Disposable Technology
J. Kevin Tumlinson

Less than a month ago I bought a new printer. The hp photosmart 7760 – thirteen pages of text per minute and photo quality images. There's a tiny LCD screen that lets me preview pictures and tells me nice things like “Press ok to print.” It's power in a small, silver and gray package. If should say “testosterone” right on the side of the sucker. But in less than a month I've already had to replace an ink cartridge, and it wasn't even empty.

There's a chip in the cartridge that tells the printer when it's spent. The problem is it's not actually EMPTY. If I crack open the cartridge and look inside (which I did – very messy business!), I find that it's about a quarter of the way full. Plenty of ink to print out a last few pages. I used to run the old cartridges dry!

But HP is insisting that doing so would cause damage to the printer. I think that's amazing, since all of the actual printing is done by the cartridge itself. The spray nozzle, the “ink jet” that makes the ink spurt in controlled patterns, is completely contained in the cartridge itself. The printer is essentially a big motorized arm that moves the cartridge back and forth over a page. Damage the printer? I could have that thing spurting battery acid and the printer would never know the difference!

It's this sort of blatant lying to the public that makes me wonder. How many times have I taken something at face value, when it came to technology or just any product in general. I mean, I've had to take my new car in for its special 3000 mile tune-up because I was told that without it I'd start experiencing minor glitches. Why? I've owned new cars before and driven them for thirty-thousand miles or more before they ever saw a mechanic. Nothing stopped working, started acting funny or just plain blew up.

Remember when cars used to last for, say, fifty years or more? Now you'd be lucky if it outlasted the three year mark. Why? I think the answer is simple. If you're a car company, you want people to buy more cars. Therefore, making a car that lasts fifty years is a sure way to bankrupt yourself. You'd have to sell each car for millions of dollars in order to sustain yourself long enough to sell more down the road.

The answer? Make cars, ink cartridges, computer parts, VCRS, DVD players and everything else on the market in such a way that it has to be replaced every few years. In the case of ink cartridges, it's more like once a month. At $20 a pop, HP is making a lot more money off of me each month than it did when I was paying $50 per cartridge every half-year. With technology like DVD players and computers, the manufacturers can boost profits by making sure the item breaks down in a given amount of time. And hey, look here, a new line of DVD players is released just in time by sheer coincidence!

Disposable technology. Instead of providing the consumer with quality and value for their money, manufacturers want to reduce everything to the level of a disposable razor. Through a combination of inferior parts and low prices, they've managed to convince us. Why pay to have your DVD player fixed for more than a hundred dollars when you can replace it for fifty?

Believe me, no company is out for your good. Your money is what it's all about. And if they can figure out a way to get it in a steady stream they will. Microsoft, that stalwart guard of consumer interests, has proposed charging a monthly fee for the use of its products – in addition to charging an initial purchase price! Bill Gates has even suggested that there should be a one penny charge for every e-mail sent in an effort to thwart Spammers (who would get that? Bill?).

Charging for services is one thing, but there's an increasing amount of pay-for-use products out there. Satellite receivers, digital cable boxes, Tivo, and XM radio are all good examples. You buy the product but pay to use it. And in three years, you have to replace it because it was made from discarded bubble gum wrappers and hairpins.

Sooner or later these people will reach the bottom of our pockets. What happens when the well runs dry? I guess they'll start charging us to NOT use the products.