Finally, PK does a rant on printers.

I don’t get anything as far as printing stuff is concerned.

All I want is a 1/12 paper model, originally intended to fit on A4, to be printed at an A5 size, so I can fit two pages on one A4 sheet, and thus resized so it will be 1/20.

If I print a single page, reduced to 1/20, solo on an A4, I have to do this at 60%. This make perfect sense to me.

If I put two pages on one single A4 sheet (which, in my theories, makes the pages A5 sized), the printer dialog box claims the reduced pages are 97%. This makes NO sense to me. 97% of the original size? 97% of an A5? What? This is not clear in any way.

To reduce a page from A4 to A5 takes 71% already. So in the dialog box the setting should be automagically set at 71%. That would make sense. Now I just have to guess new percentages to print the pages at my desired scale. That took me some more ink than I intended to spend. Of course I got there in the end. But only by comparing to the originally reduced print (@60%) I already had.

Now I learnt I have to print the pages at 90%, with the printer set to “no border” to get the exact size I intended to get.

Thinking a little further, this indeed may get the page size up to the original 60% (the pages already being reduced to 71% without incorporating this number in the dialog box) so I get the final result but it should be easier, more intuitive.

This is not making my life any easier. But then I suppose it might not be intended to make my life easier. Printers belong to the weirdest group of household appliances. Why?

I'll rant about that after the jump. (-;

Imagine you want to make some coffee. You buy a #1 brand coffee machine, and it also will be quite cheap. It has awesome coffee coming with it in a package which looks big but it contains just 30% coffee. You come home, you make coffee. it is good. Damn good coffee, even. You brew another pot. Great. You want more. But now what? You have run out of coffee. Well then, buy some new. 

Now, coffee comes in bazillions of sizes and tastes. 

But your machine needs these specific brand of coffee which only fit in your specific coffee maker. None of the others.

And all of them, also all of the other non- fitting brands, are overpriced. Actually, it just is insanely expensive, especially compared to what you paid for your coffee maker. 

Buying just two or three packs of them equals a new coffee maker. So it is almost more profitable to just buy a new coffee machine.

Now you wouldn’t buy that kind of logic from a coffee machine manufacturer, do you?

Why then do we accept this from printer manufacturers? 

To make it even more insane: Printer ink is more expensive than human blood. Let me repeat that one more time: PRINTER INK IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN HUMAN BLOOD. (source: http://www.cockeyed.com/science/gallon/liquid.html)

Now this won't keep me from printing out busloads of new models in the future but I really am getting more and more disgusted by the way we are getting screwed by these mega companies. I need a printer for my hobby but I think it is the most expensive part of it all. there aren't any paper models I know which cost more than a bloody printer cartridge.

Well, now that is off my chest, I will start with the build of the big Apollo capsule. Reduced. To 60%. so it will be 1/20. And that's small enough for my taste.

See you all soon.

--PK