I have a Canon MP160 printer-scanner combo. It's really old, but I've never needed to replace it because it still works perfectly well... until now.
Last week, I discovered a big, ugly crack in the scanner's platen glass. I have no idea how it happened. It prints just fine, but if I scan something, the image comes out with the crack superimposed on the document. It looks terrible.
I thought fixing it would've been a fun DIY project. I called Canon to see if I could order a replacement piece of glass, but no such luck. The customer service rep told me that they EOL'd this model in 2009. They don't even make parts for it anymore!
There's a TikTok channel called
Old Things Never Die. It's a guy whose passion project is restoring antique appliances like potato peelers, coffee grinders and waffle irons. He sandblasts away the rust, replaces deteriorated wooden and rubber parts, polishes and paints the metal, and reassembles all the pieces. It's strangely soothing to watch.
Some of the antiques he restores are over a hundred years old. But with a little TLC, they work as well as the day they were made. Compare that to my scanner, which is less than twenty years old and already impossible to repair. It feels like a cliche to say they don't make things to last anymore, but in this case it's true.
I could easily afford to replace it. But it feels so wasteful to junk this machine and buy a brand-new one just because it has a cracked piece of glass, not even a mechanical failure.
My public library has a free scanner. On the rare occasions I need to scan something, maybe I'll just use that from now on.