One from the boss
About a month ago, one of our laser printers was failing. It still worked, but was becoming increasingly louder by the hour. We do quite a bit of printing--internal reports, our daily inventory sheets, customer account reports, etc. all of which are directed to that printer. It's constantly in use, in other words. So it wasn't any surprise that it was starting to wear out.
I did what I could to diagnose the main problem. That is, the fuser was going out. It's supposed to shut down when the printer stops printing, and then fire back up when the next print job starts. Doing so helps it stay cool, and helps prolong its life. But, because it was failing, stayed "on" excessively, leading to constant paper jams, and being seriously warm to the touch. In fact, when I opened up the rear cover...heat literally poured out of the printer. My hands were a good 3 feet away, and I could still feel it
Boss insisted that I should call the repair place, and get it fixed. No matter of "why should we pay them $200 to come over here...and tell me something I already know. The fuser is shot, and a new one is over $300" would sway him. Why you'd want to drop $500-plus into an old printer when you could buy a new one for $700 I'll never know. Where I failed though, the 3rd party tech succeeded. Seems that one of his suppliers had someone cancel an order on him, and meant that we could secure a rather nice HP laser printer for less than $500, and two toner cartridges for $100 each, simply because he wanted the stuff out of his office!
About a month ago, one of our laser printers was failing. It still worked, but was becoming increasingly louder by the hour. We do quite a bit of printing--internal reports, our daily inventory sheets, customer account reports, etc. all of which are directed to that printer. It's constantly in use, in other words. So it wasn't any surprise that it was starting to wear out.
I did what I could to diagnose the main problem. That is, the fuser was going out. It's supposed to shut down when the printer stops printing, and then fire back up when the next print job starts. Doing so helps it stay cool, and helps prolong its life. But, because it was failing, stayed "on" excessively, leading to constant paper jams, and being seriously warm to the touch. In fact, when I opened up the rear cover...heat literally poured out of the printer. My hands were a good 3 feet away, and I could still feel it
Boss insisted that I should call the repair place, and get it fixed. No matter of "why should we pay them $200 to come over here...and tell me something I already know. The fuser is shot, and a new one is over $300" would sway him. Why you'd want to drop $500-plus into an old printer when you could buy a new one for $700 I'll never know. Where I failed though, the 3rd party tech succeeded. Seems that one of his suppliers had someone cancel an order on him, and meant that we could secure a rather nice HP laser printer for less than $500, and two toner cartridges for $100 each, simply because he wanted the stuff out of his office!
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