A few years ago I had to print out a boarding pass for a flight. The ink cartridges in the inkjet printer I had said they were empty even though they were barely a few months old and had only been used to print a few (less than ten) pages. I was furious and swore to never buy an inkjet printer or cartridge ever again.

I pulled out an old ImageWriter II which I found in the trash many years before, dusted it off, connected it to an RS-232 port, found some Ghostscript drivers for OS X, connected it and printed. Even though the ribbon had sat for probably a decade since it was last used, it created a passable boarding pass. It never even occurred to me that any part of the printer wouldn't just work.

Amazon helped me find a box of five brand new, sealed black ribbons for less than $20, shipping included.

If it didn't make enough noise to wake the neighbors, I'd use it more often. It's a great printer.