The BIG culprit in all of this is Lexmark, with their loss-leading hardware and overpriced consumables. That was a game-changer in the printing market, and led to the bottom falling out of the printer hardware side and the associated alpha-beta-ship occurring which meant horrendous quality slips not only on the hardware side but worse still on the software and drivers side.
Incidentally, whilst SD won't hear a bad thing about HP laserjets, i'd agree with two caveats:
1) We don't include GDI printers into that
2) We don't include software/drivers into that
As regards #1, it's a horrible cheapskate way to print that gives nasty incompatibilities
As regards #2, HP make some of the worst software installers in the business, and they never recognise that their desktop printers might actually need to be spooled through servers. I've lost count of the times i've needed to start the driver installs, wait until the setup process complains about an "incompatible operating system" (despite it being the same subsystem between client and server), and delving in the temporary files for the unpacked drivers before the setup program deletes them again.
I'll stop now before this becomes an extended rant into the commoditisation of IT and how marketing departments should never be allowed in the same room as anyone doing IT.
/Pining for the days of the £3500 HP Laserjet 3Si MX - now that was a beast of a printer.