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HP Must Defend Half-Empty "Economy" Ink Cartridges
An Anonymous Coward excerpts this short Detroit News story, which begins "PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. must defend the sale of half-full ink cartridges with its printers after a Minnesota appellate court reinstated a lawsuit against the world's largest maker of printers.
Three Minnesota women claim that the company doesn't reveal that the 'economy cartridges' installed on new printers are only half full of ink." The cost of refills is why I've given up on inkjet printers entirely (for now) -- guess which division of HP made more money than the other four combined?
I use alot of large format plotters. Right now regarding inkjet Encad and HP seem to be the favorites. Even bulk ink plotters like HP1050 series requires you to purchase an inktank instead of just pouring in more ink. Encad on the other hand sells jugs of milk that you can pour in on the fly even while printing.
I worked for a company making high end thermal printers and the trick to their sales were to force customers to use their inks and substrate. one by placing wierd punch patterns on the paper then patenting it. ofcourse this was played off as a superior punch pattern for accuracy. funny enough when the pattent ran out they left the patter behind. Secondly they constantly changed the firing patterns on the head of the printer so other films wouldn't work or last as long. When customers called up who used other products it was standard to blaim the non brand name film or substrate. It's no secrets companies strong arm customers into buying their peripherals and materials at a higher cost.
Actually, you can pick up a Samsung laser printer for around $170 (less on sale). Samsung has linux support for them also, and they print pretty decent quality also. Awhile back, Amazon.com had it for $150 with free shipping, and there was a mail in coupon for a free extra toner.
As far as color goes, I had a big dye sublimation printer that I picked up for $60. Printed photo quality on 8.5x11 paper. If you do some looking on ebay, you can find one of those for next to nothing. Although, I'm not sure how much the refills cost since mine came with 3 rolls. Even getting an inkjet for doing color might not be so bad since most people rarely print color.
But printing black and white on an inkjet is definitely not cheap.
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The ability to print nice color CDROM labels, plus the ability to print photos on demand, makes an inkjet the only way to go for me.
Yes, it costs $40 or so for a pair of new cartridges for my Epson. But I only ever bought one pair, then I refill them. It takes about 10 minutes and costs about $3 to fill both of them.
Samsung? NO! We got one at the office.
It's manual feed tray is left aligned and then everything that you try to print on paper smaller than 8.5x11 will try to be centered where it would be on regular letter sized paper.
Also, in the time it takes it to warm up, I can send a print job to the HP downstairs and walk down and get it before the Samsung has even started.
You don't want these things next to you when you're talking on the phone either. Imagine the volume level of a dot matrix without the rat-a-tat-tat but with a continuous humming.
Just my personal experience though.
I say 'nearly-perfect' because I found that sometimes, I needed to do a little more blotting before everything is perfect.
Before I buy a new inkjet, I check the online refill suppliers and make sure that they're reasonably easy to refill. I just don't buy printers that are not easy to refill.
I made an exception for the Epson 870 photo printer, but only after someone figured out how to refill it at all (originally it was not possible, but someone figured out how to cheat). It was good enough to put up with a little bit of hassle in filling the carts (it still only takes about 10 minutes)
The new carts for this printer are about $20 each. However, for $50 I bought enough ink to refill them dozens of times. Just be sure to get a specific formulation for your printer, not one of these Wal-Mart "universal" ink refilling kits.
To dispel some myths before they come up:
I have been refilling for 3 years now, both HP and Epson, probably 30 to 40 cartridge refills, and NOT ONE INSTANCE of a clogged head or anything.
Some people say the ink quality isn't the same. They're right; the aftermarket stuff is BETTER. I have a few dozen photos hanging on the wall behind me printed on the Epson 870. They have all faded in the sunlight a bit, but the ones printed with original Epson ink have faded A LOT more. Another complaint is possible color inaccuracies. I don't know, they look OK to me but I don't have "pantone eyes."
Also, they can't "void your warranty" for using aftermarket inks. Requiring people to buy their ink products for their printers is called "product tying" and is AFAIK an illegal monopolistic practice.
Buy an Epson instead of an HP, and the cartridge won't wear out, either. The Epson heads are separate and designed to last. The HP is integral and designed to fail.
It's because HP patented their ink-jet cartridge designs. Therefore, unless HP licenses the patent, you won't see any other companies producing them, and HP can charge what they want for them. With printers like Epson's, the ink cartridge is just a tank for the ink, rather than having the print head built into the cartridge like HP's, so you see third-party ink tanks; I buy mine (Epson 980) for ~$7 for black and ~$9 for color (with discounts for buying three or more at a time).
On the other hand, as long as you don't let the cartridge run dry (which will damage the print head), you can refill HP cartridges about a half-dozen times before the print head wears enough to be noticeable. The same place I get replacement Epson tanks from also sells refill kits; a refill kit for the HP 700-1300 series cartridges runs ~$30 and has 2oz each of cyan, magenta, and yellow (enough for 3, 6, or 12 refills, depending on which size color cartridge you're using) and 4oz of black (enough for 3, 5, or 6 refills, depending on which size black cartridge you're using). The same quantity of ink for refilling tanks for my Epson 980 is about $6 cheaper (4 black, 3 color refills), because HP uses pigmented black ink, which is more expensive than the dye-based black ink the Epson printers use.
So you can run the cost of operation down, as long as you're willing to make the effort to load more ink into your existing cartridges.
Sadly, yes. These people are refered to as "toner pirates" in the office supply industry.
I'm the office manager of a small law firm. During the first few months of my time here, someone called who claimed to be from our photocopier company and wanted to verify the model of our photocopier. Not knowing any better, I told them.
Then, a few weeks/months later, someone calls saying they are from our photocopier company and they are having a great deal on our toner. I saw "Great! Send us some!"
When the invoice arrives, the price on the invoice seems high, so I doublecheck what supply companies charge for our type of toner. The price we've been charged is much much higher (2x-3x, I forget exactly).
I sent the toner back by slow-boat FedEx (at our own expense) along with a letter saying "Here is your toner back, please don't ever contact us again." They kept calling, of course, but I'd learned my lesson.
The FTC has a great page regarding these kinds of scams that includes variations on the scam, your rights, and possible remedies.
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