Our old Postscript laser printer dates back to the mid-1990’s. At the time it was top of the range, very fast, 600dpi A3 with ethernet, photo-quality, blah blah blah. A reliable work horse that is still up to most things we feed it and that’s including media such as tracing paper, transparencies, card and envelopes. Although 16 page per minute speed is pedestrian by modern standards it’s fine for our needs of printing individual pages full of graphics rather than long print runs of the same sheet – although that is well within its capabilities.

So it came as a shock to find we can’t get hold of toners for it anymore. There are so-called “compatible cartridges” but experience showed us that they aren’t as good as the real thing, their toner granules always seem to be coarser. Luckily we found a toner cartridge on eBay which was purchased on the spot and that should keep us in print for another year or so. Then, it’s compatibles or nothing. More frustrating is to see the healthy market in the US for such cartridges where they cost about a quarter of UK-sourced ones, not even taking into account the pound to dollar relationship.

In the same vein, we still earn a bit from scanning. In the past it was a huge money-spinner but the arrival of digital cameras largely killed it off except for old photos and transparencies and the occasional large-format dupe transparency from one the national museums or galleries. Over the years scanners got better quality and cheaper in price so that now, a two hundred quid scanner has better image resolution than the ones I paid well over a grand for in the past. There is still one area we need a scanner for and that’s digitising plans and prints. The scanner doesn’t need to be colour, or offer superb Dmax, or ultra high resolution, just a large flat bed, bigger than A4. Firewire preferred but USB would do.

With these two equipment needs in mind, we went shopping. First the laser printer. My, how they have come up in the world: a full-colour, A4 laser printer with Postscript emulation and networking for a few hundred. Unbelievable, and something to think about when our inkjet printer wears out. Look for an A3 printer and the prices start in rarified heights and continue ever upwards. Even black and white A3 printers cost over a grand, not much different from the price we paid for our existing one. We have had large-format inkjets in the past but they are slow, frustrating to use and clogged heads from lack of throughput has meant throwing them away because repair is more than replacement.

The same thing with scanners. Incredible high-quality A4 scanners cost, similarly, a few hundred but look at A3 sized ones and the pounds run into four digits before the decimal point. Often their specifications are lower than the A4 ones, too.

Surely there is nothing more than a bigger piece of glass and a second CCD inside to take into account the large scan bed? And the laser printer only has a bigger drum and modified laser imager, with a larger paper hopper to take A3. So why are they massively more expensive?

Answers on a postcard, though thinking about it the Post Office have just change postal rates to take into account different sizes so maybe it’s cheaper to send answers on the back of the stamp itself, to keep costs down.