If It Wasn’t for Bad Luck

When it comes to electronics, I often think of that old saying, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

For some time I’ve been thinking about buying a new printer. My old HP Photosmart worked fine until I bought a new laptop. Actually, it worked great. Whenever I wanted to print something, I’d go to the File Menu, click on Print, decide if I wanted black or color, how many copies, and click Print again. That was it. The printer would start right up and in less than a minute I’d have my copies.

Last fall I bought a new MacBook Air and that’s when my troubles began. I’d click on Print, choose black or color, the number of copies, click Print again and nothing would happen. I mean NOTHING. The printer was as silent as a tomb.

I’d start over again. First I’d click on my wireless connection to be sure I had a strong signal. Then I’d click on the Print box. It would say things like, “Printing page 1.” or “Not connected to printer.” It didn’t really matter what it said because nothing would happen.

I would restart my computer. Then I would restart the printer. After that I would start over with the Print menu. I would try clicking Pause and then Resume. Nothing helped.

But sometimes, when I was having a lucky day, after 5 or 25 minutes, the printer would start to make noises like it was waking up from a deep sleep. Then it would grunt. Finally, and I could never figure out what I had done to make this happen, the printer would print.

I phoned Apple. They told me the printer was several years old. My laptop was too advanced for it. But, not to worry, HP would soon come out with a patch that I could download and my printer would go back to printing like it had before.

That was last fall. This is now June. HP has yet to come up with this patch, and frankly, I don’t think HP’s going to. So, much as I hated to get rid of a perfectly good printer, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new, state-of-the-art one. After all, the man at Apple said that would solve my problem.

Come back next month to find out what happened when I bought my brand new, state-of-the-art HP printer and you’ll understand why, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all!”

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