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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?
99% of the stuff you're printing is going to be black and white anyway, so why not fork out the extra $100 or so and get a budget laserprinter? Considering ink cartridges cost, what, about $50 these days anyway, you'll find the laser option more affordable in the long run.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Cost of new black ink cartridge for my printer: $40
Cost of laser printer with toner on eBay: $50
Maybe they should just sell disposable printers instead.
--Kevin
I did wonder why I could never find that HP cartridge number when I went to replace it the first time, just different cart which would replace it. Seems to me, we all got what we paid for, even if we think we should have got full cartridges. I see no deceit, to be honest, even if I think it smells like the fresh dead skunk on Highway 17 this morning.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I used to have a laser I would print out like a maniac. Whenever I wanted to read something. But ever since Ink Jets began to cost so much I have kicked the habit of printing. These I usually read everything on the computer and only print when absolutely necessary.
So the good part of this message is less dead trees. Of course now my hard disks are the mess (oodles and oodles of files)
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Becuase refilts are so much cheaper it always made me think the cost was in the catridge ... not the ink.
Which gives the question : How must did they actually save from each printer ?
Cruise TT
guess which division of HP made more money than the other four combined?
Compaq?
It is interesting, on some of the printers I have seen it says it includes a starter cartridge to be replaced by a full one.
So they have starter cartridges with a few drops, and standard ones which are only 50% full...
I worked retail for a little while, and I was floored by the number of people who were replacing their printers, because they didn't want to shell out for ink cartridges. The fact that you didn't get full cartridges didn't seem to phase them...
It's just like the razor blade industry. Except that you can't sell a half empty razor blade.
... that I can't be bothered to find a link for.
Wally suggests saving money by watering down the ink in the photocopiers. Of course, this will result in lighter copys, so to solve the problem, they increase the darkness setting on the copier...
Maran
See, some people only see the negative. I see the ink cartritge as half full.
If you look at the cart. it lists the amount of ink.. in Canada it is marked in ml. If you have one of the Office class printers the black cartrige costs about $50 and contain about 40ml of ink If you hav one of the cheap sub $100 printers it still costs about $50 for the cart but it only contains about 20ml of ink.. Its clearly marked on the cart and on the box.. I ALWAYS check how much ink is in the cart before deciding on wich printer I get. By the way the Canon BCI-21 Black contains only about 5 - 10 ml of ink.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
HP Must Defend Half-Empty "Economy" Ink Cartidges
Apparently. These "cartidges" also seem to have half as many R's.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I saw a new Lexmark printer on sale the other day for just over 50 bucks. With some ink refills running in the $30 range, it almost seems feasable to eventually have use-once, throw-away (recycle!) printers... much like those cardboard cameras.
My sig sucks.
Come on, be fair. Deceptive packaging is just that - packaging designed to give a false impression. People who bought based on this false impression have been defrauded. The cartridges are not "economy", as they are falsely represented.
Companies have been doing this with laser printers too - the first toner cartridge is less than half full, always.
Mind you, this reminds me of the ongoing fight I'm having with a coffee maker who sold me 2 12-cup coffee makers that make only 6 8-ounce cups. Nothing in the fine print, nothing in the packaging, nothing in the manual.
We'll see who blinks first - or whether I'm going to have to take them to small claims court.
"Their not half-empty, their half-full."
Got friends?
I used to work for Office Max, and I made it my personal habit to always let a customer know this, not only because I did'nt want to suprise them about it later, and so that they would'nt freak out when it ran out in half the time I told them a new cartridge would last, but also because I knew they would most likely buy replacements right away, and the name of the game is average ticket. So obviously this is HP's idea, sell 3 products (4 if you count the needed cable, but that makes sense since some users need USB and others need parallel) instead of only 1, not bad business, smart business.
Geez, vote with your dollars! If you don't like the fact that you get a crappy product (in this case half empty ink cartridges) then go buy something else.
crazy dynamite monkey
Back in the day of the Laserjet II, we had a joke around my job that HP was just a toner company, with very fancy toner delivery packaging - printers.
It's just a heck of a lot more noticable now, you're paying $60 and $40 instead of $3000 and $200 (plus $ungodly when you need to replace the other parts). With the inkjet, you get a new head every time, and that's the part that gums up and goes bad.
Perhaps somebody has some price-per-page figures, that I'd like to see. I suspect that even with the exorbitant replacement cost of the heads, it should still come out really cheap per page.
This idea is, or was at one point, common in the food industry as well. They maintain the same size of packaging, yet futz with the amount of food inside it (usually reducing it some small amount) so you're essentially paying the same price for less.
Of course they never label it as "economy", they would just sneak it in without telling anyone.
It ends up being a backhanded way of raising prices. In HP's situation it seems more like a way to motivate people into buying the real profit makers sooner, but it all borrows from the same mode of thinking. Wish the story or court case was further along, be interesting to see what the eventual conclusion is because I doubt the finding would apply to only HP.
But then again we're talking about a company that sells "premium photo paper" at over 1 euro a piece.
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
There's no law that says "HP will include cartridges with each and every new inkjet printer they sell". I see no rip off here other than the three women and their lawyers.
I will wager a large sum that these broads also think their husband's paychecks belong to them for life, married or not.
I will wager the same sum that their lawyers will agree with them on that point too.
im wondering whos learning from who here because theyre both making their money in keeping the machine runing.
it also reminds me of how the XBOX was supposed to overcome its cost to M$ through game sales.
I want 2D games back.
This is hardly surprising. This is the same comepany, after all, that has told people for years that throwing away perfectly good printheads (such as those conveniently attached to the ink cartridges) gives you 'higher quality' at a lower price. I used to work at CompUSA 4-5 years ago, and I remember even then how hard HP had to try to convince me and my fellow sales goons that this was 'good for the consumer'. Of course, then again, what with their extended warranties, CompUSA hasn't exactly been a shining paragon of sales morality.
Hmm. HP makes a ton of money off of those ink carts; I wonder how much CompUSA/Best Buy/Wiz/etc make off of each cart they sell. The guys pushing these disposable printers on people should get a fair share of the finger-pointing as well.
The whole ink jet printer industry reminds me of the razor/blade industry. They sell you the printer cheap, then screw you hard for the inks making sure you run out fast on the first set of cartridges just like the razor folks only give you one or two "starter" blades. But then again, Carly didn't put a gun to my head and forced me to buy the printer. It works well but is expensive to operate in the long run.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I see the cartridge as too dang big.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
- Refill kits. Many vendors offer kits that will allow you to add
more ink to an empty cartridge several times over. With the proper use of
plugs and caution, this may save you hundreds of dollars a year.
- Buy from Pricewatch. Pricewatch allows you to find the
cheapest vendors worldwide of most computer hardware, and you can usually
find ink cartridges there for about 60% off retail prices.
- Warranty service. Most cartridges are sold with a (n albeit
poor) warranty. Use about half the cartridge, then apply a small quantity
of glycerin or sugar water to the jets to clog them. Send the cartridge
back to HP and wait a week to get your replacement.
- Return it. When you've got a dead cartridge in your hand and
you're trying to print out that last minute book report, don't despair.
Head over to Best Buy and pick up a new cartridge. Then, spray a bottle of
typewriter ink liberally all over the old cartridge and (optionally) your
hands and arms. Head back to the store and accuse them of selling you a
defective cartridge, which exploded (and thus drained all of its ink) when
you installed it. Voila! You will have a new cartridge for free.
- File a complaint with the BBB. The majority of inkjet
cartridges clog irreparably between the time when the warranty expires, and
the time when the ink runs out. Make the manufacturer accountable for
selling you a shoddy product by complaining to the BBB, your Attorney
General, and the IFCC.
In summary, there are things you can do about this situation. You don't need to be a sheep.Throw off the shackles of copyright law.
The 312L (L for light in the toner) is (was?) a cheapo (and very nice) laser printer. It's just like the 312 w/o postscript and a full toner cartridge.
A buddy of mine was trying to install one these damn cartridges the other day. Fresh out of the box. The stupid printer kept coming back saying that the cartridge was too old to be used. IT WAS A BRAND NEW CARTRIDGE!!! Out of a HP box. The damn printer won't budge on it at all.
"Sell the printers at a loss, rip off the consumer in the long run..." - HP business model.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
One problem with laser is that it spikes the hell out of your power supply, will kill a UPS, and if not on aseperate circuit can wreak havoc with your other equipment. Inkjets are much tamer, and while a pain in the ass and slower, are safer for beginning/home lUsers for this reason. Since they're also cheaper to make than lasers and better than dot-matrix, inkjet will probably have a lock on consumers for some time.
You are not the customer.
If you want to read something on the run maybe downloading it to a portable hi-rez screen might be cheaper?
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
A laser printer I bought several (8, I'd guess) years ago came with a toner cartridge that would only print 1/3 as many pages as a new replacement cartridge, this was explained deep in the manual somewhere...
I believe it was a Canon, but i'm not sure.
--
Benjamin Coates
Most ppl here are in the systems depts in our companies. Don't tell me you haven't went out and got the same high end inkjets that the marketing dept has, just so you could gleem the ink carts from them.
:)
I mean come on, the acct depts never ever question the amount of ink that the marketing dept uses...
"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein," - Joe Theisman
My girlfriend bought a HP (900 or 1000 something) inkjet printer last year and it came with what the sales rep called "starter" cartridges that weren't completely full. This was at a Circuit City store and of course he really really wanted us to buy replacement cartridges with it anyways. We did buy them because I knew we'd need them shortly anyways.
In any case, when I got home I looked at the printer box and at the replacement cartridge box, and both stated the same milliliters (or whatever inkjet ink is measured in).
So did HP state the wrong thing on the box, or did the Circuit City salesman lie through his teeth in an attempt to get an extra $50 sale?
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.
Not only are the OEM cartridges that come with the printers are half full. So are most of the refill cartridges people buy.
See this link for the 'refil' cartridge at 34 bucks.
See this link for the 'large' cartridge at a 'bargain' 55 bucks.
They're the same size.
-- rob
Heidi Klum might sue Slashdot forcing them to guarantee that you won't mention fake pictures of your vacation with her.
Mmmm.. Donuts
"Is the inkjet cartridge half-full or half-empty?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
but I do not think of HP as a sleazeball company. They make high quality products for fair prices, treat their employees reasonably well, and you never hear about Chinese 6-year-olds assembling LJ4100's in a sweatshop someplace.
So, why are they pulling this scam? Is it a change in corporate culture? Is HP actually evil, with a thin chocolaty covering? Is it actually a fair tactic? Is it a manufacturing or shipping issue?
Insight please...
Every coffee maker I've ever seen uses a 5oz measure for a standard 'cup' of coffee. So a 12 coffee-cup coffee maker makes 60oz of coffee, or 7.5 American 'cups'.
I don't know if this is deceptive (if it is, it's all across the industry) or just a different use of the word 'cup' than you're used to. If they had advertised it as a 3L coffee maker, then you'd have a case.
Living better through chemicals
Some years ago I ran across a product that made refilling cartridges easy. I believe it was called KleanHands. It consisted of a reusable printhead and replaceable cartridges of ink. Much cheaper than HP cartridges. I found that the ink cartridges were easily refillable, too. We bought some where I work for an HP Officejet fax machine.
Unfortunatly that product seems to no longer be available and only worked on a limited number of HP printers. (not mine of course) Too bad someone doesn't make something similar today for color cartridges.
I've been refilling my HP cartridges for a couple of years, with mixed results. Sometimes it works well, sometimes the cartridge clogs up or worse, leaks all over. I'd say it works about 50% of the time. Still cheaper than paying HP's inflated prices.
Lately though, HP's changed the design of their cartridges making it harder to refill them. You either have to drill a hole in the black cartridges or use a vacuum method to refill them. It can be done, it's just a hassle and usually messy.
The color ones are easier, just crack the top off and fill the sponges with ink. At least that method still works. (for now)
I know some would say, why bother? Just get a laser printer, right? Well, I already have a laser printer, an HP LJ IIID with envelope feeder and duplex feeder that I got for free from a dumpster. (with a stack of toner carts) Some idiot got a wire hooked into the gears while changing the toner cartridge and shredded up some wiring. I patched them back together and have been using it ever since. It's great for black and white and I use it probably 90% of the time, but I still need color for some printouts so the HP stays attached to my network.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
It's well known within the company that HP's best revenue stream is it's ink business. They rigorously enforce their patents on the cartridges (thus why you never see "generic" cartridges) and go after refill companies as well. Anything goes to protect the ink revenue stream. It's been said internally that HP isn't a computer company, it's an INK company.
HP used to have a "print on demand" service where you subscribe to various printed journals or newsletters and they'd automatically print for you whenever there was a new issue. Of course, the motivation was to get you to use up more ink. (They canned it because apparently most people realized it was pretty silly.)
If you want a project to get good acceptance in the company, show how it can help people squirt out lots of ink and you'll definitely get the backing of the execs. It's been this way for years.
One other interesting bit: The one thing that was NOT mentioned publicly about why it was good for HP to merge with Compaq, and why they're keeping both lines of home PCs (rather than consolidate around one brand) is this: Instead of Compaq home PC package including Lexmark printer with a PC, they'll of course ship with an HP inkjet printer, which means more market share for home printers which means more ink. Of course, they didn't want to push this point for fear it would raise the eyebrows of those who needed to approve the deal, but don't think it wasn't part of their motivation and revenue forcasting.
-- an HP insider
If they were really concerned with driving down costs for customers and saving themselves money, they would adopt a standard size ink cartridge that fits all their printers. Epson is nutorious for this. They have as many sizes and shapes of ink carts. as they have printers. Actually, they have even more, since most require a color and a black. It makes no sense to me. They could cut their costs dramatically if they only went through the effort of coming up with a standard size cartridge. Using Epson as an example, their printers all can be grouped into catagories, either they are 720x720 dpi, 1440x720dpi or 2880x720 dpi. Why do they need to change the shape of the cartridge for every printer? Wouldn't it be much cheaper to only have to produce a few standard sizes instead of as many different ones as they have printers?
today is spelling optional day.
The joys and savings of cost of a dot-matrix. Not to mention the fact that there are pages out there designed specifically to create music while you print (for the speakerless/soundcardless of us out there).
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
the QMS/Minolta "MagiColor" (I think that's the name) is sold for a pinch under $1000 at various retailers, both in stores and online.
...
Data points:
a) I dunno about Linux support, but the short answer is, I doubt it, since a Google search didn't turn up anything useful. If there *was* decent support under Linux without frustration, I might save up for one. Color printing is nice
b) Heavy. Very heavy. No, not heavy compared to a mainframe, a car, the Earth, a whale, or a very very fat person, but heavy. One strong person *could* move it, but it's not the best idea.
c) Yes, it does come with all 4 toners you need, something I was afraid it would not. (Thought it might come with only a black cart, for instance.)
d) The only example I've actually seen in use is the one my dad bought a few months ago, and I helped him set up. The quality he gets is good, bordering on outstanding for certain uses, but it is *not* a dye-sub or even a high-end inkjet when it comes to color photo printing. He says he gets a lot of printing errors, though, and tech support he called blamed the spooler software. It prints quite speedily when it fees like working, though.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I am SURE LEXMARK is probably doing the same thing and charging MORE.
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.
I don't know about Linus, but the RMS fellow would probaly insist on calling them GNU/Ink
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
At the store where I work, most of our peripheral salesmen let the customer know that the unit comes with a smaller capacity cartridge. It doesn't seem to affect them, but if you went home expecting to get a full cartridge then I could see why you would get pissed. It could be worse, you could have to buy the ink separate like the cable.
I don't know about other manufacturuers.
Today you can buy "economy" cartridges, but the printers come with full tanks.
I hardly ever buy inkjet cartridges. I use a refill kit with a syringe and it works just fine for me. After a while, the cartridges do wear out, and I have to get a new one, but I save a LOT of money this way. There are a number of places online that sell complete kits with all the materials you need, and even a CDROM with an instructional video. Check it out!
Dog is my co-pilot.
maps, pictures, and birthday cards (I maky my own as it adds that extra personal touch).
Color adds a lot to printed documents and can help a long ways to making printed text more relaxing to read.
Anyways, keep your grey world if you want. I appreciate color in mine.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
You could keep three or four on hand if you knew a big paper or assignments/projects were due.
I came across Inksaver.com from a buy.com mailout. Its a software package for under $30 that saves ink without sacrificing quality (so they claim). They have a free trial download, worth a look.
www.inksaver.com
I recently did a photoshoot for a client.
I did the whole job digitally, and printed using the Epson 1280 Photo. The quality of this printer is truely amazing. The output looks just like a photo from a lab.
After shooting and printing about 640 photos the costs were as follows:
$658.00 ($47.00x8) Epson Photo Paper 50 sheets/pkg
$ 81.00 ($27.00x3) Black Ink Cartrige
$520.00 (~$40.00X13) Colour Ink Cartrige
$1289.00 Total
About $1.96 per page (Canadian Dollars)
What I found interesting was that with about 90% ink coverage on the photo paper the ink cartriges lasted about 50 pages every time. Very consistent.
Two dollars per page is an obscene amount of money to print out your college reports but is much cheaper than sending a glossy print job to a professional printer or photo lab.
Summary: Use the right tool for the job. The new ink jet printers have great quality but are too expensive for normal office usage.
I bought some crappy HP InkJet for $35 dollars because I print precisely 2 pages per month and I didn't want to have to disconnect my wife's Laser from her stupid Macintosh and carry it over to my computer.
The chances of me ever buying a replacement cartridge for this thing are slim. In two years when I run out of ink, I'll just buy a new printer! At $35 bucks, it's less than the cost of the cartridge!
It says "don't do it" in the manuals for both products. DO you plug your AC? Refrigerator? Compressor?into a UPS ? NO? why not? CUz it don't work!
Vote Quimby!
This is not a problem with just the inkjet companies. I recently purchased a Lexmark C710 color laser, and inside was a little note saying that "by the way, we jipped you on toner, these cartridges are good for only 3000 pages, not 10000" (I forget the exact numbers).
Aside from that, it's been a great printer. But I was pretty pissed to find that note. It should have been clearly stated on the web site where I ordered it, on Lexmark's site, and on the outside of the package.
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 $50 I bought enough ink to refill them dozens of times. Just be sure to get a specific formulation for your printer, not one of these Wal-Mart "universal" ink refilling kits.
To dispel some myths before they come up:
I have been refilling for 3 years now, both HP and Epson, probably 30 to 40 cartridge refills, and NOT ONE INSTANCE of a clogged head or anything.
Some people say the ink quality isn't the same. They're right; the aftermarket stuff is BETTER. I have a few dozen photos hanging on the wall behind me printed on the Epson 870. They have all faded in the sunlight a bit, but the ones printed with original Epson ink have faded A LOT more. Another complaint is possible color inaccuracies. I don't know, they look OK to me but I don't have "pantone eyes."
Also, they can't "void your warranty" for using aftermarket inks. Requiring people to buy their ink products for their printers is called "product tying" and is AFAIK an illegal monopolistic practice.
if you think half empty is bad, a friend of mine just bought her first computer, and bought a cheapo 50$ printer, the first thing she tried to do was print some pictures, and they were looking pretty strange, so i go over and take a look at the printer, the black ink cartridge was COMPLETELY empty, the most empty i have ever seen an ink cartridge, there were small minute traces indicated that ink was present in there at one time, but that was it. (btw, yes it was an hp printer, and we live in NC, not minnisota)
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
Why use those kits anyway? Fountain pen ink, applied with a pipette, is waaay cheaper, and just as easy. You might even say, smarter :-)
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
Dumbass/Troll, They're the same external size, but they hold different amounts. One is 19ml and the other is 38ml (or twice the capacity).
Hooked on phonics worked for me (you should try it).
Uh? From the respective pages: ;^)
specifications
* Ink volume: 19 ml
* Page yield: 450 pages based on 15% coverage
and: specifications
* Ink volume: 38 ml
* Page yield: 970 pages based on 15% coverage
Now, maybe it's because I'm European or something, here, but to me it's pretty easy to see that the large cart's 38 ml is actually more than the budget one's 19. Hopefully, I'm not unique with this ability.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
A couple of the new Epson inkjets feature a mixture of Pigment & Dye inks (previous Epson printers just used Dye).
The advantages of Pigment ink, aside from crisper black/colour, no bleeding, and 70 years of lightfastness, is that the cartridges last a lot longer. I have an Epson C80 which really does print out a thousand detailed sheets of black text in one go. I know that's not a lot compared to laser land, but it sure beats the rest of the consumer inkjet offerings. This technology has trickled down from their professional line of printers -- the C80 is very cheap. Inkjet vs. Laser could go the way of ATA vs. SCSI, in terms of the poorer technology improving so much that it's acceptable for most people.
If you count the cost of photo paper (necessary to get acceptable results) and the cost of the ink, a letter-size inkjet print comes out to around $1.50 for a letter-size sheet or roughly 50 cents for a 4x6 if you squeeze 3 of them onto a 8.5x11 sheet.
Wal-Mart's online photo center charges 26 cents for a 4x6 print, and $3 for a 8x10. These prints are made on Fuji Frontier digital minilabs which use solid-state red green and blue lasers to expose conventional photo paper (Fuji Crystal archive). The end result is a laminated print that is significantly better than any inkjet print (just look at one with a 10x loupe, you will see what I mean), and that is also guaranteed to last at least 25 years.
If you are shooting primarily to produce 4x6 prints as most people beginning digital photography are, inkjets simply aren't cost effective, mostly because of the obscene profit margins of makers of ink and photo paper. Inkjet printers are best reserved for printing documents (where you can use cheaper paper, and since the ink covers only 5% of the page, the ink cartridges don't go out as quickly), or when you need a quick proof.
Typo: I used about 14 packs of paper not 8.
658==(47*14)
Would it be significantly more expensive for HP to make their printer cartridges out of a clear plastic?
Maybe the court should force them to do so.
It'd be a lot harder for the consumer to get ripped off if they actually had a way to gauge how much product they were going to recieve before they bought it.
What the hell -- I can't bathe in a butter tub either.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
"guess which division of HP made more money than the other four combined? "
the division that allows me to by a new printer ever 6 months because its cheaper then the ink?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They key is to use remanufactured toner and inkjet cartridges from a reputable, low-volume company. High-volume companies do a lousy job. Refilled cartridges are also not the same thing as remanufactured cartridges.
A good remanufacturer takes apart the entire cartridge by hand and replaces worn parts. They then fill the cartridge completely full with toner that is often better than what HP/Lexmark/etc use.
I buy toner cartridges from this place in my city. They have a 100% guarantee on their cartridges. However, every cartridge I've gotten from them has been fantastic. I'm not sure of any decent Internet shops, but I believe this small-town shop can ship cartridges also.
I guess these ladies will sue Hyundai because they thought that those economy cars should have more horsepower and room than BMW's. They will also sue Motel6 for not leaving mints on their pillows and for their apparently crummy room service.
I bought one of these printers and I agree that the packaging was extreamly deceptive. People are missing the point when they say "If you don't like the fact that HP sells half full ink cartridges, don't buy from them." I had always thought HP was an upstanding company so when I went shopping for a printer, I specifically looked for an HP. The printer package clearly stated it included an ink cartridge. It did not clearly say that the ink cartridge contained half as much ink as normal.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the most annoying thing about my new printer. Printing in grayscale uses the color cartridge. As yet, I have found no way to make it use the black one. Now that my color cartridge is out of ink, I can't print any graphics at all... even though I still have plenty of ink left in the black cartridge.
The chances of me getting another HP printer are slim.
I thought about this, but decided that it wasn't likely to work well as fountain pen ink has a different viscosity than inkjet ink. Does it in fact work well?
Dog is my co-pilot.
See above.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Inkjets just irritate me to death. I've had experience with many from various manufacturers and none have ever been very reliable, and the @$%@&#! cartridges dry out over time. Besides I like my drab black and white papers. Black and white may be ugly, but it's ugly in an uncompromising, dignified sort of way. Lasers are glorious freedom, toner being far more robust.
A sufficient number of people are willing to pay the price. Corporations don't have morals. They exist for one purpose only - to return value to shareholders. If HP thought they'd make more by charging less for the ink, then they'd be selling for less. What can you do? Don't buy printers which use "smart" non-refillable cartridges. Buy refill kits. Use a laser printer instead. (Brother printers seem to have the most inexpensive toner cartridges.) If sales plummet then the industry behavior will change.
No, that's not a coffee cup. It's proper name is a demi-tasse, which, when translated into english, means half-cup.
The "big clunky things", ss you call them, have the same capacity (8 ounces) as a 1-cup measuring cup. Every measuring cup, whether 1, 2 or 4-cup capacity, lists 8 ounces as 1 cup.
Mind you, my office coffee cup has a capacity of almost 20 ounces (its BIG).
Not only won't I loose (they already know that - they've offered me full retail + shipping, even though I bought them on sale), they've since modified the packaging to avoid further suits.
I'll win. It's just a question of who comes along for the ride (class action, anyone?)
OK, here we go again. Moderators, think about things before you click the button. When I wrote the post above, there were 0 posts. Thus, I couldn't possibly be posting redundantly. When my comment finally made it to the page, there were already 12 other posts. I wasn't redundant then either. I suspect the redundancy you see is from posts replying to earlier posts than mine, which would make them redundant, not me.
Anyway, to be on topic, I still think that HP is doing no wrong here.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Half-full cartriges sounds bad, doesn't it? If HP were smarter they'd spend the extra $$ to make cartriges with smaller ink wells instead. Nobody would balk at that.
This is basically the same thing as hard drive manufacturers saying that a mb is 1000 bytes..
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
...I've got to say that I could see this one coming from a ways off. I don't know how many times I was pressed by customers as to why we ship economy cartriges in new printers, and how many times I asked the senior techs what to tell them if they press on it. Heck, most units require that you have BOTH color and black ink loaded before they will work, and believe me, some customers get a bit testy about that. Sure, as front line tech support for a corporate entity, I've heard my share of "..I'll get my lawyer to call you.." so it's interesting to see what will come of this.
*gives middle finger to non-disclosure form that he signed when taking the job*
.B
"Sometimes you have fun, and sometimes the fun has you"
Samsung has a fairly new laser printer out. The ML-1250 costs only $300 CDN, which is about $200 US. The ink costs about $80 CDN, which is like $55 US. Seriously, screw ink jets.
It says one is 19 ml, one is 38 ml. Are you saying the cartridge is the same size, and one is half full?
Sig
The way I see it, they are doing you a sevice by including a little ink. I mean, flashlights, kids toys, remotes, and other electronics come with those dinky little batteries that last for like a week at most, if they come with them at all, and nobody seems to care, HP advertises that it comes with a "Starter" cartridge that is smaller that a normal cartridge, and suddenly they are doing something wrong. If they said that it was a full cartridge, then I would understand the lawsuit, but as it stands, I think HP will win.
Xaotik Designs
I have to agree with this. It took 15 minutes to set up on my 1280 printer and the ink lasts forever.
The company sells archival ink as well as a double density black. The quality is worthy of framing.
Besides... it looks cool when it prints. Definitely has the cool geek factor.
What do you expect for $20 ?
Granted, Dad's "UPS" is a Trace inverter with a battery array mounted in a 45' Gilig bus, but it will easily run the 'fridge, the microwave, TV, satellite and the furnace (which has a pump for pumping glycol).
The A/C is not possible, but its a 40K BTU unit and will only run off the generator or 50A shore power.
I think its just a question of the size of your UPS (dad's is an array of 8 6V storage batteries) and the capabilities of your inverter to handle the load. Dad says he gets about 3-5 days in mild weather of "normal" living -- lighting, fridge, TV/Sat, and water pump without shore power, the generator or running the engine (which also charges the battery array).
If you bought a $100 UPS, I wouldn't plug my cell phone into it to charge. If you bought a $2k UPS that came with decent batteries and inverter, then you might be able to get away with the 10-12A that a big laser printer will demand.
There's nothing magical about compressors and other electric motors other than the current draw; most computer rooms are actually full of electric motors (fans, disk drives, tape drives). It's just that the UPS are sized to meet those loads.
err $50 sorry.
Carly Fiorina: Leading the way in abusing us.
(There are probably some people who don't know she is CEO of Hew-Paq.)
It's been working just fine on Canon BJC-4400.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
My local Office Max has an inkjet printer for $20 in every weekly flier (after rebates and never the same brand).
When a cartridge runs out of ink I just throw the printer away and buy whatever $20 job they have this week.
Actually, this week they've dropped to $10 after rebate.
Let's see: $10 printer every three months or $150 printer + $50 cartridge every three months.
And the quality is fine for crappy web pics (even scanned pics folks send) and business letters.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Look at the side of a Maxwell House can. That's a coffee cup. It's also a tea cup, for that matter. Cups like these, typically holding five or six ounces are the standard for coffee, established back in the day (watch Lucy and Ricky or the Cleavers drink coffee -- back then mugs were for stevedores), even though most people these days use mugs. Goofy? Sure, but if they're refunding you it's because it's easier, not because they'd lose.
Oh, and the measured cup is, of course, eight ounces, but that's not the same thing -- the spoon you use to stir your tea isn't guaranteed to measure one teaspoon either, and my shoes don't have to accomodate twelve inch feet.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Actually a mb (millibit) is 1/1000th of a bit (that's not even possible, is it?). A MB is 1000 bytes. No really, it is!
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
Don't you just hate how the "R" cartridge runs out before the others? Happens a lot with Slashdot because they use so many words.
Oops, you were even more wrong than I thought... a MB is 1,000,000 bytes, not 1000.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
People rarely complain about the razor/blade strategy of giving the razors away and marking up the blades.
;-)
Here's some examples:
Microsoft giving you $400 to sign up for 3 years worth of MSN. Remember that deal?
Etailers taking a loss on merchandise, but making it up on shipping (not so nice).
Cell phone carriers giving away phones with a year service contract
Microsoft selling XBoxes at a loss, but providing no pack-in game. Games cost $50 and you need at least 2
The low price of the inkjet printers is obviously offset by the high price of ink refills. I know how much it costs me to print out a glossy photo on my Epson C80. It's around $1.50 with ink and the expensive glossy paper. It can go down to just a dollar with the cheaper paper. I can get a few small prints on page. Assuming I only get a few good shots on a roll it's still cheaper buying film and photo processing.
Of course my Epson has individual ink tanks so I have the ability to save some money by only replacing the empty ones.
I had just stocked up on about 30 carts for my epson 740 that I bought from a friend (along with a revision a imac) for a hundred bucks. The day the package arrived from "ink cars are us", I had taken the printer down from the shelf and while answering the phone in the next room, my dog pissed on the printer. I took it as a sign from God. I threw out the printer, Gave the carts to the x wife (let her have the karma) and bought an Ethernet laser the next day.
It's cases like these half-filled ink cartridges that may result pretty soon in a major investigation by the Federal Trade Commission over policies in regards to ink cartridges for inkjet printers.
This may result in companies like Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark being sued for violating the Clayton Antitrust Act due to tying issues (e.g., customer is forced to buy replacement part only from one manufacturer). We may end up seeing all four companies being forced to license inkjet cartridge production to approved third parties, which will drastically reduce the cost of replacement cartridges.
(By the way, in regards to the razors, a number of third parties have been making razor refill blades that fit razors built by both Gillette and Schick for some years.)
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
From what I remember the major different between the HP inkjet cartridges and the Epson is that the HPs have built in nozzles and the Epson cartridges are merely ink tanks. The Epson printers have semi-permanent nozzles that only need to be replaces once in a long while (or get a new printer). This seems to drastically effect the cost of the cartridges.
From the Epson store the black cartridge is only $33 and each color cartridge is $12 respectively. On the HP webpage the prices are are less (except no individual colors) . $30 for the black cartridge and $35 for the "tri-color" catridge.
It seems to me that people should be complaining more about the Epson printers because their refills are simply ink tanks, but cost more.
Actually, one of my hobbies is cooking (don't laugh until you've seen chicks react to my chewie chocolate-chocolate chip cookies) and all my measuring tools indicate 8 oz = 1 cup.
Also, if you remember your grade school math, both US and Imperial measurement tables indicated 8 oz = 1 cup.
The demi-tasse (and that's what it was called in the days of the British Empire) that you are referring to was never a coffee cup - but then again, coffee was for the unrefined, unwashed masses who wouldn't know a "good cuppa tea".
But back on-topic... H-P, and all the other vendors, have engaged in practices that are deceptive (why would you even NEED small print if you weren't).
Remember: the big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
Have you guys ever heard of the refill kits?
Everyone at my university uses them because they cost ~$20 CDN and you can refill your black cartridge about 6 times with it. You can also get refill kits that refill colour.
And they actually work... I know this because I use it on my Lexmark Z42 and it works perfectly.
I thought 1 MB was really 1000 KB. and a KB is 1024 bytes.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Weight for weight, is inkjet ink worth more than gold now?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
Good link! I didn't know there was a difference between american boobs and european boobs. Talk about deceptive product packaging!
Actually, if you check commercial coffee makers (for restaurants, etc), their capacity is typically in ounces, not cups.
Manufacturers not filling the "starter" cartridges to capacity shows contempt for the consumer.
And' as I've said elsewhere, the big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
Apparently the other replies to this didn't understand what he was saying, and instead posting comments calling the parent a dumbass.
He is pointing out that they sell 2 different products, using the same packaging, but one of them is only filled half way. It'd be like selling half gallons of milk in gallon containers, but only filling them halfway, and then selling 'large size' milk jugs, which are the same as the other ones, but full.
So it looks like you are paying $19 for 18 ml of additional ink, in the same cartridge.
What?
Return it. When you've got a dead cartridge in your hand and you're trying to print out that last minute book report, don't despair. Head over to Best Buy and pick up a new cartridge. Then, spray a bottle of typewriter ink liberally all over the old cartridge and (optionally) your hands and arms. Head back to the store and accuse them of selling you a defective cartridge, which exploded (and thus drained all of its ink) when you installed it. Voila! You will have a new cartridge for free.
There's a word for this: FRAUD. It's the moral equivalent of putting a cockroach in your yogurt and then trying to sue the yogurt company. Shame on you for suggesting a _criminal activity_ to the innocent, pure-as-lambs Slashdot community!
Freedom: "I won't!"
Yea -- it is a hard decision, every time my wife drains the color & black carts on her inket:
Black Cart replace: $25
Color Cart(s) replace: 3 x $12 = $36
Total: $61
Cost of brand new printer: $55 - $150
Imagine having to pay 40% of the price of a car every time you filled the gas tank.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Remove the cheap solvent, and, by weight, inkjet ink is more expensive than gold.
I think that the "12-cups" they are referring to are measuring cups.
There is no true standard coffee cup: I have "standard" coffee mugs that range in size by 2-3 ounces.
Think of it this way: if you are making a loaf of bread, and it calls for 3/4 cup of buttermilk, you wouldn't grab a coffee mug to measure it, but a measuring cup.
(Oh! And as my wife and sister (two different people!) pointed out to me (that I did, of course, check) liquid cup is slightly larger than a solid cup--you can't use the same vessel to measure the flour for that bread)
When you designate capacity and use the name of a standard unit of volume, it is unreasonable to expect readers to know that they are using a non-standard definition of the measurement. "12 serving" would be acceptable. If the unit size is arbitrary, they should use a different unit name. You notice they specify mass of gold in "troy ounces", not just plain "ounces". To do otherwise would be deceptive, even if insiders are in on the fiction.
"Economy" as a descriptor on a product package, is universally used to signify extra capacity, usually for a larger, but proportionally smaller, price. Except in cases of intentional deception, like this one, it never means lower payload. Whaddya know? I went back on topic!
How many other companies (Epson, Lexmark, etc.) do this? If we know that one or more of them doesn't do this sort of thing, we simply vote with our dollars and see what happens next.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
My panasonic dot matrix has never quit.
/dev/hda >> /dev/lp0
I just shove in a $2 cartride, and type:
cat
It is as simple as that.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I just want to know if any of you have come across this scam:
(I have seen this happen 3 times in my career in IT)
You get a call from some one, they find out that you are in charge of purchasing for you IT dept in your co. They tell you that they are going to send you your free gift! a small tv or some such thing. If you accept this gift - they send you a pallat (sp?) of laser printer toner cartridges and try to charge you like $200.00 each.
They bill you and try to send you an invoice at some regular interval.
When I first got into IT I mistakenly accepted the seemingly innocent free gift from a vendor and had this happen. They had told me that they were an authorized HP cartridge re-manufacturer, and that the toner cartridges containg high quality super fine toner which yeilded over a thousand more pages per cartridge (no - I did not fall for this BS as i will explain) - they continued on the superiority of their re-furbished crap... I was very wise/lucky to basically record the conversation in transcript form in notepad....
I told them I did not want to buy any of their cartridges - but sure I would accept the free gift that they wanted to send me regardles... big mistake. They sent the free gift all right - right along with half a pallet of the toner cartridges i didnt want.
So I accepted the gift, but refused delivery of the pallet. but the delivery guy was apparently giving instructions not to take no for an answer and would not accept the refusal of delivery. and left me with the pallet - and the invoice for a few thousand dollars.
I was pissed off... luckily I had the entire ordeal meticulously documented... for some reason I felt the whole thing was fishy and kept very good notes.
being that the company said that they were one of the few nationally certified and autorized HP cartridge manufacturers - and that the delivery of the toner carts was total BS - and that they were charging over 200 per toner I was pissed off.
I called up HP and asked about their authorizing such shady companies - I was informed by HP that there was nbo such thing as an auth'd cartridge remanufacturer... and they forwarded me to their legal dept. I talked with them about the whole thing... emailed the transcripts of the whole ordeal - and they sent someone next day to pick up the pallet of illegal cartridges (but said I could keep two or three for my troubles)\
Then since we never paid the invoice to the con company - they called up demanding their money. I told them that I would be happy to pay them - if they could prove that they were authorized HP remanufacturers (I dont remember exactly why - but HP said that I should not tell them that I had reported them until they gave me the go ahead... they said to give them the run around on the invoice for a few weeks - and they would contact me and tell me when they had completed their investigation)
they called every single day trying to get payment out of us. Then they sent us another pallet of toner carts - that HP galdly picked up again the next day.
Finally I had the pleasure of telling the guys on the other end of the line that I ahd documented every last detail - including them verifying their mailing address 3 times for payment of the invoice and had reported them to HP and the BBB and the state attorney general for fraud. You should have heard the guy on the other end - he went stark raving mad into a panic - especially after I was able to document exact conversations and every single time they called me.
They claimed that what I did was illegal and that I should be prepared to be sued "big time" by them. They never called me again....
But ! some others tried to get in on the game a few years later. I received calls where they said "Hi, sam - we would like to send you your free gift!" I would ask them what company they were from, get them to repeat and verify their company name a few times - then laugh and tell them I knew their scam and that I was calling the Ca state attorney general - they would promptly hang up.
Anyone else seen this scam before?
Many printer manufacturers do this, and not just with inkjet carts. I bought a Samsung budget laser, and it's cart was only half full as well. That being said, I still don't think it is right, and I would discourage any company from doing it. It is nothing more than a low way to sell more carts.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
See the specifications on each cartridge:
HP 78
Ink volume: 19 ml
Page yield: 450 pages based on 15% coverage
HP 78 large
Ink volume: 38 ml
Page yield: 970 pages based on 15% coverage
That's funny. I always have that problem when I'm trying to make coffee. The coffee will say "one tablespoon per cup of water." Then I'm thinking "is that actual cup of water or the weird coffee cup measurement." Then to make things worse, the coffee pot has some measuring lines and I'm not sure if those lines are 8 or 5 oz. And then there's further confusion when I pour the water in the back of the coffee maker and the lines on the pot don't seem to match the ones in the coffee maker holding tank.
So I end up just dumping a pile of coffee in the filter and eyeballing the measurements. Guess that's probably what the coffee makers wanted anyway.
Never underestimate the power of fiber.
I have an HP and tend to print most of my documents in draft mode. For most intents and purposes, especially for text documents, it is is perfectly sufficient. Since the print head seems to pass twice for high quality, I would guess that I am on average doubling the life of my ink cartridge. If I need something to dazzle then the high quality mode is there when I need it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Yes, the argument is that this isn't clear to the consumer. Especially when it is labelled 'economy' or 'refill' which implies something very different. They should be clearly labelled as 'Small' and 'Large' or something along those lines. I guess people should just be as careful with print cartridges as they are with food and actually read the labels. Or maybe they should have a price per ml listing like they do with most food items.
What?
>guess which division of HP made more money than >the other four combined?
As guess who makes LaserJet's? It's Canon. Not sure if they also make the InkJets.
Funny, the best consumer product HP sells IMHO is the LaserJet and Canon actually makes it.
I've bought a few of these for relatives at Xmas as they seemed such good value. Replacement ink cartridges were barely cheaper than the full printer with a colour cartridge, so I treated them as disposable!
(my only gripe was that the USB device didn't come with a USB cable, but that didn't add much to the overall price)
Yeah, before all the bad media attention - the cartridges were half full.
*ba-doom* * bah! *
Ace
A "measured cup" is of course 8 ounces, but that doesn't mean that every "cup" is or should be 8 ounces. The Stanley Cup is bigger, most bra cups are bigger, and the cup in a jock strap is usually smaller. Similarly, a coffee mug is smaller than a beer mug, even though they're both "mugs".
(Oh, and you'll get no laughter from me. Cooking is a necessary as well as noble art. It would be a hungry world if we had to eat everything raw off the ground.)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
The inkjet printer industry has always seemed to use the old "Snag 'em with the razors, gouge 'em on the blades" business model. The printer chassis was surprisingly inexpensive, while replacement inkjet carts were disproportinately high.
The practice of 'shorting' the included carts is what they're being sued over - since the "economy" lable seems to imply a "good value" for the customer, not "we only half filled the cart so you'll have to buy a new one soon!"
It's not about the difference between inkjet v. laser. It's about deceptive labeling.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Heh... I know what you mean, I really do. I just lost my job last Thursday due to "budget cuts" (after 6 years of doing computer support for them!) - but despite that, they have not one, not two, but *3* office managers who insist on printing just about everything to a color laser printer just so their Excel spreadsheets can have little yellow and green boxes instead of greyscale, and so the emails they print can have URLs and such printed in blue.
Then, they used to throw a fit when I told them they needed to buy a new fuser or imaging unit for the printer, at hundreds of dollars a pop.
(That doesn't seem right! We just replaced some expensive stuff on that printer a few months ago! Are you sure about that?)
"Due to complaints about the ink provided with our HP Deskjet series of printers, we have chosen to no longer provide ink cartridges with our printers."
Then no one can complain that they're only getting a half-full or half-empty cartridge, right?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
This is interesting:
19ml * 2 = 38 ml. So, the large has twice as much as the budget. Okay.
But, 450 * 2 = 900. Why do you get more than twice as many pages from it?
--RJ
Oh, so that economy car in front of my house is a "jumbo"?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
So sell printers with half filled ink cartrigdes..
Thats how they will pay for the merger!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
One of our clients is a real estate appraisal firm and they routinely include color photos of the property along with their appraisal report. Like many new businesses, they started with two computers networked together with one inkjet printer between them. As they grew they just added workstations and printers until, by the time they asked us to fix things, they had files everywhere in various stages of completion and a $300 per month cartridge bill!
We did two things. First, we installed a Dell server running Linux to be their file server and mapped all their "my documents" subdirectories to a directory on this box.
The second thing we did was install an HP color laser printer with a network interface and point to it for default from every machine in the place.
Savings? Everything paid for in just over one year!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
...to sell half-full ink cartridges with new printers. I just bought an Epson C80 and I'm sure that the ink cartridges that came with it are of the 'economy' class.
What bothers me more than that is that Epson puts microchips into their cartridges so that "the user can get more information about the state of the cartridges." I'm sure that the side-effect of not allowing me to refill the cartridges was an oversight. Yeah, right.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
For selling razors with blades that have to be replaced.
I just realized that Humpty Dumpty has been only half filling thir bags full of chips!
.5 oz less over the grand volume, save the company millions and make customers buy your brand faster, it's probably a solid business practice to recommend.
Who do I contact to sue? All the additional weight I could have gained, gone. I fee half ripped off.
Now for the serious note:
Just like anything else, businesses must stay profitable. If it means offering
From a Sales Guy point of view, we often sell customer's services we know they pay WAY too much for and will never use, usually because of one small thing the customer needs over and over.
-Yo Grark
"and uncompleted sig is like
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
If HP included a full inkjet cart, I'd just throw my old DeskJet away and buy a new one when I ran out of ink!
We do pay that here. If the price of Gas goes any higher the gas stations are going to start giving away cars with a fill-up.
Their ink jet printers seldom last for an entire ink cartrage and so there is no point including a full one.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
I've had this one, twice, a few years ago. I've also had, 3 times, invoices from the UK (I'm in a California large company), for "expenses" for a "consultant", (travel and minor fees, total around $2000) that were bogus. I think the invoices are sent en masse to large companies, with the expectation they will be paid without questioning.
Do you really think that a mechanism and control electronics that can repeatably position an ink dot to within 0.0004 of an inch only costs $60?
S300 Inkjet - $100 - Black Refills -$10 - Color Refills - $15. Only drawback is USB only. Works well under Liunx installed as a Canon S800. No complaints.
Only according to floppy makers.
Try Google for more info.
The standard should be increased to 25A or 30A in all rooms.
Switch to compact flourescent bulbs and you'll trip your breaker less often. My two 15A circuits were supporting 18 100W incandescant bulbs, which together drew around 12A. Since I replaced all the 100W bulbs with 25W flourescents, I haven't tripped the breakers once.
A huge difference with what HP is doing is that the auto manufacturer is not also the sole warranty-accepted source of gasoline for your new car.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The cartrige is twice as large as it needs to be.
That's what twigged me to the discrepancy.
It's not just printer manufacturers who lie^H^H^Hmislead people about capacities, etc.
Marketroids figure that consumers won't complain, because the consumer will figure it's his/her own fault for being technically inept.
Same with 17" monitors, 27" TVs, etc.
Good advice on how to get into that free country club called jail!
Nope. Wouldn't work. If you want to get into a country club prison, you have to steal at least a few million. This is petty and will get you thrown in a really crappy prison reserved for people with less ambition in life.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Where would I get one of these? I assume that HP will only sell chipped cartridges now, so I guess I'll have to get one elsewhere.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's called UPSELL. Look into it.
The little things cost less than $100 anyway. How much do you think it costs to setup a fab line for a new model every few months, shipping, marketing, support, etc?
I can guarantee you it costs more than $100 per printer.
So the companies try to make up for it by upselling with expensive ink refills.
There ain't nothin wrong with that, either.
And this lawsuit I hope is dismissed as frivolous. She may have a valid complaint in some of your opinions but the story smacks to me of simple greed and trying to extort a good amount of money from the Big Bad Rich Evil Corporation.
mje0w!!!1!
Great for businesses with high print volumes.
I personally replaced my defunct HP 550C inkjet with a Panasonic KX-P7110 laser. It's network enabled, duplex and will do 4,000 pages for the cost of 150 pages on an inkjet.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Whilst in this case, yes, they used the term 'cup', it was not intentionally deceptive, rather it was actually being used in the same way in which almost all other coffee maker maufacturers use. I have a plunger here which claims "3 cups", of course, it only just fills up my mug. This method of capacity definition is a 'defacto'. Of course, I realise that just because everyone does it doesn't make it 'right'.
It should be noted that 'cup' is not a 'standard' measure of anything, it is not an ISO unit. Rather, almost everyone presumes it's 8oz... does that make it 'right' ?
Filing a law suit against the said company could probably have been avoided if you simply wrote a letter to them, or other more amicable approaches.
Simply advising them that they should perhaps have a fluid-capacity rating on their products would have done the trick most likely.
Every day we hear more and more reports of people being sued or taken to court over matters which could have been resolved quite simply through basic communication skills. Instead, the trend is now to hide behind a 20ft brick wall and send the lawers in. Is it any wonder that entities like the RIAA, BSA and other such which we are all fearing because "They are taking away our 'freedom' rights" are growing so fast...it's because it all starts with things like this.
( Note - in the case of the HP ink issue, yes, HP is misleading the public because there's nothing 'economic' for the
It has "jumbo" MPG.
# make clean sig
It's 1024 KB, and a KB is 1024 bytes, making it 1024x1024 or 1,048,576 bytes
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
All the HP carts I've bought were clearly labeled with the volume of ink contained. I think for my particular model it was 1.9ml for econ and 3 for the normal one. I can't remember for sure. But they're clearly labeled.
scott
... n' havahd yahd.
Can someone say, "Boston accent?"
pcable
Clearly the man who wrote this has never flown economy class, or spent the night at an Econo-Lodge.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
thanks for the data point there ...
:)) as supported.
:)
btw, the Mandrake supported-hardware page lists the Magicolor 2+ (but not the Magicolor 2 -- and I don't know where your "cx?" fits in
My dad's experience so far seems to be along the lines of yours, but not *quite* as bad, and he says the tech he reached was friendly. I can bet you three wooden nickels my dad doesn't give three wooden nickels about color balance; for his print-quantities, shouldn't be a problem.
I would really *like* this to be a good printer, though, because a sub-kilobuck color laser would be a nice addition to my household
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I buy Office Depot premium glossy paper, which I like very much. At full retail, it's $45 per 100 sheets, but it's often on sale for $25. With refilled carts, I can print a full 8.5 x 11 for about 35 cents. I can fit THREE 4 x 6's on there.
Sure, if I bought HP paper at 80 cents a sheet, and used OEM carts, it'd cost me well over $1 per sheet.
I do still go to Wal-Mart or the local photo lab for archival prints though. The inkjet is just for proofs, or if I need a print right away, or for stuff to thumbtack to my wall at work.
Wal-Mart and most small printers with digital-equipped printers have now surpassed the online places for price. Also convenience; I dump the photos I want onto an old 32MB CF card, drop it off on the way to work, and pick up my prints at lunch. I'm paying 30 cents, less for large quantities. Wal-Mart is 26 cents but you never know what idiot is going to be running the printer.
It would be a hungry world if we had to eat everything raw off the ground.
Ah, but raw out of the sea... That's another story!
I have been pwned because my
Yeah I got a cappucino machine that is supposed to make 2 cups worth. The little beaker thing is just big enough to fill one coffee mug.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Epson uses chips to prevent you from refilling in order to protect you from "damaging" equipment{their profits}. It is in Epson's and our government's interest to keep consumer printing cost high, as to prevent every Joe from competing with the crap that is printed now by big publishing houses.
Congress should pass a law requiring that a each individual cartridge prints a minimum of 1000 pages, and mandate that cartridges not be priced above 10$/cartridge. I'd rather pay 500$ on a printer, than 150$ and getting it up my arz every other week for 30+ dollars!
What isn't credible is that HP picked up the cartridges from you and told you to keep a few for your troubles. No way in hell would HP recommend that you use a rebuilt toner cartridge in a laser printer!
And nobody intelligent wastes time reporting stuff to the BBB. They're owned by the businesses they "investigate."
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
Buy something that has independent replaceable cartridges. My S630 from canon cost a bit more at initial purchase, but it beats having to buy 60-70 dollar cartridges when the BLACK runs out.
Exactly. There are numerous times when I have had similar things happen. Pissed me off. Owell
db
Cig:
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They don't use slave labor directly, they play the underpaid migrant contract worker angle here in the US. The fact is that the folks who assemble and box these units could'nt afford to buy one of HP's PCs. They receive shit wages.
I know because I was drowned in the HP way, (and paid exhorbitant wages due to a plethora of wankers in IT), and saw exactly how these poor sods were treated, isolated, and worked like peon slaves. Yes, there are people whose skills rate peon slave pay, and they're necessary to keep the retail price down. But when only %8 of the workforce appears to do more than plan meetings about agendas for new, more exciting meetings and lunch platter garnishes, you have to wonder what kind of a mandate management is/was laboring under.
Note: The above opinion is rendered by a die hard, anti-tree hugging hippie conservative who never has or will buy another HP product, and was never happier than the day he resigned.
Well a new store opened in town with Inkjet printers on sale at $69 AUD each. Cartridge for same? $65 AUD each...
So I bought a near new 600 dpi postscript network laser printer for $250 AUD.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Lew Platt, Hewlett-Packard's former CEO, was not a management wonder, but Ms. Fiorina is worse. She just cannot handle the job. She does not have sufficient technical background, for example. At present, one of the most common reasons for corporate failure is thinking that a good salesperson with little technical understanding can manage a high-tech company.
Ms. Fiorina's bad judgement at her previous job didn't become apparent until after she was already working for HP. When you work at that level, however, failure is successful. This [undated] Time Magazine story says she is worth $2.2 Billion dollars: Carly Fiorina, Makeover Artist. $2.2 Billion!
Ms. Fiorina was previously at Lucent. A January 12, 2002, Detroit News article, New chief for Lucent [Patricia Russo] is exception to numerous departures, tells of Lucent's problems. A lot of Lucent stories are filled with positive spin, but obviously something is very wrong. Apparently Ms. Fiorina led Lucent to overspend seriously on investment in communications. Again apparently, the new debt has crippled the company, making it a difficult place to work.
The September, 2001, BBC News article, Profile: HP's Carly Fiorina, mentions an interesting fact: "... she has consolidated her power, now holding down the jobs of chief executive, president and chairwoman - the only woman to control all three top jobs at a major tech firm." Maybe someone who merely wants to have all three top jobs should be considered incompetent.
The BBC News article also says, "A Business Week cover story in February [2001] concluded that she was 'gambling with Silicon Valley's proudest legacy' - and that was before she unveiled an 89% profits slump..."
which HP division made money not which made the most. If HP stopped selling ink cartridges i'd go bust overnight.
Cure cancer.. and stuff! www.team45.info
It seems to me then, that economy means to be more efficient at the main function. Economy cars and flights cover the same distance for less, econo-lodges cover the same amount of people for less. So therefore, an economy ink cartridge covers the same amount of paper for less.
HP is supposed to make the product more economic by removing unneeded packaging, or even using cheaper ink, but not needed contents. When you remove the whole purpose of going economy, that is wrong. Economy doesn't mean "less of the product", it means "less of not the product".
# make clean sig
Yes, that is true, but now that everyone has gotten it right, including the refillers, the price should be far less. The cost of the solvent is very small. The price charged for the remaining ingredients is outrageous; the remaining ingredients are not as rare as some chemicals in the human body, as is shown by the fact that the refillers sometimes have better ink than the originals.
the only decent InkJet I own is an old one, a HP DeskJet 500c, no USB crap, no Winprinter crap, just a real postscript printer that does fast black and white, and crappy color, didnt hurt that I got it for free.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
High Price.
A half-empty cartridge, like a half-keg of beer or a split of champagne, is less expensive to buy, although not to use. (I know people, BTW, who swear that econoboxes cost more to operate -- cheaply built, they say, and requiring more maintenance than a full-size, full-price car, with its heavier and more durable parts.)
I haven't looked in quite a while, but printers used to say that they had "starter" carts, which certainly made the point that they were different from regular ones. Is that still the case?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I was one to buy inkjet printer every 6 months to a year (due to ware on on it). I use to refill tanks in all of them. I had IBM/Lexmark, Canon and HP. Lexmark is the worset for refill (normally 2-3 times max) as the head wares out FAST. I have since dumped all inkjets due to the price of replacement cartigages - I thought about Color Laser - but the replacable toner are expensive. I went with Xerox Phaser 860 solid ink printer with NO CARTAGES to replace and only one consumable (a replacement oil roller/counter kit) and FREE BLACK INK for life! Is the cheapest per page than HP or Canon could offer (other than dot matrix printers). However new version of the printer do not have free black - it is still cheaper per page than most other black and white laser printers. The printer is not cheap but for volumes like I do (1000+ color copies plus many full color every month not to mention replacing my old laser or vers photocopy at Staples/Office Depot ect..) I am still ahead. Starting at about $1200 is is not cheap but if you buy a $299 printer every year or two plus all the consumables at $30-50 every month or every few weeks you could spend over $2000 in just 2 or 3 years! I know I have spent way over that in the last 3 years (and 4 or 5 printers later...) Average price per page for inkjet replacement ink was 15-20 cents vers 1-9 cents for my new system. Inkjet are for low volume and is suited for home use or low use business. If you need larger volume - get a low end LASER - it is still cheaper in the long run. Then you could run your "good" color stuff when needed. Most people run color when they don't NEED to. It is a point of well I can, so I will. Not thinking SHOULD you waist the ink. Note: using color uses up to 2-3 and even up to 4 times the amount of ink than if you print just black - thus costing you more in ink!
You know, I was thinking of sushi when I wrote that, but really, even that is hardly pulling out a fish and biting off the head. There's a lot of work that can really only be called "cooking", except that it doesn't involve heat, in that raw fish. After all, the guy behind the counter is a "sushi chef", not a "fishmonger".
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I have one installed on my Epson 1160. It works like a charm; even with the pigment quadtone I'm using. I don't know of one for HPs.
Consumables is where the printer companies make their money. They may even lose money on some models. It's like razors and razor blades.
HP inks
Epson CFS
I have seen this also - but on on PALLET quanity. A company called - idtenfied them selfes as "Corporate Supply" or some other very vage name. Get info on what you have. They say there recycle toner has 10-50% more than the OEM has -blaa - blaa - and it is much cheaper than others recycled carts....Blaa-blaa. Even offer a FREE toner to try - no charge for me to try. I said to send! I take anything for free (for the company use if they can - anything else goes to some charity golf thing they host). Then sent it okay - but by the time I got to use it - they sent an invoice for 10% less than the OEM cart which was 4 times what I now pay for a recycled cart! I sent it back. Since then they have called and tired to get me to let then send carts (mostly tring to "confirm" non-existant purchase orders or "buy now before cause the price is going up" or "this is the company you get your toner from did you need any more"....). Every time I tell them to "take us off there calling list" - "do not call us" ect... BBB was no help at all. I was told there is very little legally we can do to stop them from calling. Last time when they called - and before the girl "started" in on the junk - I demanded to speak to the manager - every time she said anything to me I interupted her and repeated my message. I had to wait (she did not know what to do) - but it was there dime - but finnaly a guy came on - after I got his full name (most likely was not real anyway as he didn't want to give me his last name) - told him that if you don't remove us from his list and stop calling us - I will be filing a harrasment claim on the company, the president and him (the one and only thing we could have really done)! Have not herd from them since. Mind you it has only been 6 months.... Who knows - they might still call.
Just bought refill kit for $30 Canadian. It contains 2 ~100ml bottles of black ink. From my experience with my previous refill kit, and my usage patterns, this should last me at least a year and a half, so long as I remember to tape fill hole to prevent drying out.
"I respect faith but doubt is what gets you an education." --who knows