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

what do you expect

[papasui]

when you can buy a printer that's cheaper than the ink cartridge costs.

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

Printers, feh!

[ackthpt]

Amazingly my HP Deskjunk 895Cse still works. It 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. Oh, and a big thanks to HP for renumbering the ink cartridges, that was a huge help, now I go to the store and say, "well, it was a C1823D, no I can't remember what model the printer is, I only kept track of the cartridge." Naturally there's now guide handy at the store either, so I'll probably have to look it up on-line and put the new number in my PDA while I'm thinking about it.

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.

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.....

Re:Printers, feh!

[ackthpt]

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.....

I'm quite familiar with how they work. The issues I have are more along the remaining mechanics responsible for paperfeed, alignment, sensors (got paper?) etc.

Images used to look beautiful, now they regularly have bars, even with a new premium HP cart., due to the paper feed being less precise. I've wasted a number of envelopes, too, as it seems to be getting cranky about how it wants to handle them, i.e. how far does it advance the form before it decides it actually has been moving a form rather than trying to load it.

And slow doesn't begin to describe it. The way it appears to recalibrate every time I start a new print job appears to indicate they knew it would run into problems eventually and try to correct itself.

Then there are the messy jams. And I haven't even run mailing labels through it. :-) Anyone who has ever had to disect, clean and reassemble a printer a user has reversed mailing labels through, I appologise for recalling that memory and making you cringe.

This was ~$300 printer when I bought it. An equivilent printer off the shelf is about $124 now. Total cost of a set of carts, from a discount seller, $55-$60, YMMV.

Printers Suck

[Noexit]

I've been going through about one a year as well. I don't buy cartridges anymore, just printers.

Quality is job N

[kwerle]

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.

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.

It's all that British spelling

[deadgoon42]

If you'd cut down on all those extra u's you're putting in color and favorite, maybe your printer will last longer.

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.

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.

Deskjet service tip

[Radi-0-head]

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...

Exactly why printers suck

[sterno]

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.

It's far from just printers...

[KC7GR]

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).

16ppm Postscript Laser for $200 available in US

[Brian Ristuccia]

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.

HP Thinks Older Printers Were Too Good

[buddhaunderthetree]

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.

Re:Printer Issues... (And solutions!)

[sg3000]

> 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! :-)