journal of a writing man

Tuesday June 19, 2007

All I really wanted was a flat-bed scanner. Preferably a cheap one. Not a bells and whistles one, just a scanner to copy and digitize pen-and-ink cartoon-style drawings. We have a posh scanner on Graham’s computer.  It also prints, copies, and does faxes.  All I wanted, in my innocence, was a cheap gadget to let me scan and publish my little scribbles without climbing two flights of stairs.

Hah!

I found two. One, ugly and unpromising, cheap and utilitarian, looked as though it might do. “No, it won’t work under Vista,” I was assured. “You need the Canon for that.”

I looked at the Canon. Very, very smart. Far too big. And, when I peered at the price tag, way, way over budget.

“I’ll think about it over a cup of coffee,” I said.

The salesman disappeared faster than a gecko on a hot day.

“It’s ridiculous,” I said to Graham when we joined up again in the DIY store. “You can buy a really decent printer/scanner/copier from a well-known maker for what they charge for a functional flatbed these days.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Graham said, peering abstractedly at vinyl planking. “When I’ve done here I’ll come with to see what the sensible stores have got. PC World is just that–a world of its own.”

Those magic words–’a plan’–always win me over. I like it when we have a plan.

In the event I bought a Hewlett-Packard scanner/printer/copier for forty quid. Almost exactly what I’d thought of paying for a flat-bed scanner. Strange old world, ennit?

New HP printer

Oh, the bright young salesman with the pitifully bad teeth tried to persuade me to buy Hewlett-Packard inks for it, costing a little more than the device itself. “We do a discount,” he said.

“He doesn’t need ink,” Graham chimed in.

The bright young salesman disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving me to pay for my purchase.

“Why don’t I need ink?” I asked when we got safely outside the store.

“Because you can buy ink at a fraction of that price on the Internet. Anyway, you don’t want ink if you’re just going to use it as a scanner. You seem to prefer using the network printer.”

“Ah. Thanks. The coffee’s on me, then?”

“Yup.”

I had salty chips with my coffee, to adjust the imbalance caused by my omission of the diuretics yesterday, you understand.  Graham kept dipping into my bowl, dodging the mock stabs of my fork. Even sensible blokes lose it when faced with a bowl of salty chips.