At Last!

Last night we ordered a new color laser printer. whooHOO!!
[INSERT PHOTO OF ME DANCING A JIG HERE!!!! (if I had such a thing)]

A couple years ago or so I bought a color laser printer for the shop. It was a very inexpensive HP that I got at Costco for $350. I loved it. Slow on the color, but it did such a beautiful job. I used it for all the shop stuff (signs, newsletter, etc, etc). I also used it to print and publish the bead knitting patterns my then friend Meryl and I were producing to sell (another heart breaking story I shall not share at this time.) After closing the shop I brought the beloved printer home. I had every intention to continue the little pattern thing with Meryl, but, sadly, it died an untimely death.

Shortly after this death the yellow toner cartridge ran out of stuff. So I ordered some new cartridges from my favorite online source. However, I made the HUGE mistake of buying refurbished cartridges, rather than brand new. I was buying 4 carts. At $99 apiece, that's a lot of money. So I was trying to be a little more wiser about the spending. Arrghh! Never again!

I carefully installed the new yellow toner cart. Turned on the printer, and printed that first test page. POOF! This huge cloud of yellow puffed out of the printer. Ah...NO...PANIC ATTACK! The toner coated everything inside the printer, including the thingamajiggy you're not supposed to even touch (name escapes me at the moment) plus it stuck to stuff outside the printer, including my shirt front.

I spent a couple days carefully cleaning the insides, and outsides for that matter, in hopes things would be okay. My sister-in-law even told me how to clean the thingamajiggy (we figured it's lost in it's current condition anyway, so why not?). My efforts were for naught. My printer prints large vertical yellow stripes down the front AND back of every page that goes through it.

So then I looked into getting it fixed by a professional, and replacing the thingamajiggy. To my great horror and dismay-just the thingamajiggy costs more than the whole darn printer did! We're not even talking the labor $$ the pros want. What's with that???? So, in frustrated disgust, I shut the printer down and changed my default printer to my little Canon inkjet. Sigh. Symbolically, shoving it to the back of my closet with the unfinished knitted items that stumped me to deal with another time, when I'm ready. That was over a year ago.

I'm ready now. Brought the subject up with hubby over dinner a couple evenings ago. I'm paraphrasing, sort of.

Me: "I miss my laser printer."

Hubby: "I do too."

Me: "What are we gonna do about it? I'm thinking taking the plunge, getting it repaired, and calling it an expensive lesson."

Hubby: "It would be cheaper to get a new one."

Me: "I know, but I hate just throwing it away. It's not very old, and it worked so great!"

Hubby: "I think tax wise we'd be better off throwing it out. Remember, it was a store item. We need to look at how that effects us tax wise in closing the shop. I think it would be just easier to list it as damaged and throw it out."

I thought a bit and realized he was probably right. As much as I hate adding something large to the already nasty problem of over sized landfills, this beast has to go. It can't just sit on my desk in it's powdery yellowness for ever. Nor do I want to spend hundreds of dollars getting it fixed. There needs to be a balance between being 'green' and being financially wise. So I agreed, we'll throw it away. When the new printer arrives, we will hook it up, try it out, and then I'll have hubby carry the dead one out to the garbage bin. I can't bear to do that myself.