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Anti-Competitive Behavior in the Printer Industry?
Greyfox writes: "Here is an interesting story about the printer industry versus ink-cartridge refillers. Anyone who's bought a low-cost inkjet knows that you can spend over half the cost of the printer on ink. So it was only natural that an industry would spring up around refilling the cartridges. Well the printer industry has apparently been fighting back, trying to protect their market share. As with all good stories, legislation is being considered. Worth a read." Sort of like spyware -- it's a back-and-forth battle.
HP seems to be the most expensive, with Epson a close second. Canon however has some decent prices on the dual cartridge packs.
I have tried the refill cartridges (a LONG time ago) and found out it was not even worth the effort the first time, much less the third attempt to refill the same cartridge.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
the refill ink is usually not the same consistency and composition of ink made by the manufacturer - and hence ruins the printhead on ALL inkjet/bubblejets. This is the reason why it is not recommended, and sometimes forbidden to use the refill ink.
with that being said, inkjet and bubblejet printer makers are involved in a cut throat environment, which causes them to sell printers for less than cost. Money is made up from the ink you buy. You didn't think you could get bubble jet or piezo technology for that cheap, did you?
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
At work we have a Tektronix 860 that uses Wax Sticks Compared to Ink Cartreges or Toner Although the printer is expensive (For the avereage user competitive for buisness use) it comes with free black ink for the life of the printer. (The Color Wax sticks are more expensive) But what you do is just print in black and white and you can save a bundle on expenses. Of course Xerox wants you to print in color more often (and wont tell you that you can setup your print server to print in B and W). But at least the Printer is worth more then the ink.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You can do refills pretty easily with some printers.
I've been refilling my Canon BJC-4000 for over 3 years now. It's not a process for the faint of heart (or those that hate to get dirty!), but it can be done.
I use the big BC-21 black ink tanks which have a plug in the top that you can get out fairly easily. Then I just inject the ink into the sponge inside with a syringe. A bit of cleanup, put the plug back in, and it's done. It takes less than 10 minutes.
Not only that, the ink from the supplier I found is, IMO, much better than Canon's. It's darker and seems to print a bit clearer.
I bought a big (500mL) bottle of ink for $99CDN and by the time I'm done with it I'll have got close to 50 refills out of it. A cartridge costs $40CDN. Do the math!
Well, actually I can only get about 3-5 refills out of a cartridge before the print head gets too clogged, at which point I still have to buy a new cartridge. But that's a lot better than buying a new one every single time!
I simply couldn't afford to own a printer without refills. It's something I intend to look into carefully when I buy my next printer. If a manufacturer goes out of the way to make refilling difficult, then I'll go out of my way to avoid buying their product.
Before I got a job as a Beowulf admin, I used to work at a company that refills and remanufactures printer cartridges. It is absolutely amazing the profit levels that HP, Canon, et. al. must make. We resell the cartridge for a fraction of the amount as the OEM's and make a handsome profit.
Think about it: you're spending $40 for a tiny package of carbon black. The printing industry has been taking notes from De Beers on how to extort money from carbon.
I tried the drill into the top and refill it yourself once. The image quality dropped to that of an Imagewriter. What's worse is even after buying a new cartridge the printer was never quite the same. I ended up buying another printer. I'll never buy refills or recycled again.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I have an assortment of Epson printers. It appears that their evolution on this front has been:
As I say, I don't have one of the latest types and I never will buy one.
Cannon has some printers that actually use a detector of ink prescence. I haven't tried it but in theory adding ink would suffice. If I were buying again, I would give them a try.
Lexmark does (did not) publish yield numbers. When I corresponded with them, they still did not provide info but offered to do so on a per model basis.
All of this digging was targeted at the dream of decent home photo printing. In the end I find that the online photo services are superior. Most of the prints that are done in color would be just fine in B/W anyway.
The only thing that this attitude from the inkjet vendors has done is increase my appreciation for my LED printers and renew my commitment to keeping them operational.
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
So I got an "Epson chip resetting kit" and generic ink cartridges. It's pretty easy to use - you take out the old ink cartridge, pop out the chip with a little plastic tool that comes with the resetter, insert the chip in the resetter. Wait a couple of seconds for an LED to change color, then insert the chip in the new cartridge. Then install the new cartridge as Epson's instructions direct.
The chip resetter wasn't cheap - $36, but the ink was - $7 and $9 for B/W and color, respectively. I figure the total fixed cost of $116 for printer and resetter is still reasonable, and $16 for a pair of cartridges is much more reasonable. Also, I got my mother an identical printer, so I can just reuse the resetter since I am her official administrator.
Then again, if I were printing a lot, I'd get a refurbed laser printer. Their per-page cost is way lower than inkjet.
There are continuous refill systems that store ink in large printer-external reservoires.
Actually Epson's smart tagging of cartridges are not to defeat refilling they are to allow more flexability. I can take out my black cartridge, drop in the photo cart, print a photo banner, replace the black cart and the driver knows the level and alignment of the cart when it is re-inserted. I also will pull my normal color cart when I get back from a trip, I replace it with a fresh one, replace the black with a photo cart and print all my pictures, then place the black and half full color cart back in. Besides of all the manufacturers Epson is the only one with a legit quality beef. While working as a tech I saw several Epson's ruined by refills, since the heads are built into the printer and not part of the cart a bad refill turns the printer into a doorstop, and the customer wants to know why their 6 month old printer isn't covered by waranty.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Which simply explains you really don't know color matching.
Getting screen colors and printer colors to match is a very difficult problem, and sure as hell ColorSync doesn't cut the mustard.
a) screen colors are transmissive, RGB; printer colors are reflective, CMYK. Totally different color spaces (and no, it's more than the 1.0- code in Ghostscript).
b) Pantone has a reasonable solution to the problem - ask Photoshop for a specific Pantone color (from your color swatches.. you DO have color swatches right?) and in theory you get that same exact color from your color printer all the way through professional typesetting & production. And no, your screen won't properly display the Pantone color; you just have to assume that it is correct.
I'm surprised that I can't find any posts explaining why printer manufacturers are against refills (other than the knee jerk "they want all my money" response).
I had the chance to meet one of the inventors of ink jet printing awhile back, and he explained why the HP "smart chip" would be (it wasn't rolled out yet then), a Good Thing(tm).
Most ink cartridges today have print heads on them already, which is a big part of their cost. Now obviously, the print head on an inkjet cartridge doesn't last forever. With today's really high printing resolutions, this head is a device which has to spit out pico-liters of ink with very precise timing. The ink must be at the correct temperature so as not to evaporate before hitting the paper or to stay wet on the paper for too long. All this requires a pretty sophistocated print head which wears down with use. After enough use, printing performance actually suffers.
The only way to guarantee printing quality under these conditions is to make sure the printing head is replaced periodically (i.e. with a new cartridge). By allowing cartridge refilling, there's no way to guarantee the print head gets replaced when it needs to be, and thus they wouldn't be able to guarantee that "an HP printer will always print quality." So there's actually a QA issue.
HP has developed a separate print head / ink assembly, but generally only very high volume printers use this type of solution (because it's not cost effective for Joe Q. Consumer to buy a gallon container of red ink), and even then they have to separately replace the print head occasionally.
And, as you point out, unless the ink is the exact same consistency, the print head will get clogged or else simply not deliver good print performance.
Additionally, the reason they make the print heads part of the ink cartridge is (at least in part) so that users will change the heads regularly. For good print quality, you need new heads every few hundred pages anyway, so tying the head to the ink forces Joe Blow not to forget to change the heads.
Now, don't get me wrong: I believe that this is also a case of the manufacturers taking a legitimate claim and using it as leverage to force the users to pay more. I'm not naive. But that doesn't mean that the manufacturer's claims are entirely without merit, either.
I think that ideally, the heads and ink should be separate, standardized modules. Each one would have to be labeled with precise information about (in the case of the head) number of jets, jet spacing, voltages, etc. and (in the case of the ink) the types of heads it will work with, the quantity of ink per container, etc. That way, you could (theoretically) upgrade your printer by swapping in a higher-quality print head. If they could legislate that kind of solution, it might work.
But DIY ink refills are at best a hit-and-miss proposition -- if the government were to legitimatize ink refills, they would have to also regulate the quality of these offerings... something like requiring a warranty, in case the refilled cartridge somehow ruins the printer.
Oh, and BTW: None of this applies to laser refills, which I have very little experience with. My understanding is that some are very good, and others are very bad. And, having had to clean toner spills out of laser printers, I can tell you that it's not a fun job. But laser is by far the better technology: my printer here is a LaserJet that produces nice, sharp (albeit B&W) pages and that has jammed maybe once and otherwise never given me a problem. Of course, I don't use it as much anymore... I really have no need for hard copies of anything 99% of the time...
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
Except Sony didn't sell Playstations at a loss. Atari tried to sue them for dumping, because the announced introductory price was so outrageously low compared to the competition. But Sony was able produce them for cheaper, and the exchange rate helped them too. Read the story here.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Then consider for a moment that they often sell printers at a cost lower than the combined cost of all the ink cartridges to go with it. My current printer cost me $50CDN ($100 - $50 MIR), while the cartridges alone for the printer would've cost me >$80CDN. Unless bundling the printer somehow lets them save $30, I'd say they're selling something at a loss there.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
For the medication dispenser, they are probably worried about people putting Tylenol in with a differnt amount of active ingredient, making the dosages on the box wrong. Also, I wouldn't be suprised if it was an FDA regulated device and it actually would be illegal to not use the "approved dose"
I don't think the same thing applies to ink cartridges though. That's more of a "void the warrenty" at most.
My wife and I gave up on ink-jet printers. We started with an HP. It constantly chewed up cartriges. HP has a repair code for "short cartridge life". We mailed the printer back to them. They lost it. They found it. Supposedly fixed it. It lasted another 6 months and died.
Then we got a canon bcj-6000. It bit the dust just after the warrantee ended.
Then we got real good deals on some cheapo lexmark printers. They lasted longer than the more expensive canon, but died in short order also.
We started looking at good ink jet printers which were in the $500 range at the time. Then with ink jet cartridge prices, we decided to take the plunge and buy a color laser printer.
It's been bullet-proof for a year now. It's a QMS/Minolta desk laser 2200 I think. $1000 after rebate. It's fast, quiet, reliable, does 100baseT, and images come out bone-dry. The software's a bit goofy, but now that I know how to deal it, it's great. The software's only needed for 100baseT anyway. The toner cartridges won't be cheap, but we beat the daylights out of the printer and it's still on the original cartridges.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
This is only enforceable if the manufacturer supplies the ink for free (except in the unlikely event the service provider can prove the third party ink caused the damage (i.e. using refills ipso facto isn't considered to have caused the printer to fail). See the Magnasun-Moss Warranty Act, a law written to prevent these kind of abuses (at the time by automobile dealers).
Of course, this would require someone to bitch really loud and/or take a printer manufacturer to court, which would be a big hassle. My plan would be to sue the warranty service provider that refused on those grounds in small claims.
I have addressed the issue of the HP smart chips and the issue of needing to replace the print head due to wear and reduced quality. Web graphics are generaly low resolution and do not need the high res/high cost of a new cartridge. I use a refilled cartridge for when browsing the web. Most of the time I use my older printer (color cartridges $48 per twin pack) instead of the new printer (same size cartridge at $56 each). The old printer does not use a chip. The smart chip in the HP78 cartridges is simply a serial number and nothing more. The printer remembers this number and the one before it. Rotating between 3 cartridges fixes the problem on resetting the estimated ink levels. Another way to reset the printer's memory of used cartridges is described in the discussion section on www.atlascopy.com. They also have information on getting into the service mode of the printer. In that mode, you can print out the nozzle counts for the cartridges as well as estimated ink levels as a percentage along with the current cartridge serial number and the prior serial number. These remembered serial numbers is what keeps you from refilling the current cartridge or the one just before it. The printer remembers it is out of ink. Because I print lots of digital photographs, I have been filling these. The money saved on cartridges could have easly paid for a color laser printer. (looking at it the other way; the printer would have cost more to use than buying a color laser printer for my volume of photo printing.) About $100 in ink buys 2 pints of black ink and 3 1/2 pints in color ink. I shudder to think what that would have cost buying that much ink in the little 38 mL cartridges. I'm on my 3rd pint of black ink in the last 18 months. The black cartridges get about 5 refills before I can notice any print diffrence compared to a new cartridge. Color I notice diffrences after about the 3rd refill. The color is difficult to refill because an air bubble may make a color quit printing unexpectedly. Black is usualy good for about 10 or more refills for draft and web page printing.
The truth shall set you free!
I recently bought an Epson Stylus Photo 820 printer, because it was top-rated for the price at printing photos - mainly due to the fact that it uses a 6 color ink system.
I hoped that this time around, I'd at least be able to buy 3rd. party ink cartridges and get decent performance. (My last inkjet was a Stylus Photo 700, and every time I used anything other than real Epson ink, it would clog up after 2 or 3 pages were printed - and nothing would unclog it again, short of putting new Epson cartridges in and running it through 14 or 15 cleaning cycles.)
My first experience with ink carts. off eBay was dismal though. The colors just wouldn't print uniformily. Every time I printed a test pattern, one color would be missing completely or streaked up. Sure enough, putting in a real Epson cartridge made it start working again.
I think with these high DPI Epson printers, Epson must be putting some type of thinner or solvent in their ink that nobody else is using. Everything else seems to clog up their nozzles real fast. Quite frustrating.....
Canon has spouted that same line about print quality since their first inkjets came out, long before there was any such thing as a high-resolution inkjet printer.
I had a BJ200, which I used enough that the moving parts finally wore out. I found that contrary to Canon's claims, the better cartridges could be refilled indefinitely (not all carts were exactly alike in quality; there were four carts that fit this printer, and the one labeled for their fax unit was best). I've refilled some as many as *8* times, and only lost carts at that point because I accidentally bumped the printhead and damaged it.
The trick is to keep the printhead clean -- swish it thru denatured alcohol every time you refill it, and make sure you keep the track area clean and free of dust. Use a high quality refill ink, like Fillmore brand (which is considerably better ink than Canon's original ink, at about 5% the cost). Don't overfill the cart -- half-full works better in many cases. If it gets cranky, next time it's empty run a little alcohol thru the cart itself, and print a few demo pages to let it clean out the printhead from the inside, then do the regular refill. (I've even resurrected "dead" dried-out carts that way -- turned out good as new.)
With proper care, inkjet printheads provide the same print quality throughout their lifetime, which is a helluva lot longer than the time it takes to use up that first ink resevoir.
Note: I've seem similar results with high-resolution HP and Epson inkjet refills, but my hands-on experience was with Canon.
And thanks for the heads-up on the newer HP units -- personally, I wouldn't buy an inkjet that rejects being refilled. At some 25 cents per page to print with "original" ink, inkjets cost too damn much to run. (Compare to about 5 cents/page for laser printers, and barely above cost of paper for pin impact.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?