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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.
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'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.
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.
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.
Find a used HP LaserJet 4 (or even a 3) if you don't need color. I'd avoid eBay (or any online source) unless you can find a local auction (they're damn heavy to ship). They last forever. No ink to clog up anywhere, just nice, dry toner. Cartridges are readily available, and all of the printy-bits are in the replaceable cartridge, so if the drum gets scratched you just get a new toner cartridge and it's good as new. They're fairly economical, they warm up pretty quickly and print reasonably quickly. If it needs to be cleaned out, get a toner or HEPA vacuum (don't use a normal one, the toner's too fine and it goes right through the filters and bags) and clean it out.
Use good paper. A ream of cheap paper is $3. A ream of good paper is $4. Spend the extra buck to not jam the thing up all the time.
If you can find one with a JetDirect (ethernet port) built in, that's a bonus. The JetDirect usually includes an lpd-compatible print server, so Linux likes it, and MacOS loves it. Windows even works mostly, as much as it ever does anyway.
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.
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 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.
I feel like I rent my inkjet printer.
_nfotxn
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 -
> 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.
Yes it does. The printer manufacturers wants you to buy a new printer every few years, even if they sell them at a loss. Why? Because when you have a new printer you have no choice but to buy your ink from the original manufacturer since there are no 3rd party cartridges yet. If you have an old printer, chances are that you can find cheaper third party cartridges.
This scheme works extremely well in order to keep the heavy users to buy your cartridges. Their printers break down quicker, thus giving them a quicker upgrade cycle, probably ahead of the 3rd party ink suppliers, making them buy only your cartridges. These are otherwise the clientel that is most inclined to put in the effort to find and buy good, cheap 3rd party cartridges.
So I guess that the most lucrative "point of failure"-setting for the printer manufacturers would be so they make the printers break down for the heavy users around the same time as the 3rd party ink cartridges gets available.
The best way to remedy this sick and wasteful situation would be for some government-, industry- or consumer-organization with a lot of clout to set a simple, patent free standard for ink cartridges and strongly encourage the use of it. If a large enough share of the user base gets behind it, the printer manufacturers are forced to accept it. The same goes for many other product groups, including wacum cleaner bags.
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/
The problem with this kind of reasoning, though, is that people like me exist. :) Heh, okay, let me clarify.
I bought an Epson Stylus Photo 890 recently, for a number of reasons, ranging from full-on (i.e. better print quality than Windows) Linux support (over USB, even!), printer resolution and speed, 6-color cartridge and separate black cartridge, low price ($300 list, $240-ish on pricegrabber), and a $100 rebate.
It is not Epson's newest printer. It was among their cheapest (after rebates and shopping around). It's one of the best supported inkjets in Linux land. It handles lots of media types, including cardstock and glossy paper on rolls (heh; I still want to find 8.5" wide rolls of paper ... like a hundred feet of the stuff! Imagine the obscene high-quality pornobanners! :), and prints fast.
Oh, and the aftermarket cartridges for the damned thing are five bucks a piece including shipping. Let my cats dye themselves black (or cyan, yellow, red, whatever) by stumbling upon my spare cartridges and sharpening their teeth; I'll laugh at them and consider it five bucks well spent :)
So this idea won't work with people like me. I only paid $140 for this thing after the rebate check arrived, but if it dies after only going through 25 cartridges or so, I'm still going to be pissed, and I'll switch to another brand (if I still need to print anything when/if this happens).
It seems another "best" solution to this problem doesn't involve the government at all, but people just refusing to buy the latest and greatest model because the front facade looks cute and it can bake cookies. At least wait until aftermarket cartridges are available.
Read my stuff.
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
(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...)
:-)
??!! Sounds like you've been snorting toner, too...
Information wants to be beer.
> 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
You know that "Post Anonymously" feature? This is one of times when you should have used it. I'm not sure if fellating your printer is anything you want to admit with a traceable user name.
On the other hand, you might be able to take pictures of yourself in the said act, post them on the Internet, and use the membership revenue to offset some of the cost of buying new cartridges!
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.