Comment by tpmoney
5 days ago
> IMHO it is just one more example of how PCs have become content consumption devices rather than outlets for creation.
I would argue it’s more of an example of a part of an industry dying because the reality never lived up to the expectations and the individual costs being prohibitive to getting there. As the artwork computers were cable of got better, we weren’t as happy with the quality of image you get from standard printer paper and an inkjet. The difference between photo paper and regular paper in the same printer is night and day, but most people never saw that and most people didn’t want to spend the money that photo paper cost for printing out a single birthday card. Especially when it’s was a 50/50 crapshoot whether your print heads were clogged or would clog half way through and ruin the first print. Add into that the cost of all the ink that was wasted to clean the print heads and the chance that you would just plain be out of a color and unable to print anyway and I think most people just decided the aggravation wasn’t worth the novelty of Clip Art Dog #23 telling you happy birthday.
And then once the internet really took off, who wanted to give a clip art card printed on printer paper when you could send someone a “jibjab” custom e-card with funny animations of your faces?
My old HP 500c was incredibly reliable and it didn't have any of the print head cleaning shenanigans that are needed now days.
It was however dog slow.
I am not sure why modern inkjets need print head cleaning whereas old ones did not.
That old device was 300 or even 150 dpi. The newer devices are 1200 dpi-ish. Smaller hole, more clog.
For greeting cards, 300dpi is fine.
For photos, the paper makes a huge difference, 1200 dpi on cheap paper is trash, 600 DPI on high quality photo paper looks good.
In the race for bigger numbers we lost out on reliability so now we have nothing. :/