point taken...Many a time have i lost work bc of simply not saving!

Remember the past as well.

Let us all not forget that those little flat squares were once a thing.

What is that device you are holding?

I legitimately don't know if you're being serious or not.

Joking of course :) looks like a disk for an Amiga 500 <3

I think those disks were compatible with any computer of the age, not just the Commodore Amiga series. It was more dependent of the way it was formatted.

Also, don't accidentally copy your backup over your master instead of the other way around.

I gave all my floppy disks color-coded labels after that mishap. 8)

I should do the same for flash drives -- if I can make sure not to lose them.

I do believe there are printer drivers that won't fit on that thing.

(And I don't know why. The things really need to be that complicated or just lazy programming???)

Program bloat.

Most every time I throw a new game into a new console, I suffer from that.

Most printer drivers are under a meg and fit just fine on a floppy. The 300+ MB installer that comes with a consumer printer is full of crap, and usually installs dozens of drivers at once for a number of similar models you don't own. It's definitely laziness.

My Logitech keyboard requires a 120MB driver to get the media keys working, but that's because the driver comes bundled with headset, mouse, and other peripheral drivers. They really should separate the drivers from the application software.

Now that makes a lot of sense. Trying to cover every base at once. (When they should be options.) But, when hard drives have, for years, been able to store a ton of stuff, then I guess programmers can afford to be bulky in their coding.

Now, I feel that every programmer should be forced to go through a course on Atari 2600 programming. Why?? Because that gives experience on how to scrape together every byte for function. It's like a survival course that drops one off in the middle of the desert with little more then a knife. Once it is known how to make something out of nothing, it becomes a bit of a shameful point to use megabytes up like they were free. (I'm forgetting just how few games it took to fill up my PS4 standard HDD. (...4K???) Not many. The PS3 has tons of room while housing over a hundred games.)

Now, the era of the 3.5" knew of printers where after plugging it into the PC, they just worked. No software installs at all. And the ink cartridges cost $8 and printed 8,000 pages. Instead of costing $50 and maybe reaching 100 pages.

In regards to the page limits of today's printers, it might've been the hp model I got, but I've been able to print off hundreds of pages (in draft mode) and deplete entire reams before needing to reload the ink. Then again, it is an Office Jet model.

I think Draft Mode is also known as Ink Saver.

All I know is that when I went to back up my novel into a paper format, I recall it costing upwards of three hundred dollars. Had I any idea in advance, I might have invested in a laser printer, instead.

I hear you. Ironically, it's worst when it comes to web development, since bandwidth is still a limited resource compared to hard drives. You're limited by your tools and the standards you have to follow, so it's often not even possible to write small, tight code. That's part of why I quit.

If you want a printer that lasts, you need to buy office grade, preferably laser. Consumer printers are designed to clog and fall apart. Pay a bit more for the business model and you get way more pages out of a toner cartridge. Brother is a good brand for that, since you can reset the page count and refill the cartridges yourself. Can't do that with Canon, HP, Epson, etc.

How true that is. Office grade is the way to go for sure. Sure wish I knew that when I had decided to turn my novel-in-progress into a paper format. Might have saved some cash.

Last printer I bought had a slightly hilarious deal going with it. See...it was a basic HP bubble jet that came with the ink. Alas, it cost more to actually buy the ink cartridges alone then it did to buy the machine. While it felt like a phone deal where the contract brought the phone along for free, it was kind of sad to think that once the ink ran out, it was more economical to throw the whole printer away. Does avoid that break down factor, however. (Granted, I bought it a couple years ago for doing the taxes and it still runs fine, today. My printing needs are as light as can be, due to cartridge price.)

I may yet look into an office laser printer. After all, the novel probably has over two hundred pages that need updating or just plain introducing. And...not looking forward to $60 or more in ink. (It feels like highway robbery.)

It really is robbery. There's just no reason for ink to cost so much.

There's one. Monopoly.

Fun fact: printer ink costs more than blood. It doesn't cost much to make, so yeah, it is highway robbery.

I'd recommend looking into a Brother B&W laser (LED), if all you need is text and no color. I bought a color model, the HL3070CW, and it cost me $250 about, oh... 6 years ago. B&W models are cheaper than that. The cartridge that it comes with is pretty small, but by manually resetting the page count you can squeeze some extra prints out of it, and replacement carts (which have full capacity toner) will last a long time.

I threw out my last bubblejet printer 15 years ago, because the carts could never sit idle for more than a couple weeks before the heads dried out and clogged. Unclogging them wasted TONS of ink and didn't always work, anyway. These days, the printers are designed to do head cleaning automatically, every few days, which of course just makes them burn through ink even faster. Total scam.

You're better off going to a retail store to have pictures printed on professional photo paper, and using a laser at home for anything else. Drums last forever, toner never dries out, and these printers print wicked fast, too!

A friend had this theory that the printer kept track of how long the ink cartridge was in there and would fake running out of ink, as if there was some kind of internal expiration date. Granted, I've never left these printers plugged in long enough to even test such a theory.

And it is quite true that just going to the store is a better deal. Wal-Mart has these self serve terminals that are cheap to use when the print isn't full page size. And some public libraries may be the best deal around.

Yes, that's known to be true, and has been for years. Carts do have an expiration date, though I believe that's enforced by the driver, not the printer itself, so printers don't have to have built-in clocks. Also, for "quality control", the carts have a hard-coded number of uses before they disable themselves, regardless of how much ink is in them. That's why you can't refill the carts by cracking them open. The carts have a little computer inside that keeps track of this stuff. Many printers will also disable themselves if only one cart is bad, which is why you can't print in B&W if a color cart is empty. Hell, most all-in-one printer/scanner combo units won't even scan documents if the printer is dead. It's BS. HP is the worst in this regard.

There are some chipmods and other hacks you can use to break the DRM, but I've heard it's not easy.

Scary to think just how one sided this all has become. Been years since I last walked into a Staples. Though, they still did have a 9 pin ribbon printer option.

Sets my thought to wonder just how many other things are far too under control of corporations...