December 26, 2008

It’s a Long Tradition

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

It’s been true for years: Computer printers do not come with cables. Why?

Once upon a time I wrote books about buying computers. Along with the computer purchase usually comes a computer printer. That brings up one of my printer-buying mantras: Printers do not come with cables.

My mantra was true back in the days when printers used the old printer (or Centrontics) cable. I found that absence puzzling. Someone explained it to me that not all printers had the same connectors as the computers or blah-blah-blah. I bought that explanation, but it didn’t seem logical. (There isn’t any logic in the computer industry.)

Today, computer printers still don’t come with cables — even though pretty much all printers today use the standard A-B type of USB cable. I mean, how cheap are printer companies that they can’t even toss in a cheap USB cable?

Oh, yeah, some folks will say that, “Maybe the printer is too far away for the cable.” What. Ever. I just think that the printer companies are being cheap.

Case in point: external hard drives come with USB cables. Some times when the drive uses both USB and Firewire it comes with both cables! Ditto for scanners, cameras, iPods, and other gizmos. So tell me, why are printer manufacturers behind the curve on this? Does anyone really know?

6 Comments

  1. Well, here in Aussieland at any rate, Epson have started throwing in USB cables again. Well, they did. Ours did at the start of the year. That’s why I’e always loved epsons.

    Comment by Douglas — December 26, 2008 @ 3:50 am

  2. Glad to hear about the change. I think it was a Brother printer we unwrapped here that lacked a cable. I’ve not bought an Epson in a while, but I’ll check out whether they come with cables (here in the US) when I visit the computer store later today.

    Comment by admin — December 26, 2008 @ 8:06 am

  3. Cables are a cash cow to most retailers like Radioshack. They mark those things up like crazy.

    Comment by jamh51 — December 27, 2008 @ 12:49 pm

  4. Tell me about it. Just bought an HDMI cable. $59. And that was the Radio Shack brand! The Monster Cable version (notoriously a rip-off) was $80! But I must confess that the HDMI cable and resulting image on an HDTV is simply stunning!

    Comment by admin — December 27, 2008 @ 12:55 pm

  5. Washers & Dryers also often do not come with electric cords. How stupid is this?

    Comment by ellipse — December 30, 2008 @ 12:24 pm

  6. It’s been a while since I’ve bought a washer/dryer, but you’re correct. That’s really dumb because they have a standard cord that you have to buy that serves no other purpose. Imagine if video games were sold without their custom TV cables!

    Comment by admin — December 30, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Powered by WordPress