A brief history of the inkjet printer

Inkjet printers exist only to cause frustration, make a big mess and waste lots of expensive ink.

These days, we've got cheap laser printers that work great for documents and cheap dye sub printers that print high quality photos. They can sit unused for months and still work on the first try since there's no liquid ink to dry up.

Now that we can pay for access to printers in our own homes via a subscription model, it really seems like the possibilities are endless!

Here's a brief history:

First was dot matrix, and it was good. Then it wasn't. Then was laser or inkjet with laser being too expensive so on many desks at home Canon became canon (Apple StyleWriter was a rebranded Canon), and it was good. Some cartridges were even interoperable. Then HP made some and that stopped. Then it was also expensive and HP became (more) evil and basically never stopped and is now the 800 pound gorilla.