Do you have a printer at home?

**creditcardfree** · 07-11-2020, 02:32 PM

Yes, we have one. And our college age daughters each have one too. However, I do know my youngest daughter has used a scanner app on her phone many times for turning in homework. Quality must be good enough, since she is nearly a straight A student. But she has had to print a document first to sign or fill in, so I'm not sure she could entirely go without. We don't use even weekly, unless I am selling frequently on eBay, which I currently am not.

**kork13** · 07-11-2020, 03:30 PM

I've always had a printer since I was in college, but frankly, we don't really use it extremely often. When my wife & I were recently packing up our house, we had a bit of a chuckle at the literal cases of printer paper that each of us purchased shortly after college. 12 years later, 3 reams have been used...from 2 full boxes of paper. It's noteworthy that we have a basic laser printer, so black & white only -- for anything in color, we need to find another source. Often, that is at work, or at the library, or somewhere else. But in a given month, I'd estimate that we print off less than 10 pages a month (being a numbers guy, I did the math... based on 3 reams used over 12 years, that's ~10.4 pages a month. Boom! lol)

The vast majority of our printer use is for & at work. But even when it's not, there's no issue (in my mind) with using the office printer to print out a couple pages for personal use if needed, as long as it's infrequent, limited, and truly personal (not for any personal gain/side hustle). Now, if I were drafting my masters thesis & running off 70-page copies for editing...yeah, that'd be abusive. But for probably <10 pages of documents in any month's time, I have no qualms with using work resources for it. Heaven knows that much and far more gets wasted on a daily basis... and as a supervisor, if accepting something little like printing personal documents when needed allows my people to manage their lives more effectively, I'm happy to let them do so.

One of these days, I'm probably going to just start taking our personal reams of paper to the office to get used up... It's silly to hold onto them for so long, knowing we won't use it up. And hey, I guess it'll even the accounts with our minor personal use over time.

**kork13** · 07-11-2020, 03:37 PM

Originally posted by creditcardfree View Post

Yes, we have one. And our college age daughters each have one too. However, I do know my youngest daughter has used a scanner app on her phone many times for turning in homework. Quality must be good enough, since she is nearly a straight A student. But she has had to print a document first to sign or fill in, so I'm not sure she could entirely go without.

Actually, I've managed to buy our next house while printing exactly zero documents, in spite of everything needed to sign in that process. There is a wide variety of options available for electronic or electronically reproduced signatures, which can be entirely valid. Services like DocuSign, for example. Or even free services, such as Adobe Acrobat's basic application, allows you to apply electronic signatures, or even (which I've done frequently of late) apply "wet" signatures that are saved in the program -- I simply save my signature into the application, and I can basically "stamp" it anywhere I need to. Quite handy.

**disneysteve** · 07-11-2020, 03:52 PM

Originally posted by kork13 View Post

apply "wet" signatures that are saved in the program -- I simply save my signature into the application, and I can basically "stamp" it anywhere I need to. Quite handy.

This is how we sign notes at work. Our signatures were all scanned into the system and I can easily pull it into a document to "sign" it whenever I need to.

**Jluke** · 07-11-2020, 04:03 PM

Printer/scanner. Ink running low. Tried to scan the other day and ran into an issue. Haven’t tried to troubleshoot it.

On the fence about buying replacement ink ($60) esp now that the scanner might be bad. Or just buy a new one or nothing at all.

I use it mainly once a year for taxes and an occasional photocopy here and there

otherwise things were mostly printed at work pre-Covid.

**scfr** · 07-11-2020, 05:43 PM

Yes. We have a printer. I use it for work and for helping my mom. I do her grocery / various sundries shopping and created a list for her; she just has to look over the list, circle the items she wants, add notes (some items are fill-in-the-blank), and then call me. I use a paper copy of the same list, circle & make notes, then after we get off the phone I place an order online to pickup and deliver later (with a fresh blank copy of the grocery list). The list is 4 pages long and I print it on 2 pages front and back! (Quite a bit of spacing and font size large enough for her to read.) If she weren't 80 and very un-tech-savvy we could do it paperless I'm sure, but that's not going to happen. Using the paper lists has been a major sanity & time saver, and food waste reducer.

**ua_guy** · 07-11-2020, 06:30 PM

Early millennial here, so, that means I'm uncomfortably close to turning 40. We've had a multi-function home-grade laser printer/copier/scanner for a very long time. We've gone without fax functionality since broadband started becoming popular in homes, so our fax modems (dial up) went the way of AOL. The multi-function thing doesn't get used often, but when it does, it's a price worth paying for convenience. Just the other day I had to scan some paper W2's. I file rebates occasionally, and being able to make copies of receipts is great. On occasion, I print things. Last thing I think was a couple pages out of an electronic service manual while I was working on an old car of mine - saves me from getting oil/grease on my laptop in the garage. The printer also does an annual note for christmas cards, and address labels.

I should note, it prints monochrome, just a black toner cartridge. I completely missed the color photo-printing craze of the 2000's. The inks and papers, and "high-end" home photo printers were expensive, broke often, and I couldn't see the value in printing out pictures unless needed for a small frame. I was already running regular backups of important stuff, so photos would never be lost. The few times I needed to, I took a memory card down to the drug store and used their digital photo printing services.

I don't print at work. It often means sending personal files to the work printer or across company-owned networks. Most places have had a badge-system where it only prints when you badge-in at the device, for privacy, but you all know that those images are stored in the copier and sometimes archived, right? I don't want my W2's floating around in there, or personal business. Not to mention, most places I've worked have very strict "de-minimis" policy regarding personal use, and using printers for personal business is often explicitly prohibited. Not worth getting reprimanded or fired.

**QuarterMillionMan** · 07-11-2020, 11:13 PM

Yes but come to think of it the only time I print is to print shipping labels on eBay or boarding passes pre-COVID. I'm old school and prefer the paper vs the phone boarding pass.

**srblanco7** · 07-12-2020, 01:41 AM

We have a multi-function monochrome laser printer, copier and scanner. For many years prior to that we had an ink-cartridge color multi-function. I became tired of how fast the color ink would get used or seemingly dry-up given that we did not use the color print option all that often and made the switch to the laser printer. Thus far, satisfied with the decision - we don't print often, but it's nice to have at the house for convenience.

**creditcardfree** · 07-12-2020, 04:55 AM

Originally posted by QuarterMillionMan View Post

Yes but come to think of it the only time I print is to print shipping labels on eBay or boarding passes pre-COVID. I'm old school and prefer the paper vs the phone boarding pass.

Definitely try the mobile boarding pass! You can take a screenshot of it and have easy access even if no connection. I had the same preference, until I tried it. Won't go back! And worse case you can show ID to confirm you have a seat.

**MonkeyMama** · 07-12-2020, 05:24 AM

Yes. We use our printers daily. Off the top of my head, we print homework, recipes, concert tickets, movie passes, coupons. My husband is a writer and also prints a lot.
Though we were late smart phone adopters, we were early computer adopters (I am 43, but have *always* had a computer/printer). I am guessing that is why I rather just print something like a concert ticket or a boarding pass.

I did buy a more fancy scannier/copier/printer when I was hired by a former employer to do some side work (2 years ago). I would have not made the decision to buy just for personal use, but now that we have it I can't imagine not having it. I've always had a copier and a printer and a scanner, but our old scanner was on some separate computer and only scanned one page at a time. So it's nice to have the multi page scanner. That was probably the major upgrade with that purchase.

**riverwed070707** · 07-12-2020, 05:29 AM

Millennial here. Can confirm printers are not needed. Ever. I haven't had one in 10+ years. I'm a landlord and send my leases electronically. If I need to scan something such as receipts for expense report i's way easier on my phone - I can just collate everything into one pdf straight from my scanning app and attach to my electronically submitted report. For taxes, all forms are received and submitted electronically. I use adobe pro to fill and sign forms. I just can't think of a single reason I'd need the ability to print at home.

ETA: I also rarely, if ever, print things at work. I will say, with my works new WFH program they are offering, it has come up in a number of IT discussions because the cybersecurity parameters on our work laptops don't allow them to be connected to a non-network printer so those taking that option need to be able to navigate without.

**corn18** · 07-12-2020, 05:39 AM

We have one. We use it to scan and print. My wife and I are the same in that we like to read things on paper vs. the computer screen, so we print a lot of stuff to read through and then throw it away.

Could we survive without one? Sure. We could use our phones to "scan" stuff and read and sign everything on the computer.

**disneysteve** · 07-12-2020, 06:00 AM

Originally posted by riverwed070707 View Post

Millennial here. Can confirm printers are not needed. Ever. I haven't had one in 10+ years. I'm a landlord and send my leases electronically. If I need to scan something such as receipts for expense report i's way easier on my phone - I can just collate everything into one pdf straight from my scanning app and attach to my electronically submitted report. For taxes, all forms are received and submitted electronically. I use adobe pro to fill and sign forms. I just can't think of a single reason I'd need the ability to print at home.

Thanks for weighing in.

I've tried to think of things we use our printers for.

DD prints a monthly calendar page that she uses to track her writing goals for the month. I suppose she could do it on the computer but she likes having it right in front of her all the time.

I print a calendar every January. There's one hanging right by my computer and another at my desk.

I print my work payroll schedule which is also hanging at my desk.

DW prints sewing patterns. She prints the instructions so she can have them close at hand but also the actual physical pattern - pieces that she needs to cut out and trace onto the fabric. No way to do that without a printer.

I periodically sell on ebay and print the postage labels. I could take the packages to the post office instead but it's cheaper and phenomenally more efficient to be able to avoid the post office entirely.

Scanning has largely been replaced by my phone but when I really want the best quality image, I will use the scanner.

Not nearly as common as it used to be but I will still print a photograph every now and then.

We will print things for the occasional craft project. For example, I do these canvas art things where I print an image, tape it to the back of the canvas, and then work on a light board to transfer that image onto the canvas. I've made and donated a bunch of those to charity auctions where they've sold very well and brought in hundreds of dollars for the cause.

I'm sure there are many other things we print but those are just a few examples.

Do you have a printer at home?