A window popped up in broken English: “Adjacency Program for PX-660 Series. Use only in service center. Warranty void.”

Maya ran a small photo studio from her garage. Her weapon of choice was the Epson PX-660, a tank of a printer that had produced gallery-quality matte prints for three years. But last Tuesday, it died.

She loaded a sheet of glossy 4x6. In Photoshop, she printed a single pixel of pure cyan. The PX-660 whirred, purred, and spat out a perfect, razor-sharp dot.