Re: The problem with not owning the software

On Sun, 29 Dec 2024 07:17:32 -0500, Andrzej Matuch wrote:

I remember being in high school and talking about the latest 486 and
dual-speed CD-ROM when my English teacher came up to me and asked me
what was so exciting about that. He told me he was using some ancient
technology (I don't remember which) and mentioned that the exam we just
did was prepared on that. I was actually surprised to hear that because
I recalled that printers in the 1980s other than PC ones were usually
tiny daisy wheel ones.

My hatred for printers goes way back. The products were laboratory pH
meters and auto-titrators but they could print out the results. Every
printer was different, dot matrix, daisy wheels, thermal, and so forth. We
would send a gopher to ComputerLand to buy a printer, determine what it
needed to print, and then send the gopher back to exchange it for another
model. We legitimately bought enough from ComputerLand that they put up
with the ruse. The worst were the little thermals but they were popular in
labs.

I was amazed when I plugged the USB Samsung into the Ubuntu box and it
just worked. That definitely has not been my experience with printers.