Are Printers What They Used To Be?

Fifster asks: "Has anyone noticed any trends in terms of printer quality nowadays? Perhaps it's just me being nostalgic, but I used to have an old HP Deskjet 500 maybe...ten years ago, and it worked for years. Sure, it wasn't colour, and it was noisy and somewhat slow, but it never died. After I decided to retire it and buy a fancy new colour printer with features I don't really need, I've gone through about a printer a year. I finally decided to get a Brother HL-1440 laser printer to avoid the cost of cartridges after my last HP died after I replaced an expensive cartridge. Has anyone else noticed this trend of poorer and poorer quality printers, at least in terms of life expectancy?"

Comments

Deskjet?

[telstar]

You're citing the Deskjet as a quality printer? I had the Deskjet 500, the Deskjet 500c and some other variant of the Deskjet and they all sucked. (Don't ask me why I kept buying them). They cost in the neighborhood of $500, were loud ... slow ... and EVERY single one of them deteriorated to the point where they were useless.

The happiest day in the life of those printers was when I sent 2 of them down the garbage chute and listened for the crash at the bottom. Deskjet, a quality device? I think not.

Perishable parts

[Zaffle]

The printer manufactures need to sell many printers, at low cost, to many users. Now, in order to do that, they need to reduce manufactoring costs (thus lower quality) and reduce profit margins.

Some bright spark[1] decided that once a person buys a printer, they are commited to it, so will have to buy the print cartridges for it. So if we make the cartridges expensive, we can still maintain our profit margins, and have continous profits rather than once off for each customer.

Now enter the business side of things. Our business customers don't want to keep buying the latest bubblejet/inkjet/crapjet every 3 months, so they produce a seperate business line of machines. Mostly these are laser based, however, there are some top-of-the-line inkjet systems that are mostly used in the printing industry (eg signs/cars/etc).

So you either buy a business quality printer, preferably laser based, and you pay good money for it. Or you do what some of my customers do:

They buy a new printer when the old print cartridge runs out. However, they are being thwarted by the print manufactores who are now selling print cartridges half full on new printers, so they buy a new cartridge with the printer (usually at a discount, since they can wrangle one with the printer), and run it till it runs dry, and pick up the next latest and greatest model.

Ok, so thats a bit extreme, but I do have one customer doing that.

Basically, printers are becoming a consumable product.

[1] Reminds me of the quote: May a bright spark grow into a flaming idiot.

Re:Printers, feh!

[d3moneyes]

misbehaves regularly and print quality is looking less impressive every time I run off copy. It's 3 years old and I've undoubtably spent as much for ink cartridges as I did to buy it originally. Yes, they do print very nice and pretty when they're new. Best not to expect that for long though, like a chinese made egg beater in my kitchen drawer the plastic cogs loosen up until it starts making strange noises and jamming


Unfortunately, the printer itself is not capable of "losing quality." The particular printer you have is basically a simple processor that moves a carriage back and forth and tells the cartridges (which are actually pens) when to shoot ink. The cost of "cartridges" (read: pens with ink resevoirs) is a little ridiculous...however, you are paying for the actual PEN itself (the unit which is responsible for laying down the ink). Next time you are in the printer aisle, look at the cost of the pens BY THEMSELVES (for the printers which need them--OfficeJet D Series, for example)...

The point of this: each time you replace your ink, you are actually getting a brand new pen as well, so the quality is exactly the same as when you bought the unit (unless they are misaligned, or need to be cleaned). This changes with newer printers which use lasers to self-align.....

more info than you probably wanted

[trmj]

Sadly, I work in a retail environment, so I have a little insight into this area.

Printers, nowadays, are made to last about 2 months longer than the manufacturer's warranty period. Why? Because it gives meaning to the retail store's warranty. If you buy a machine with no extended warranty, and it breaks 2 months after the manufacturer's warranty is over, what do you do? You can't return it, it's been more than 30 days since purchase. You can't call the manufacturer, because their warranty is over, and they owe you nothing. Next time you buy a machine, though, you will (most likely) get that extended warranty for an additional $30.

But aside from that, here is a list of home use printer manufacturers to stay away from:
1) Lexmark

In terms of machine life span, expect no more than one year from Lexmark. And even then, they are riddled with problems such as drawing the paper in crooked. Also, companies such as Dell and Compaq bulk purchase Lexmark printers and rebrand them, so stay away from them as well.

Epson is much better than Lexmark, however their newer printers are very picky about what paper and ink you use. In fact, if you use the name brand epson ink but not epson paper, chances are that the ink will run or absorb wrong and your print will look all sorts of bad. When you use all of their propriety stuff, it looks great, but you pay more for that great look. Much more.

HP makes high quality printers. The prints look great, they are fast, and they have all sorts of features like digital camera card readers and little color LCD screens that let you see what picture you are about to print out. With these toys comes a much higher price tag. Also, their ink system for their home line of printers sucks. The machines put much more ink on the paper than is needed and the cartridges cost quite a bit to replace. HP overall is a good brand to go with, but not for long-term usage. If you buy an HP, buy the warranty. Trust me, you will use it.

Canon is by far the best manufacturer in terms of home use machines right now. Their S series has machines that fit almost everybodys' needs, including the s750 which is great for small offices that need speed but not photo quality, and the s820 that prints beautiful photos but isn't the fastest. Canon is also the only company that is making inexpensive cartridges for their machines and using them as a standard for the entire model line. They are even cheaper if you get the generic brand, and have a much lower failure rate due to their simplicity.

Brother's laser machines are great and last a long time (if they work right out of the box, but that's another issue), but never, ever get one of their inkjet machines. Low print quality, leaky cartridges, over-charging for replacement ink, etc. Laser machines are great, inkjets suck.

Lastly, Sharp makes a copier that can be used as a laser printer. It's main use is a copier, but can be hooked up through the USB port to act as a color scanner and laser printer. It gets good quality and is pretty quick, but toner is a bit costly in these machines to use as a daily printer, so I wouldn't recommend it.

I believe that covers them all, so let's hear the flaming from Lexmark fanboys. If there are any real questions or requests for elaborations, I will reply to those.

Re:what do you expect

[shadowbearer]

Then there's this: I've repaired printers for more than a decade as one of the side jobs I do. I don't do electronics, but the mechanical side is fairly simple to do.

I charge $15/hour with a cap of $75 on repairs. For most office quality printers that's not a big deal. However for most consumer/home printers with severe problems (dust accumulation, pet hair, and cigarette smoke being among the worst ones) it rapidly climbs to the cost of a new printer.

What most people don't realize, however, is that good quality older printers, especially HPs, Xerox, and Canons, are often worth keeping around and repairing if they do the job you want to do. Most newer printers, especially those under $150 or so, are simply built to last maybe a year or so. Lexmark particularly comes to mind.

So often, for most home users, it's cheaper simply to replace it (hey, what's new? ;-) and as noted in the parent post and elsewhere, it's often cheaper to replace a low-end printer than it is to buy new cartridges. I have to confess I don't understand the economics on this - I find it hard to believe it's cheaper for the manufacturers in the long run - but that's where the markets's going. Sad.

I have two printers - a HP870cSE and a Xerox laserjet. Both, I suspect, will continue to give me great service for years to come. Too bad the HP cartridges cost me more than the printer is worth. The Xerox toner cartridge has a lot of life on it yet, tho.

Just my shave and a haircut worth.

SB