Welch: Letting go can be hard sometimes
Letting go. Sometimes it’s what you have to do.
Life is hard. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Let go.
When it comes to an old printer, it’s all you can do.
OK. You can keep it for that future garage sale. After all, it’s still equipped with only partially depleted ink cartridges. You paid a lot for it back when, not to mention what it’s since cost you in ink, including that unused ink.
It’s a classic lose-lose situation.
Even if you really manage to stage that garage sale, nobody will want your old printer(s). At the end of the day, look online for a place that recycles electronics. Call that place. Expect them to say they don’t take printers. Or that they’ll be glad to take it – for a fee.
By the way, if you have a television or some other electronic item you’d like to recycle, expect to pay that same place to take those items too. That was my experience today. For $40, I could have offloaded my defunct television. No thanks. I’ll just keep carrying it with me in my car.
Back to printers.
Me, I have one printer that still gets along with my computer. But it’s started telling me (who knew we would end up communicating with things like printers?) that I’ve installed the wrong kind of ink cartridge.
My only satisfaction is that I’m smarter than my printer. It’s NOT the wrong cartridge. I’m just not smart enough to convince my printer it’s the right one.
Advice: If you have an inverter in your car to power stuff meant to run on house current, think twice before using said inverter to power a printer. Me, I was feeling clever, thinking I’d be able to print some documents from the rear of my car. How cool is that?
I plugged my printer into the inverter. The printer lit up and made some of those reassuring internal printer noises. Good. Then I installed a fresh ink cartridge. That’s when I got the backtalk.
Too late I found this advice online: “HP recommends connecting the printer directly to a wall outlet rather than a surge protector or a power strip.” Add power inverter to the forbidden list. How was I to know my HP Envy 4500 can’t handle power that doesn’t come straight from the wall?
Since surge protectors aren’t recommended, I guess it tolerates lightning strikes.
Anyway, my husband and I spent most of yesterday going through our impressive collection of old printers to see if one would work with my computer. Or his computer. Anybody’s computer.
Today, at a city-managed recycling facility, I dumped all three into the designated bin. It’s the same bin they use for old washing machines.
You can get a few dollars for a washing machine if you take it to a for-profit salvage yard. Been there, done that. In the final analysis, that’s the critical difference between a washing machine and a printer. Nobody wants your old printer.
Let go.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Welch: Letting go can be hard sometimes
