Slashdot Mirror
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?"
when you can buy a printer that's cheaper than the ink cartridge costs.
I bought a Lexmark for $40 at Walmart, and it's a peice of crap. To make it worse the drivers for Linux don't work with CUPS(thus not Mandrake 9.1)
The real question would be, what's a decent quality printer these days?
Stashed in my closet is an Alps ALQ-224e, one mighty printer. You don't find them made like that anymore. It's got to weigh 30 lbs, but it could whip off draft copy fast, and best of all on fan-fold paper. Ever try to debug with your code scattered across several sheets of laser printer paper? Ugh! I'll probably keep this beast as long as it runs. I've still got two ribbons for it and they're still for sale (apparently these things were more popular outside the US, as in Europe) and ribbons are still for sale for it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I've been going through about one a year as well. I don't buy cartridges anymore, just printers.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
It COULD be that the cost of the printers you're buying has something to do with their useful life.
I had a conversation about toasters a little while ago that went the same way. Ya know - your parents toaster that they got when they were married still works, but you go through one every year or two?
Try spending 5x the money on a good toaster and see how long it lasts you.
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.
I can buy a somewhat useable printer at the grocery store for $30. At that price I could see using it once or twice in a pinch and tossing it.
Still going strong, bought it new in mid '87...Sure, it's only 300 dpi and is slower than today's printers, but it's built like a brick outhouse.
I've never owned a printer and I never plan on owning one. On the very rare occasions when I HAVE to print something (Usually once a year at tax time) I take the file to work and print it there.
I've never understood the need to print stuff out. It's hard to grep a dead tree.
If you'd cut down on all those extra u's you're putting in color and favorite, maybe your printer will last longer.
Smeghead every day of the week.
This trend is most evident in the market shift away from workgroup laser printers to high speed ink based printers that last far longer then laser units and don't have multiple parts that wear down (such as fusers and transfer drums). Ink printers have a purge unit, a print head, and an interpreter board. It is cheaper to avoid the costs of onsite service contracts and instead just ship out refurbished units. Both the consumaer and the manufacturer (and even the distributors) win. This is blatant when it comes to the "home office". Ever cheaper bubblejets are available while the cost of ink remains the same. It is more practical to buy a new set of $45 ink tanks then it is to replace the printer - ink that costs Canon, HP or Epson $5 to manufacture.
Everything is a cheap piece of crap compared to Back In The Day. Of course, everything costs about 10% of what it used to, maybe about 5% if you consider inflation.
Hard drives, scanners, printers, keyboards, all crap. Strangely enough, now that I think of it, there seems to be an exception: monitors. Back in the days when you could use a HP scanner to pound a LaserJet under a house (without damaging either one) to support a sagging foundation, monitors were really expensive, and it seemed like I had to replace them often. It's been a long time since I had to replace a monitor for any reason other than "I want to."
</nostalgia>
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.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
The best printer ever, hands down. Fast (10-12 pgs/min), reliable, and compatible - with everything. I never had a problem with them. Perfect for the office environment but perhaps a bit too bulky at home.
Unfortunately they are no longer being made but many can be found on eBay. Yay HP!
- Ben
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Of course printers are getting worse in quality! Why do you think StrongBad still uses a Dot Matrix?
HP makes great laser printers.
THe problem is not the manufactors but the technology. They all blow. I do not know of 1 inkjet that is reliable. Not one!
Epson is bad, cannon is worse, hp is ok, and lexmark makes medicore ones.
Since I upgarded to laser for the same price as a high end inkjet my problems went away. No streaking, paper jams, unexplained errors. Ok in a year I did have a single paper jam when I feed it dusty paper.
In an inkjet, dusty paper would cause the ink to streak and the printer heads to clog. With a laser printer it just james on ocasion. The text is always clear and it always works.
Inkjet vs laser is like modem vs cable modem/dsl. Its not the speed but the reliability of it always on and working.
http://saveie6.com/
I am only in college so I haven't seen that many printers come and go. Although, the first computer my family bought (in 1995) came with an HP Deskjet 400 that still runs pretty well today. Many of my classmates have Canon Bubblejets that have operated consistently and cheaply (8-10 dollars per cartridge) for three years. In the office where I work the five year old bubblejet is the most dependable of all the printers, even next to the laser printer.
I am sure these kinds of things vary and the bubblejet isn't the first choice if you need super quality or high volume, but it works well for the occasional color spreadsheet with charts.
That is just my experience, and since I am no expert on printers (that takes a special breed), that is all I have.
Way-back I used to use dot-matrix printers. They were great because they just kept chugging along, spewing out reems of ugly dotty print and making lots of noise.
When the ribbons started running out you could even give them a squirt of WD40 to help the ink on the outer margins wick its way back into the printing area -- and they'd print like (near) new again for a few more weeks.
The cost of a new ribbon (which lasted several boxes of paper -- about 5,000 pages of program listings) was around 5% of the printer price so they were very cheap to run.
Then came the laser printers.
Much higher quality, much faster but a little harder on the pocket.
These days however, inkjets rule. Every computer store you go into has row upon row of these evil devices -- each with their little laminated samples of photo-quality printing attached.
When they're new, these printers do a great job. They're quiet, the quality is superb and they're pretty fast -- considering the previous two statements.
However -- thanks to big high resolution screens and better development tools I find that I seldom need to print program a listing and virtually all of my correspondence is done by email -- without a drop of ink being used.
This means that I might not fire up my inkjet printer for weeks or even months at a time.
But when I do -- the bloody thing is almost always suffering from clogged nozzles -- requiring (at best) a cleaning cycle (which wastes $$$ worth of ink) or, in the case of an Epson, the total junking of the printer.
So what's the answer for low-volume, very intermittent printer user?
The cost of a laser is hard to amortize over a hundred or so pages a year, inkjets hardly last a single cartridge of ink before clogging up, and dot-matrix printers are not only rare as hen's teeth but they're still noisy, slow and produce ugly print.
Anyone got any ideas.
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.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Perhaps it's just me being nostalgic, but I used to have an old HP Deskjet 500 maybe...
Nah, you're mistaken. A Deskjet isn't old enough for nostalgia.
Not even a dot matrix is.
No, it's not nostalgia until you've reached daisy wheel.
The coolest voice ever.
I see the occasional busted deskjet cross my path, and while they're not typically worth repairing, I have found one easy fix that's saved a handful of printers from the trashbin.
Sometimes a deskjet will just start freaking out while printing -- skipping lines, not printing to the edge of the page, weird stuff like that.
There is a clear plastic ribbon that runs horizontally from one side of the machine to the other. It is usually just above and behind the metal bar that the cartridge assembly is carried on. Look closely, and you'll notice that there are finely pitched vertical lines printed on this ribbon. As the printheads move across the paper, a sensor counts the number of lines and as a result the printer can determine where on the paper the printhead is.
Very often, this ribbon will be soiled by inks, dust, etc... Take a soft lint-free cloth, wet it lightly with isopropyl alcohol, pinch the ribbon between cloth-lined fingers, and wipe across the entire length of the ribbon. You might be surprised at the amount of crap that you pick up.
Anyway, someone out there might find this useful...
That's exactly why printers, and many other electronic devices, increasingly, suck. When you went to Walmart, did you do a thorough comparison of the quality of these devices? Did you get test pages, check the durability of the construction, and ask the opinions of other people who owned them? Of course not, if you had that $40 printer would still be on the shelf at WalMart.
The problem is that today, most people are comparing devices based on price and nothing else. So, if a manufacturer can undercut its competitors prices by reducing the quality a few notches they'll do it every time. Until consumers, in general, prioritize things like quality and customer service over price, you can expect devices to continue to suck.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
...the Apple LaserWriter II series.
I can't find an exact release date on them after a few minutes of Googling, but they are all well over 10 years old and plenty of my clients still have a few of them around. They aren't the fastest printers, but they are built like tanks and the toner carts are fairly generic and still rather widely available.
I wanted something a little better, so in 1994 I bought a ~$1400 LaserWriter Select 360, IMHO one of the best printers Apple ever made. 600DPI, 10PPM, 16MB maximum RAM, and even an internal fax card option. My Select 360 will be 10 in February, and it shows no sign of its age.
The newer printers I work on just feel cheap and insubstantial to me, especially the inkjets. And if this DMCA crap they're pulling to keep third parties from making toner/ink carts continues, I will keep my older printer for as long as I possibly can, with the help of fixyourownprinter.com, if necessary.
~Philly
While what you are saying about decreasing prices being offset by the cost of consumables. If your $40 printer dies quickly then you aren't going to spend enough on consumables to offset the printer company's costs in the original printer. Seems like it would be in their interest to make cheap printers, but yet ones that would last forever so that people would keep buying more ink for them.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
For me, it's been a bitter-sweet progression over the years.
The first "real" printer I ever bought was an Epson FX-286 wide carriage dot matrix printer, 17 or 18 years ago. The print quality is typical crappy dot matrix, but the printer still works (although I haven't re-inked the ribbon now for several years), and it never missed a dot.
The next printer was an Epson EPL-7000 laser printer, purchased probably around 14 years ago when I needed better graphics capabilities and letter quality printing. The print quality of course was much better (300 dpi), and this printer also still works well and has never had any problems, although it tends to curl paper even more than most laser printers. The toner cartriges are very espensive in comparison to other small lasers, but they also last very long.
Then things started changing. I began buying inkjet printers for their color capability. I first bought an HP Deskjet 855C. This printer worked for about four or five years until it stopped printing properly in color. I still use it as a backup monochrome printer.
Still wanting color, I replaced the HP with an Epson Stylus Color 1520 wide format inkjet printer. By this time the print quality was quite good - 720x1440 and it did a pretty decent job printing photos even though it's only a four color printer. This printer still works; however, I have had constant paper feed problems with it, and the head nozzels clog occasionally if it goes more than three or four weeks without being used. Presumably this is due to the fine geometry print heads.
Wanting better photo quality, I recently purchased an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 about a year ago. This printer still works of course and seems to have fewer paper feed problmes than the 1520, but the head clogging problem is worse. At least a few nozzels clog almost every time that the printer goes unused for more than two weeks. The photographic output quality, however, is exceptional (although perhaps not quite as good as can be had today).
Clearly, the higher volumes and lower prices have brought about a reduction in quality and longevity of printers, but what do you expect - you get what you pay for. The flip side is that the quality of the output, particularly for photographs, is better than it has ever been, and you are paying much less for most newer printers, so they don't owe you much when they die after only a few years.
> Printer manufacturers realized -maybe 10 years ago- the same thing that game manufacturers realized more recently; that far greater proffits await those who seek out continuous revenue streams.
That may be true, but it still doesn't explain the drop in quality of printers. I can't buy your cartridges if my printer doesn't work, and if I have a bad experience I am likely to take my cartridge business to various competitors until I find one that sucks the least.
> As I recall, some would-be cartridge vendors have sued printer manufactuters claimin that this practice is anti-competitive.
It's Lexmark, who manufactures Dell's rebranded printers as well.
I bought my Panasonic Laser Partner KX-P4450 back around 1990. Its been working great. Prints on plain old copy paper ( cheap : 99cents/ream(500 sheets) at Fry's when they put it on sale ). Toner - cheap at around $20/bottle, which is good for several reams of paper. The rest of the stuff in the printer slowly degrades, but over the last 10 years, I have only had to replace the drum, which came in at about $150.
$150!! I spent $150 for a Drum??? Yes! I know, I spent more for that drum than I could have spent for a whole new printer! I know that. But I really do like this old laser machine. Hardly ever jams. Makes nice prints. Its only drawback is that it does draw a lot of power ( keeping the fuser hot ), so I only power it up when there's printing to be done.
I spent right at $2,000 to get the printer in the first place. But then, I wanted a printer done right... not some cheap pile of stuff I can't depend on when I need it. Otherwise, I would be in the same boat a lot of people here are posting over. I bought that printer the same time I bought my brand spanking new AST-Premium 286. The printer is still with me. The AST is long since gone. ( It had proprietary innards and I could not economically maintain it, although I still have several 286 still in service.... that's how I learned my lesson in proprietary stuff... the lesson cost me about $1000, which is the price difference between the AST and what a generic machine would run me. The generics are still in service. )
Business will provide what sells. If you focus on price and are willing to accept junk, that's what you will get.
Price for me is a consideration, but I consider much more than out-the-door price when evaluating a purchase. I have been known to pay an order of magnitude, sometimes even more, if I know what I am getting is good stuff. Don't get me wrong - I will pay very little for "bragging rights"... when I pay more, there's a reason... usually things like having it extremely maintainable, using generic parts, or maybe extremely energy efficient. A car designed for easy maintainance to me is worth far more than a car designed to visually impress someone. Show me a car where I can't work on the engine, and I will show you a car that I may look at, but leave it in the showroom. Want to turn me off fast? Tell me it has all these extended engine codes, but don't share them with me. You might as well be trying to coax me to live in a gilded cage. I don't care if it is gold, it is a cage!
Business does have a tendency to provide what the customer will pay for. It's up to us to guide business on what to provide. Putting our little dollar-sign blinders on doesn't help much. There is so much more to something than the out-the-door price.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
The best inkjet I had was the Canon BJC-4200. It had seperate ink tanks, so you could replace the blank tank for ~$7.00 and not have to replace the print head every time (though you could if you wanted to). It also had seperate black and color tanks, so if you didn't print color that often, and the color tank dried up, you weren't completely SOL - you could just buy a new color tank.
Linux support was great - it accepted plain ASCII input (ie: you could cat a text file to lp0), and once RedHat 4.2 came out, there were built-in ghostscript drivers to print PS. I never had a problem with it in 5 years - I only got rid of it when it physically broke (mainly because it got stepped on). The closest replacement I ever found was a BJC-2100, but it still didn't beat my 4200 for reliability. Recently, Canon's history of working with the free software community has sucked, but regardless the 4200 was the best printer ever.
However, I too gave up on inkjets and bought a LaserJet 1200, and I haven't looked back. I still have my BJC-2100 for when I need to print in color, which is rare. But HP's office/home-office printers have always been great and reliable, and if you can afford them, and don't care about color, there's no better laser printer. Just so long as you don't get the shitty "home" printers, like the 1000, which are basically big honking paperweights. But any of their entry-level printers that speaks postscript is a good deal.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
EVERYthing I've seen in the last decade or so in the electronics field, with the rare exception of some very high-end (and expensive, if bought new) test equipment, has been suffering from a progressive degradation in quality of design and physical build. Here's just a few examples:
1A2 Key Telephone Systems: Rugged as all get-out. Granted, they need one 25-pair cable per phone, but they just Kept On Going, and they had a nice balance of features perfect for small and medium-size businesses. My own has lasted over 25 years, and in all that time I've replaced maybe a couple of fuses and one bridge diode.
Their fate: All 1A2 equipment recalled by AT&T was destroyed by crusher and recycled. I guess it was TOO reliable to the point where it competed effectively with newer and cheaper crap. They're still made by ITT/Comdial, but their heyday passed with the death of the 'ever-better engineering' philosophy propagated by the original Bell System.
Tektronix: Used to be THE name in oscilloscopes, RF spectrum analyzers, and other gear. In the year 1998, they stopped including schematics and servicing info in their instrument manuals (and they used to have some of the best documentation in the business!) In 2000, they completely discontinued their entire analog 'scope line. Now, in 2K3, they're selling cheap crap that's made overseas and final-assembled in the U.S., and they couldn't care less about supporting older (and still very useful!) gear if it's over five years old.
Hewlett-Packard: Don't go there with me. They spun their entire test equipment division off into something called "Agilent." They used to have a most (older) IBM-ish attitude towards their gear, in that you could get manuals and parts for test gear up to at least ten years beyond its last production date. Not any more! Not with Crazy Foolerina at the top of the ladder. Now, what was once one of Silicon Valley's proudest achievements lies in ruins, fragmented into a company that doesn't seem to know what it wants to make, or what companies it wants to merge with next.
I could go on, but it's too depressing. Suffice to say that true "innovation," in my eyes, means taking the best lessons and techniques from older (and PROVEN!) technology, combining it with the best ideas from the new stuff, and watching what happens. It also, to my eyes, means finding better ways to build stuff that will LAST!
Does anyone have any real idea of how much of the planet's raw materials and resources have been wasted on "throwaway" technology that'll be polluting landfills for generations to come? No? I didn't think so. I doubt anyone really does know for sure (or care, to judge by today's corporate "ethics" -- or lack thereof).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I think about printers differently than most Slashdot'ers do, apparently. In my spare time, I do a lot of digital and film photography, and use Photoshop to manipulate the images, and create them from scratch.
What I care about is the print, be it a proof or final image.
I shopped around for a very good quality inkjet that is reasonably economical to operate--however the value curve leans definitly towards quality.
I ended up buying an HP PSC 750 for about $175. It uses a multicolor (about $30) and a black cart (about $15).
Now, when I run prints, I have a good idea of what the per image cost is, and just keep it in mind. I don't worry that an extra proof will run the cost of an extra print--in the end its my work, and I just want it to look just so.
Many seem to worry about keeping the per print cost to an absolute minimum, but that just seems bass-ackward to me. I guess if you're doing thousands of prints that makes sense, but most home or even home-office users don't fall into that catagory.
When I'm reading a how-to, or some other form of documentation, I generally download it to my laptop and read it there, if I need to be able to take it with me. I don't waste a ream of paper.
Anyways, I know I'm not necessarily like most people. Just thought some would like to hear a different take on the subject.
-buf
PS. Some will undoubtably jump to the question of the permenance of most inkjet prints. For something that matters--like end product for a client, or show...I use a medium-to-high end service shop. There's plenty available online and the prices these days are fairly economical.
My first printer: $400 (HP LaserJet IIp+, ahhh..)
:).
Current printer: $30
I don't care how far technology has come, you can't cut the price of the average consumer printer that much without flushing quality down the crapper.
I haven't owned a printer since the old HP died my first year of college. I can't find one that I like as much that isn't huge and costs $1200. I don't really need a printer anyway. Paper is so passe`
Game... blouses.
I have an HP LaserJet that is 5 years old and still going strong. For color printers, I've had a Lexmark, a Cannon, and two HP printers (one of which I'm currently using, the others have worn out). Supposing I had bought all HP printers, they would have made a lot more money of off all of those color printers I bought than that old laser printer which still works wonderfully today. I've noticed the same thing with computers. I have an old IBM Aptiva -- about 7 years old -- that, although slow, is still going strong today. I haven't even had to replace the CMOS battery in it! I had one Compaq that burned its motherboard out within two years, and a Gateway laptop that shuts off if you so much as tap it while its running a CPU-intensive program (luckily, although Gateway computers aren't really good, their tech support is great and they're happy to take it in and replace whatever is necessary). The real problem is that computer geeks don't make up the majority of computer and peripheral consumers. There are far more 'Average Joes' and businesses out there than there are computer geeks. 'Average Joes' don't know enough about technology to make an educated computer or printer choice -- they buy what's cheapest or what (and I quote) 'has the most Gigahertz.' Same thing with businesses -- in an effort to cut costs, purchasing managers may choose to buy a cheaper printer or computer and let someone else deal with the maintenance issues. It looks good on them to cut costs, and most likely no one will think to blame them when the printer or computer breaks down a year later.
That's great that that prices keep coming down, regardless of quality. But the real problem here is the fact that it has gotten to the point where we feel more comfortable throwing away a 30 pound printer that has seen a 1,000 page workload to buy a new one. All of these printers go somewhere (read landfill), not that many people would care sitting snuggly in their mansions printing off the latest slashdot article so they don't have to stare at their $1000 monitor to read it, cause that would be hard on the eyes. We still have our HP LaserJet II (I know, along with half the readers on here) and likewise it continues to print to this day, not to mention that it was one of the first printers I can remember seeing under the driver list on Linux. Not to mention our HP 4Si (Duplex :-) ) and our HP2100 that print with great quality. Most people just need to realize that eventually all of this wastefullness is going to catch up with us, so just shell out the extra $100 and buy a printer that will last more than a year. Believe it or not it'll save you and the rest of us in the long run.
he got a 5050 or something and it didn't lasat 1 print job.. it was a dud ;-) rotflol.. seriously.. they are sending him a new one after actually making him do some test.. scary part was that one of the tests he had to be online and they tried to reset the printer remotely... true story folks.. big brother may know what you are printing
Only 'flamers' flame!
I have an old OkiData 400e laser printer from my 486 that sort of works fine (it started printing pages completely smeared with black for a while and then fixed itself somehow) but I barely use it. The problem is that it went obsolete. I haven't tried it in linux but it's been compatible with everything I've tried it with so far. It has hp compatibility mode for DOS programs so that probably means something.
The printer's page buffer is too small to do a lot of stuff. If all you're printing out is text then it works fine but if you try printing out a full page image at 300 dpi (the max setting) it doesn't work. It doesn't even print out some graphics heavy pages done in word. I would upgrade but instead I just don't use a printer.
The printer is a solid piece of work though, really heavy and well built with an lcd display that actually gives useful information, although it jams more than it used to. If you want a printer that lasts, buy a laser, they seem to be built better because of their price and the life span of the toner. Get one you can barely lift and doesn't creek when you twist it and you'll be good until your requirements deem otherwise.
It seems like it's hard these days to get your hands on a decent printer that doesn't need a new set of $50 ink cartriges every 300 pages or constantly clog, steak or jam. Added bonus if it has PostScript and expension capabilities without costing an arm and a leg. The new dispoable inkjets and GDI winprinters may occupy the best shelf space in the local office supply store, but there's still decent printers out there if you look around enough. You can bet I was a happy camper when I found a name brand 16ppm PostScript laser printer for under $200 at a local office supply store.
This week, the national office supply chain OfficeMax was advertising the HP LaserJet 1200SE for $199.99. Bad news, it was sold out. But good news is that another national retailer, Staples, has plenty in stock and will match the OfficeMax price if you bring a copy of OfficeMax's advertisement. In my area, it appeared in the Sunday Lowell Sun and the Sunday Boston Globe. Check your area newspaper for the advertisement. I'm sure there's other national office supply chains which can match the OfficeMax price on this printer. According to HP, regular price is $399.
The printer is 15ppm at 1600x1600dpi with PostScript and 16MB of RAM. (The non-SE model has only 8mb of RAM. On both models there is a quasi-standard looking RAM expansion slot which can accommodate another 64MB of memory). Connectivity is via your choice of a bi-directional parallel port with standard centronics connector and a USB "B" connector. Printer works flawlessly with CUPS over the parallel port.
Reports indicate it works fine over USB too. See linuxprinting.org for more information.
The printer includes one C7115A toner/drum cartridge, which yields around 2500 pages. I found new prefilled cartridges for $60. Loose refill toner is $13. I found ferrous toner (for MICR printing on checks and so on) for $35.
The big profit stream eventually backfired as hundreds of companies have rushed into the printer cartridge refill and refurbish market.
Printer cartridges is one of the few markets that do well on the net. The cartidges are small and easy to ship. The field is information rich...that is, you buy according to the label..not the look of the cartridge. Why do you think you get 10 spams a day from people selling ink?
I've noticed the printer manufacturers have finally started to come down in price on the cartridges to match refillers.
Smart printer shoppers look at the cost of printing and not the cost of the printer. Personally, I would avoid Lexmark because of the chip. I also look for those brands that have the most ink per cartridge.
(That said, Consumer Reports doesn't pay much attention to lasers, probably because most home users want to print color pictures. The only others they reviewed were the HP 1000 and 1200se, which both also got excellent marks.)
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
I know Lexmark is currently using the DMCA to bludgeon their competition with regard to this.
Also, if I might make a recommendation, Canon seems to be the least obnoxious with the ink issues - their printers are a little more expensive, but the quality is a good bit higher, including a lower consumables cost. This even applies to their ~$150 printers. But that's just me.
Also, I think HP's entry level printers, even at a constant price point, have turned to crap. I've noticed a lot of DOA printers among my friends and family (I, like most of you, am the local "computer guy," so I have a decent sample size ;)), much more than they used to. Seems like they really are determined to quit doing what they did well and turn into Compaq.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I worked ato Future Shop (in Canada) for around two years while in University and probably sold around 5 to 10 printers a week. It was in a smallish town and I worked hard to make a good impression and develop clients, not just customers. As such, I VERY quickly stopped selling Lexmark, and only reluctantly sold any printer that cost less than $300. Not because I made more on the high end stuff, but because I would hear about it if I sold crap (AND I made more money on the high end stuff). HP's low end, Canon's low end, Epson's low end all suck. Suck suck suck. Drop $300 on a printer, and they were actually pretty decent.
Finally, the time came when my girlfriend's aging Apple Imagewriter died and I needed a new printer (for my PC). What did I get? An Okipage 6W, an LED printer - one step down from laser but it IS a toner based system (instead of ink) and I love it.
I've been counting the number of 500 page paper bundles I've fed into it (to see if the pages per toner cartridge numbers I would quote people were bullshit or not) and so far with two toner replacements I've printed around 8000 pages. Runs fine, print quality is great (black and white only) and the toner cartridge isn't even that expensive.
Moral of the story - skimp on the price now and you'll get crap. By an ink based system... well, read the rest of the posts for the various rants about how expensive, quality degradation, disposable they are. Go with a toner based system (laser or LED) and spend a little more. 8000 on an HP would have already cost me around $400-600 more than I've spent on my Oki including toner.
almost all computing equipment nowadays are built to lower standards than in the past - i guess you could say the older stuff was in a sense overengineered. Maybe it doesn't make sense to build a PC that will last ten years when the components in it will be obsolete in 2. But personally I like the older, better built stuff. I have circa-1989 Mac IIcis that still work. I have IBM original-pentium-era PCs that still serve me well, running less intensive tasks, but working nonetheless. Quite frankly a lot of the "horsepower" of current machines is unnecessary.
But from the point of view of the vendor, they've just screwed themselves if theyve given you a machine that will last much longer than the warranty period - they've just almost certainly guaranteed they won't be seeing any more money from you for "X" years, *unless* they "luck out" and you're the kind of person to go around making sure everybody you know also gets one. But then they also dont have control over their whole user experience either - if the OS dies, will the general consumer think to blame the OS maker, or will they go look for another brand (possibly only to find out it wasnt the hardware, but then hey its too late for vendor A, no?)
look at the whole industry - hard disk warranties are shortening, motherboards are dying because of cheap capacitors - its a downward spiral into the toilet bowl, for product quality and longetivity. Its much cheaper for the vendors to replace parts (or refuse to replace parts) than to Build Things Right the first time round.
My experiences:
Citizen Swift A3 printer, dot-matrix: still working (10-15years old)
Citizen Swift 9 Pin: still working
3x Citizen Swift Colour 24pin: 1 broken rest still working (8-10 years old?)
HP Bubblejet: too expensive to repair after 2 years
Unisys Laser: works but unreliable/tempermental
Citizen C60: jammed 1 month, ink cartridges have to be hacked to be economical
I only converted to InkJet due to noise anyway. I still prefer dotmatrix when possible! It's crazy.
If you can keep them going buy old printers, good refillable InkJets seem to be like gold dust here (south uk) and there's still even a market for ribbon cartridges too after more than a decade!
It just comes across as massive price fixing to me, even if it's not I'm still not happy with what is available for the money these days.
A blog I run for the wealth
I've been going through about one a year as well. I don't buy cartridges anymore, just printers.
Quite a few of the posts mention the logic of a $50 printer with a $25 mail in rebate being cheaper than a $35 ink cartridge. So buy a new printer not a cartridge, right?
Wrong. That $50 printer comes with a "sample" cartridge. What that means is you get a cartridge that's deliberately only 25% or whatever full.
It's enough to make you think you're getting a deal, buy the printer, install the drivers, print maybe 100 pages and then go to the store and buy politely buy a series of $15 cartridges for $35.
Or, even better, you come up with a cunning plan to get a $35 cartridge in a discounted, now $25 printer. Only you get a $10 plastic print unit and a quarter full cartridge that's only worth $3.50. Plus, with luck, you'll forget to mail in that rebate and you paid $50 for a $13.50 product as opposed to $35 for a $15 one.
Don't feel bad. Some idiots buy a Lexmark Z22 and get a color sample cartridge. Now it uses all three inks to print murky brown when you just want black and runs out after 40 pages of wasted ink. I know. I did. Once.
Ok, we thought, it is still under warranty, no big deal... No such luck. The print head was "designed to wear out" and as such was a "disposable/renewable part," just like the printer cartridge. The company said we had to buy our own new one... which coincidentally cost more than the entire printer did in the first place. Grrr!
We now have an HP, they seem to be much better quality, and last much longer.
I agree. The 4L is a consumer printer, but mine just keeps on cranking the pages. It was when HP made every laser a robust product. I've never felt that any of the inkjets were as reliable.... I've printed many, many manuals, tax forms, what have you on it, no problem. It's slow, but so what? It STILL looks better with cheap paper than an inkjet with expensive paper - at least where plain text is concerned. (And that's 99% of what I do with it. Once in a while I print out a map. I don't print out any photos. I like them better on the computer.) I find that even modern inkjet prineters have the occasional "blob" around the letters. Maybe the whole in the e is almost filled in. Maybe the bar over the top of the l is a little too thick. Stuff like that never happens on the laser, and it's been going for 10 years or more.
If you're a SOHO user printing in color, having to replace the printer once a year really is not a big deal when you consider the cost of ink cartreges.
My younger brother went through 2 Epson printers (each seemed to last about a year... the first kept clogging and the 2nd died of an electronic failure) before finally switching to a HP 600 series printer about a year and a half ago - it's still working.
My HP 932C is over two years old and still works like the day I unpacked it - although I have already spent more in damned ink then the cost of the printer. The printer it replaced, a 660cse, is also still working, at my brother's girlfriend's house. On of my friends has had an 800 series HP printer for several years now and his father has a 500 series printer - all still working. While this is just anecdotal evidence, the HP printers seemed to just keep chugging along long after they've burned up their value in ink.
If you think about it, since HP makes their money off the ink - it's in their BEST INTERESTS to make printers that last. It seems the game lately isn't to make the printers break earlier, but to make the ink cartreges run out faster... If you look at my discontinued printer, the 932c, and then look at the printer HP's web site recommends as a replacement, you'll notice the new recommended printer holds almost HALF AS MUCH INK!
If you do a lot of printing, you're getting screwed using ink jets no matter what the reliability of your printer. If you need color, get a closeout printer (pricewatch and google are your friends) that is easy to use refill kits on and refill yourself. If you can live without color, laser is the only way to go.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I picked up a HP Deskjet Portable (also called a "110", I think) with my first 486. Mini little thing with a straight-through paper path and a power supply that rivals a brick for size and portability.
Some years later, I picked up an Epson Colour something-or-other. I can't remember what it was, because mere weeks into it's lifespan, it'd begun attracting dust and crap like a magnet. I swear the damn thing was magnetic - what eventually broke it was the adjustable wrench that somehow found itself in the works.
Nothing's better for a printer's mechanism than an adjustable spanner.
The HP was (is!) built like a Masonry Water Closet. I swear you could (can!) crack rocks with it. The Epson would break if you looked at it funny.
Postscript is that, ten or so years on (and four after the Epson) the HP is still plugging away, and hasn't dropped an iota of quality in that time - although it has a few issues with Windows XP.
Carts are getting harder and harder to find, though.
We're all gonna die!
I feel like I rent my inkjet printer.
_nfotxn
Do you buy the cheapest brand of monitors?
I can't remember one ever dying, and I make heavy use of mine. Generally I only get rid of them when I finally resell them cheap bundled with an old machine to someone.
I am the kind of guy who twenty years ago was reverse engineering the 'seperate sync/video' lines on discarded dumb terminal displays, wiring in a 9 pin connector and using them with Hercules graphic cards. Then Sim Earth (for DOS) came along and I had to finally have color.
I've seen a lot of bashing of Lexmark printers. Presumably much of it is accurate but there are good Lexmark printers out there. I've been using a Lexmark 4039-10R laser printer for about 8 years now. It's been terrific. Toner cartidge lasts 15,000 pages, prints 10PPM, does postscipt and the printer has been rock solid. It's built tough and though I could make a few critiques of the design none are serious problems. Just wish I could find a network interface for it...
I've used some of the Optra lasers as well with similar success at work and have nothing but good things to say about them.
I can't speak about Lexmark's newer stuff. I've never used their inkjets or low end lasers. They may be great or junk, I don't know. But some of what Lexmark makes (or did anyway) is genuinely good.
Yes, they have decreased in quality. This is just a normal part of capitalist companys in a competitive market. Please ingnore it and continue to consume our products.
Quality isn't so much the issue as I see it...
In other words quality is at an all time high,, it's longevity that's the problem.. I think there is some connection between complexity and problems (think Murphy's law). But there are other issues that are plain stupidity. A great example is the current line of Epson photo printers, I've owned three of their models over the last three years (yikes! one per year..) All of the printers had a common flaw, the printhead is built into the carrier for the cartridges in such a way that it's nearly impossible to get at the actual printhead, this caused the problem of having to run the "Clean Printhead" utility and waste a ton of ink (not to mention it didn't work for crap). HP however has the idea with replacing the printhead with each cartridge, although Epson's cartridges are cheaper because you never replace the printhead.
I've found a few nice tricks to keep your inkjet working right at home using stuff everyone has, I'll share...
If your printheads are clogged up a soft cotton rag with water on it will do miracles (I've also found that in really bad cases you can suck a bit of ink through the printhead, but it doesn't taste too good, although on the bright side it doesn't seem to stain your mouth as long as you rinse it out right away...)
If you're getting software communication errors check your cable first (although that is usually not the problem) and then go after the contacts on the printer with isopropal alcohol and water mixed 50/50 to clean off the spray of ink that is ever-present in an inkjet (if you doubt this take a rag and wipe the inside top of your printer or watch someone spraying paint) as it can cause bad connections with the inkjet cartridges.
Other than this, all I can say is the warranty for 20 dollars that I buy with my printers from Office Max has been the biggest blessing I have had..
I'd be willing to bet the people who think they are 'okay' are much younger than the people who think they suck.
Obviously, there are always exceptions.
Personally - I'm 36 and have been do this crap for 25 years (yes - since I was 9). I think most of today's printers suck for multiple reasons -
We're keeping old HP printers around because they work. Sure, they're slow, the postscript support is flaky and the network stack is garbage but you can work around those. It's much more of a hassle to use the newer HPs which have jams and other mechanical failures on a regular basis. We've gone through all of the usual procedures, had them professionally serviced, etc. - they're just poorly designed.
/dev/null mode and choke on some postscript documents - and they continue to be quite slow - I've never seen anything close to the rated speed in actual usage since the processors aren't even remotely capable of keeping up with the print engine once you get past the "hello world" level. PDFs containing complex figures are measured in minutes per page even on the "workgroup" printers.
Unfortunately, there's not much connection between cost and quality - expensive workgroup laser printers seem to jam about as often as cheap deskjets. HP's firmware hasn't improved much, either - the newer printers don't hang if they get multiple simultaneous connections but they still go into
There are two new printers I rely on: a very expensive Canon ImageRunner copier which doubles as the uber-printer and a Xerox / Tektronix Phaser 8200, which is a color wax printer. Both have been rock-solid, handled all sorts of convoluted jobs and are *much* faster than the latest HPs - the ImageRunner is rated at 60 pages per minute and I've never seen much less, even with huge files containing truly vile postscript. This isn't surprising - it has an 800MHz PIII instead of the slow 300Mhz ARM/MIPS-class CPU which is all HP can afford to put in a $16,000 printer.
Dye-Sublimation is the way to Go for alot of printing - this one is under !K and prints a 8x10 in under 90 seconds. - Kodak Professional 8500
It's a cartoon from 'the worlds best computer mag', the german CT.
The one guys saying:
"Those were professionals at work. They only took the gold, the stockshares and the printer cartridges."
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
A lot of people seem dead set on comparing an entry level printer of 100 buck or less to what used to be a 1k+ printer. Hp's at the grand level, still pretty sweet. And they've learned new tricks.
Don't want something that will only last a year. Here's an idea, don't buy something that's only ment to last a year. Buy something from the business line.
As an aside. From my experience with Brother equipment. They're always a pain in the ass until you learn the secret trick. Every machine they make seems to have a special lever that has to be jiggled just so, or a spot that needs to be jabbed just right. After that, they tend more towards the simply annoying.
But hey, you get what you pay for. Don't expect the rolex you bought off the guy dealing three card monte to be suitable for circumnavigating the globe either. It's just one of those things.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
YOu can buy a laser printer for $225. My HP laserjet 1100 is very reliable and was purchased for that price. The difference between reliabilty is night and day compared to an inkjet.
I disagree with you on the assertion that low end laser printers are just as crappy as the low end ink jets. This is what I thought originally but was proven wrong. The reason inkjets suck so much is because the ink is low grade and dries out on the ink heads. Or dust from paper clogs the nozzles when passing through. Also the mechanics wear down and are not designed to handle more then 5k copies.
A laser is different because the vast majority of parts are in the cartidge itself. Only the laser writer, transfer corona, feed tires, and the loading mechanism are left. The drum, toner, charge corona, developing unit, and recycling unit are in the actual cartridge.
This means the same manufactoring which takes in account that the el-cheapo gears that brake every 3k copies will be replaced whenever you change the ink!
This makes them extremely reliable. The technology also insures jams are next to zero and even dirty paper will never smudge. The ink lasts for a long time because it is already a powder and is melting into the paper. It is not a liquid that can dry out. And last the majority of customers who buy laser printers are bussiness users who will not tolerate downtime and have requirements about pages printed per month. Inkjets are made for the consumer who printers something every once in a while.
It is true what your saying with built in obscelence. I have seen it with coffee makers. My mother decided only to buy the top of the line coffee makers because of breakage. No luck. She now uses an old MR Coffee bought when I was born because it works. However laser printers are not built like this and even if a problem arises you can always replace the toner cartridge which takes care of %90 of the problems since this is where most of the mechanisms are.
http://saveie6.com/
I know a chap at one of the insurance agencies in South Africa. They did various tests in the printer market. In the end They settled on the Minolta PageWorks 8L. It is a normal B&W printer, but the printer has the following advantages: 1: It runs on normal Copier toner. Dirt cheap. 2: It can take a stack of paper and runs reasonably fast. 3: It is super robust. 4: The printer itself is truely affordable. Unfortuanately, you then need a seperate printer for the photo's.
!
No joke. I interviewed with HP a few years ago and when I made a casual comment about how my old laserjet just kept going and going, the guy interviewing me started ranting about how those old printers were ruining HP's business. He said that if the engineers had done their job right those older printers would only have lasted for two product cycles. Sheesh.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Next time an epson bubble jet dies on you, crack it open.
My girlfriend had a 740i and it went the way that epsons seem to go - colors progressively becoming weaker and eventually stopping completely so that repeated "cleaning cycles" did not fix the problem any longer. I took it apart and found what I expected to find - a mixture of dust and dried ink covering the print head cover area.
What was amazing, however, was the huge piece of blotter that filled the entire bottom of the printer, probably 4" x 14" and 1" thick, which was half saturated with ink! I have taken apart printers before, and have never seen anything like this. It was taking those $32 ink cartridges and pumping them into a piece of blotter!
Now, my brother has an old epson 24 pin dot matrix, and he has about the dustiest room I've ever seen and that thing still works beautifully. I am half tempted to buy one off of ebay just since I know that it has worked since 1992 and he's probably only bought about 2 ribbons for it as well!
+++ ATH0 +++
out and buy the domain suckmycartidge.com
1. Find some lamer willing to do sick things with printer cartidges.
2. Photograph said process.
3. Post on the net.
4. ????
5. Profit.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.