Dear Lord, but I can get on board with printer ranting!!!

I recently spent a sweaty Saturday afternoon swapping out a "broken" printer for a new one. This is a MAJOR production for me, moving furniture, getting up and down from the floor itself is an engineering feat for my bad knees these days. HOW was the printer broken, praytell?
An HP all-in-one choked on a piece of cardstock and stopped being willing to print.
The print cartridges wouldn't move.
Because the print cartridges wouldn't move, it kept demanding I FIX that before it would do any scanning.

Scanner weren't broke, were it, dagabbit!!! (insert screaming and cursing here)

I'm running a soundless limping along XP, but from my last job I realized that XP has a driver for an HP LaserJet4L. I bought said printer back in the early 90s. It's nearly 20 years later. The thing still works, I can still get cartridges, so I unplugged it from my Win 3.1 machine and now I've got a Newpiceofcrapfrom HP all in one that'll do color and suck ink like an addict as well as an ancient venerable HP from the days when those suckers knew HOW to make machines to do my black and white.

The $100 & under machines are merely vehicles to have you buy overpriced ink cartridges. We have a color LasserJet HP2550 at work, and I haveta say it's quite reliable.
But.
It was a top of the line sort - quite expensive - and the color toner cartridges & "imaging drum" are wayyyyy expensive.

I ascribe this to the "big box" view of consumerism. that dictates we can be sold little that can be repaired, and be forced to buy new, even more poorly made crap with each breakdown.

Joanne in Cleveland