The new wok?
> Inability to find a personal use for 3d printing even in its current nascent form is a failure of imagination rather than a failure of technology.
I suppose that depends on your approach. That philosophy is fine for a toy - imagine all the fun that kids have with a cardboard box, lots of imagination being put to good use there.
However if you're talking about giving a 3d printer the same status as a domestic appliance, then (apart from all the stuff that's bought, never used and consigned to the cupboard under the sink) it needs to earn its keep. It's clearly ludicrous to pay a kilobuck for a device that is only going to be used to print a $3 phone shell or ten.
The third possibility is the geek alternative. If that thousand smackeroos confers on you (either within your peer group, or just within your own mind) an elite status and the value of that position is worth the money then: fair enough. Go ahead, buy one - safe in the knowledge that it's an immature technology and that next year's model will be better, faster, cheaper, sexier (!) and more useful. But by then it'll be on sale in Personal Computer World and any possibility that it's a geek status symbol will have vanished.