or so pages work fine. After that nearly every back page will end up in a paper jam, always same position, no visible reason. Until the next day (or maybe a shorter wait is enough, haven't really tried). Very annoying...

PC load A4 you mean?

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