Ben de Groot posted on Sat, 19 Jan 2013 18:47:58 +0800 as excerpted: > On 19 January 2013 18:26, Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: >> On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 3:26 AM, Ben de Groot <yng...@gentoo.org> >> wrote: >>> >>> People who do have printers can always enable [USE=cups] themselves. >>> >> Unless we plan on adding yet another profile for "normal" users I think >> this is really pushing it. > >> Yes, I'm sure some people don't own printers. However, that figure has >> to be fairly low. > > I'm not so sure about that. The majority of my friends and colleagues > don't own a printer. When we do need to print something, it would be for > work, so we have it printed at work.
I recently heard someone /else/ recommend no printer, pointing out that it was an additional expense without a lot of practical benefit for many, since ink is expensive, the cheap printers are fiddly and often break, and if you /really/ want something printed, it's easy enough to load it on a thumb-drive and take it to kinkos or the library (or as Ben suggests, work). I had come to that conclusion for myself some time ago and haven't had a printer in years... I won't do inkjet and I always seem to have something better to do with the money that'd buy a decent laser. But it was still rather surprising to me, as like Rich, I'm from the generation where it was just assumed that if you had a computer, you had, and needed, a printer. So to hear (it was a meatspace conversation, with "average folks", not geeks) someone ELSE say "take it to kinko's if you want to print something" was /indeed/ quite surprising/enlightening. So yes, I suppose it really is a generational/cultural thing. "The tablet generation" and "the smartphone generation" are rather more likely to find the idea of simply assuming that everyone with a computer/tablet/ smartphone also has a bulky/balky printer... rather quaint. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
