I hesitate to this say, but it isn't the cost per se that's the biggest problem. It's the reliability. It's the hassle of having one more thing to baby. Sometime I'll tell you about the Bosch dishwasher I bought and the constant maintenance it requires.
I haven't had any problems with the mechanical reliability of printers or computers. I have had failures with cheap third party ink and toner cartridges and I have had printer drivers that failed to work because the manufacturer
CHOSE not to update the drivers to work with upgraded versions of the OS, but that is about it other than routine replacement of paper, ink, toner, and other consumables.
I expected this futuristic world of ours to be "set it and forget it" more than "buy it and tinker with it constantly as though you were a German engineer". More often it's the latter. Moreover, researching products has become almost pointless when there's no consensus and nearly all brands and products have problems.
Name one product that doesn't require research before purchasing and where there is even 50% consensus on which manufacturer's product is best. If such a product existed there would be no competition. In fact I would posit that as long as any choice involves humans there will always be different opinions about which is best and all of those opinions will be valid in the eyes of the individual expressing it. Differences of opinion are part and parcel of the human condition.
I was looking at an Epson Workforce until I saw many negative reviews on Amazon, though that's not so unusual anymore. Every time I think about inkjets I think about all the problems. I don't fax or scan much. I don't even know if copy machines are sold anymore, but I do need a copier and printer.
I very seldom send or receive faxes any more, but I use my multi-function device to print, copy, and scan every day. It is very useful.
I loathe touch screens. I assume they are ubiquitous because they are cheap. I wonder if cockpits have touch screens. There's a thought that might keep me awake tonight. I've used them on vending machines. Tried to. It's easy to press the wrong number.
Granted, at my age, I wish the touch screen on my multi-function device were larger and the menus had the benefit of some human factors engineering, but it works where switches could never adequately fill the bill. Touch screens have become ubiquitous because they are far more reliable than mechanical switches as well as being more informative not to mention they are multi-functional which is
very useful essential on a multi-function device. The touch screen on my multi-function device would require 40 or more rotary switches, toggles, buttons, etc. to control all of the functions and options and they could never give as much feedback to the user as the touch screen does.
By-the-way, just to keep you awake nights the instrument panels on modern aircraft from the largest airliners down to many two passenger "sport" aircraft are almost entirely "glass" displays. The big guys still have an amazing number of toggles, knobs, and levers but even those are often backed up by computerized stability systems without which the aircraft becomes extremely difficult to fly. The apparent cause of the two recent Boeing 737-800 aircraft was a change in the SOFTWARE that is the "intelligence" behind the stabilization system. Personally I would be very reluctant to fly on any recent Boeing or Airbus product that relied on "steam" gauges and lacked computerized stability assistance. A human pilot might be able to fly the aircraft successfully without that but the work load would be cruely high.
