The Charlotte facility doesn't make printers any more (I worked nearby at Wachovia/Wells Fargo CIC for a while). A story I heard from an IBMer was that the rob

The Charlotte facility doesn't make printers any more (I worked nearby at Wachovia/Wells Fargo CIC for a while). A story I heard from an IBMer was that the robotic assembly systems weren't ready at time of product launch, so they were hand-assembled using temp workers. IBM thus discovered that designing for robotic assembly meant that humans had a much easier time of building the product. They did eventually install the robots to save on the labor cost, though. I installed hundreds of those printers while on another contract. They were a little dated by then, but still a solid office printer. We only had to replace a few of them, and that was because of a lightning strike close by the customer's office. Very reliable. I don't miss the massive Centronics parallel cables one bit - what a pain it was to route those things up from under people's desks.