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North Carolina Fights Back Against Lexmark
ngrier writes "Seems that at least some aren't sitting idly by, while printer manufacturers try to assert total control. The North Carolina legislature just approved a measure which guarantees the consumer's right to refill ink cartridges. For history of the Lexmark DMCA-related story, involving the company placing copyright-protected code in their printer cartridges in order to prevent competitors from producing compatible cartridges, there are previous Slashdot posts about it here(1), here(2), and here(3)."
I think if Ford Motor Company tried to completely control the aftermarket by trying to control the tire you put on your car by some device, I think this Legislature would act.
There are many areas of the market place that this should be applied.
The price of printers may go up, but we will still have Choice when it comes to ink. Ink is by far the higher cost in the long run.
Are you an employee of a company that manufacturers inkjet printers? Are you an inkjet owner? Have you been thinking of buying an inkjet printer? If so, listen up.
Now, don't get me wrong. Everyone owning their own printing press is an important leap for free speech, and thus democracy,
but there's one tidbit the printer manufacturers have neglected...
The loss leader model in the printing technology business is a failure.
Sure money is pouring in now, but sooner or later your customers will reel from the pain caused by you ramming their asses.
Let's face it-- previous inkjet owners would rather print at Kinkos than buy a new inkjet printer. If you put yourself in your customers' shoes, it's not hard to see why:
1. Ink cartridges are too expensive. Boy, are they too expensive!
2. The cartridges have a short shelf life before they dry up and jam the print heads.
3. Printing regularly (or otherwise wasting ink) is the only way to combat the ink drying problem.
4. Consumers are reluctant to print anything unless absolutely necessary thanks to the artificially high price of ink.
Thus, inkjet printers are rarely excercised enough to maintain them and rarely work right when they are needed.
Ink cartridges have a short shelf life and no printer manufacturer has been able to solve that problem. Because of that, Gillette's give-away-the-razor-sell-the-blades-at-a-primium model does not adapt well to the printing consumables industry. In
the meantime, raping consumers on ink is a business model that will soon die, because consumers will find that inkjet printers are just not worth it. Joe Sixpack will learn soon enough that the printer bundled "free" with his PC is nothing but a money pit.
Because printers are sold cheaply (presumably at a loss), it's not surprising that printer reliability has gone down the shitter. Manufacturers are cutting corners when producing printers. Inkjet printers today are made out of cheap plastic where metal should be used, resulting in a fragile product likely to jam paper.
Let's face it, until printer manufacturers change their business model, inkjet printers are just not worth the hassle.
Well consumers have that right already - they are perfectly free to refill their cartridges; of course, it doesn't do them any good, because the chip ignores the new ink. Is this a ban on putting the chips in?
I doubt it, although Lexmark would be a fool to push it.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Is there a lot of this in the USA? States which have allowed things that are banned in other states gaining additional 'export' markets? I can think of people travelling to Vegas for one.
I'm glad someone's deciding to finally act on this. Ink cartridges should not be costing 20,30,40 dollars. It's ink... the technology has been around for several hundred years. Now granted, printer technology has only been around 20 years, but still, it's not like it's rocket science (or rocket fuel, for that matter :)
hookers and grits.
Oh please....consumer choice doesn't have anything to do with this. A North Carolina company may get shut down, costing 1,200 jobs, which is why there is soon going to be a law protecting it.
I half expect Kentucky's government to jump in and ban the sale of replacement ink cartridges to protect Kentucky jobs or some other nonsense.
More on topic, if this bill get's signed it'll be interesting to see if similar legislation is passed in other states.
I always buy my printers based on how much it'll run me to replace the ink afterwards. Not necessarily comparing *just* that, granted, but it's a big factor. These days, my favored brand is generally Epson, and my still-relatively-new Stylus C62 has been good to me. And replacement ink doesn't break the bank.
If people would *think* before they purchase and realize that Lexmark may have decent printer prices but their ink is absolutely ridiculous, such legislation would be largley unnecessary.
Why not fix the whole DMCA? Or at least codify something stating that DMCA doesn't cover cases where the intent was clearly only anticompetitive?
The big money is in toner not inkjet ink. Toner cartridges are the cartridges that Lexmark put anti-refill technology on. Things like counting the amount of times the drum roles restricting the cartridge to so many pages printed (even if there's still toner left in the cartridge!) there are companies out there that can circumvent this. check out Multilaser
IANAL. But, I tend to doubt that local law can overide Federal Copyright Law.
Fight Spammers!
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
The DMCA is federal. No matter how much we wish otherwise, we need to make the change at a federal level.
Even though California or Oregon voters may be in favor of medical marijuana, the federal prohibition on marijuana trumps that.
Repeal DMCA on a federal level, or otherwise the efforts are meaningless.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Good point. Consider the application of Article VI of the Constitution, the Supremacy Clause:
See:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constit
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution
As FindLaw explains:
See http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/constitution/articl
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
If Lexmark (or HP or whoever) makes a product and they say that for warranty purposes you have to use their own crappy ink/toner -- all this upfront, I don't see a big deal why it is a consumer victory as touted. I surely agree that a refill helps in cost cutting, but I have also seen tons of printers (both inkjet and laser) with ink/toner spilt all over their innards just because ppl didn't want use a decent cartridge / toner. This is when they bring their product in for warranty "replacement" since their ink/toner is "smudging", "not printing right" , "sucks" or something of that nature.
.....
As long as they let the consumer know this in advance and you have a choice not to buy this product no one is in trouble are they?
Ofcourse you may not have much choice for buying from someone besides Lexmark & Canon & HP but then thats a DIFFERENT problem
-- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
If you have a G4 or whatever you DO have a choice of OS. Either an Apple OS or Linux or Darwin.
w are. htmlo ftware .htmls _softwa re.html
If you buy a computer from SGI what OS choice do you have when you order it? For the workstation, it don't look like it
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/fuel/sys_soft
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/tezro/sys_s
http://www.sgi.com/workstations/octane2/sy
What Lexmark is doing and what Apple/Sun/SGI are doing is like comparing Apples and Oranges.
Yea, when you buy a G4 you get stuck with OS X and Classic. But Apple doesn't use the DMCA to keep you from installing Linux on the box.
Is it really the job of government to pass such narrow, precise laws like this? Or, instead, should they be passing higher-level laws which a) most of us can even keep in our heads to start with and b) cover a whole lot of smaller, more specific cases?
I wonder how many consumers get to the point where they realize that buying a new printer each time is about as effective as trying to buy OEM ink cartridges.
I was in Best Buy yesterday, and they had an inkjet printer on sale for $39. It has been a while since I bought an inkjet cartridge (company supplied laser printer), but I believe it was almost that expensive.
That is the problem with a highly competitive razor/razor-blade model - as soon as the razors get really cheap due to competition, you get the the point where you start competing with the blades in price.
I wonder how long before you see "intro" ink cartridges (with only like 25% filled) being supplied with the original printer?
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
The Lexmark inkjet cartridge problem is based on abusing copyright rather than trademark, but it seems quite possible that a court would find that because Lexmark has unnecessarily forced their competitors to use their copyright in order to make a compatible cartridge, they are to blame for the resulting copyright infringement.
It had to happen in North Carolina, because politics is ultimately about local issues. Static Control Components of Sanford, (close to Raleigh) employs 1200, and might even more if business grows. The Company had enough pull in the State to get the law passed.
And I think this should be a lesson for other issues too ... Abstractions have to come down to one or few test cases where the rubber hits the road .... guess RIAA's thousands points of lawsuits will also meet such a fate from the localities where the lawsuits draw first blood.
I would be foolish enough to say to RIAA "Bring 'em on" but I think that they should expect the unexpected when the finally go for it.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
There are people who sell remanufactured HP cartridges. I would never rely on a remanufactured HP color cartridge (they tend to have cross-contaminated ink, where the yellow might be greenish because some cyan leaked in, for example) but I use remanufactured black cartridges happily. They are all over the place. Even Wal*Mart has 'em, from NCR.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Last time I checked Canon doesn't sue 3rd party competitors
& uses a seperate tank for each color (less waste)
& doesn't throw around the DMCA
& tells you to check your ink level by LOOKING AT THE CARTRIDGE (as it should be).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from my recent research I found Canon to be the most reasonable (yes, I hated them as much as everyone else 5 years ago).
"Apple must leave the choice of OS to customers - right now you still have to pay for OSX when you are buying Mac even if you plan to use Mac with Linux or BeOS or BSD."
Apple doesn't prevent you from using a different OS, though. That's like saying Lexmark shouldn't include an ink cartridge with the printer when you buy it -- if nothing prevents you from changing it, I don't see why it would be a problem.
It appears the bill doesn't address the DMCA problem. As the article states:
(emphasis added) http://www.heraldsun.com/state/6-371743.html
It appears the North Carolina law simply declares void contractual agreements not to refill printer ink cartridges as being against the public policy of the state. While this might be necessary for such refilling to be legal, it does not appear that this law is by itself sufficient to make it legal.
The law does not address the DMCA problem. That is, even if in North Carolina a contractual provision cannot prevent someone from refilling ink cartridges because said provision is void under this North Carolina law, this doesn't prevent a printer manufacturer from filing a DMCA claim against a company that makes the refilling kits.
Under the Supremacy Clause (Article VI of the Constitution), the State of North Carolina may have been unable to address the DMCA issue, and indeed may have recognized that fact. Article VI provides:
See:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constit
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution
As FindLaw explains:
See http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/constitution/articl
I have to wonder if this legislation will accomplish anything. I also have to wonder if the legislature knew that it might not accomplish anything when they passed it.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The thing that continues to be overlooked by the editors here:
The chipped cartridges, are NOT the only option for these printers.
There are 2 sets of cartridges that Lexmark sells. One set, is chipped for single use, and then you're obligated to return the cartridge back to Lexmark for them to refurbish, etc. They call it a "pre-bate" basically they are rebating you for returning the empty, at the time of purchase.
If you want to reuse/refill, etc yourself, then you can buy the non-prebated inks. And then you can just go hog wild.
Caveat Emptor.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
As far as I can tell from reading the description of the law (IANAL), they made it illegal to enforce the ban on cartridge refills, and it probably does conflict with federal law. What they should have done, with no conflict with the federal statute, was to ban the sale of printers with that sort of restriction. AFAIK a state can ban the sale of various items on whatever grounds it feels are correct, and the feds have nothing to say about it.
The company I worked for had to pull out of the consumer market(both ink and toner based) because they couldn't keep losing money on lost revenue due to generic cartridges. So now there is less choice in the toner and ink jet printers.
My last ink jet screwed up because of the damn refillable cartridges. My current ink jet works great with name-brand cartridges.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
They don't have to try to force Lexmark to allow others to use their copyrights (which would be an attempt to supersede federal copyright law) -- instead they can simply say that it is illegal for printer manufacturers to make their cartridges such that copyrighted material is necessary for their operation. Then nobody could copy Lexmark's cartridges, but they couldn't legally sell them in the state either. But their copyright would still be protected.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I understand why these companies want to prevent others from stealing this cash cow. You're talking about huge amounts of money just for ink. I can't remember where I read it but there was a story about ink being 3 times more expensive than a fine wine or something like that. Maybe it was here? It's fucking ink so I don't know why it's so expensive.
It could be all of the companies in collusion with one another to keep the prices high.
We should boycott Lexmark and while we're at it boycott Epson for being busted by joint tests by several European consumer groups indicating that Epson ink cartridges prematurely block printers from churning out more pages even when there is enough ink to keep going.
Here's the story on that con
I think it'd be less painful to my pocket book if they could figure out how to turn my blood into ink from a simple IV...
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
The whole idea in the current market is to sell cheap printers that become mechanisms to sell expensive ink jet cartridges. The goal is to sell as many expensive cartridges as possible; so you find marketers playing stupid games like not filling the cartridges to capacity, etc..
The result of this is simply a great deal of garbage that consumers have to pay to haul away.
I doubt that toner and ink cartridges are really the most environmentally friendly things in the landfills. I suspect the fewer we toss out the better.
My brain fart du jour is that it would be great if industries had to pick up the tab for the garbage they create. Lenmark and other competitors in the industry would have to pay a disposal fee that could be distributed to landfills to cover costs.
If industry had to pay for the waste up front, there would be a hope that they would design products that create less waste product.
As you point out, the industry is really about putting ink (which is relatively inexpensive) on paper. All the extra packaging, cartridge parts, etc., that get produced and sold in this game are waste.
This whole industry is based upon one thing. Everyone knows that these companys literally give you the printer only to make the money back on the refill cartridges. If they were to market the printers differntly, go back to making quality machines rather than things that print for a few years then die, and aren't fixing cause it's cheaper to replace we and the enviornment would win. We would get cheaper ink cartridges, and higher quality ink jet printers, thus lasting us a lot longer and saving our landfills and being green in the same process. If the companys were even smarter, they would have a exchange policy for old cartridges, or offer refill kits themselves.
Or you could just not buy a lexmark printer. Let the market descide, don't legislate to death.
I would agree with you except for one thing. Lexmark is using the DMCA to stop people from refilling ink cartridges. There's a crypto widget in cartridge that contains copyrighted info. Can't duplicate it. Can't reset it. Do so and it's "legislated to death time". The best outcome would be taking the DMCA behind the barn and having either the Supreme Court or Congress shoot it through the head. Since the media conglomerates and electronics monopolists won't permit the death of their dream come true, I'll take what North Carolina is doing as a consolation prize.
I've never seen these cartridges, but I tend to doubt that Lexmark has gone to any effort to educate consumers that they are entering into any sort of contract.
OK, Apple is both a hardware and a software company, correct?
Apple hardware counts for what, 3% of the consumer market? I don't know for sure, but its at least 2%-ish and not more than 5%-ish.
Now. Apple makes Mac computers. Mac computers cost more than PCs per unit of computing power.
Yes, I will grant, for the sake of argument, that Mac's G4 architecture is superior to that of, say Intel's P4 and P4-Xeon.
But, for approximately the price of a high-end G4 ~1Ghz, I could easily get a 3.06Ghz P4 system, and likely even a dual 2.4 or 2.8 Xeon system...
Mac cloning would put downward pressure on the hardware prices. Suddenly Macs would not cost thousands of dollars while PCs cost only hundreds.
Thus, it is likely that Mac hardware would take a larger chunk of the market, perhaps, say, 10-15% of the total market.
That means that Apple could sell 3-5 times as many copies of the latest version of OS X. And many more copies of all their other software.
Thus, Apple could become a real player in the marketplace, instead of the little guy on the side.
And, correect me if I'm wrong, but it would not be a crime (under the DMCA or any other law) to reverse engineer the core Mac architecture and produce a compatible product.
On the other hand, it would be a violation of the DMCA to reverse engineer the print cartridges in the same manner because the DMCA protects the copyright protected code.
Oh, and another thing. If you've ever read the text of the DMCA, you will find that it does not prohibit the circumventing of access control mechanisms, but only the circumvention of EFFECTIVE access control mechanisms. (by my reading, IANAL)
If you can prove that the Lexmark mechanism is ineffective (as stands) then you should be home free as far as circumvention is concerned...
but the courts have yet to define "effective" here
Actually, Apple used DMCA to keep Other World Computing from patching iDVD so it'd work with other external and internal DVD-RWs
That's all I found from looking for Apple DMCA and Apple DMCA ROM
Get one at Wal-Mart and when the ink runs out - return it and get a new one, complete with a new ink cartridge. Wal-mart employees could care less. Just give some lame-ass excuse.
If manufacturers want to play this game, let's play! HP & Lexmark will have a new definition for "loss leader."
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
Seems like North Carolina forgot about a little thing in the Constitution called the Supremacy Clause.
In general, states can't nullify federal laws, but they can make federal laws much harder to enforce. For example, the City of Arcata banned compliance with the "optional" suggestions of the USAPATRIOT act.
Federal law, 17 USC 1201: "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." That is, you can't sell devices that defeat DRM.
Hypothetical state law: "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that contains one or more technological measures that effectively control access to a work, as defined in Title 17, United States Code, section 1201, if the device's packaging does not carry a conspicuous label that discloses the restrictions enforced by such measures." That is, you can't sell DRM that isn't labeled.
I don't see a supremacy problem here. The federal law bans black boxes; the state law merely requires labeling.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because of the practical design of Canon's print systems (replaceable print heads with reasonably-priced separate ink cartridges), I strongly recommend Canon inkjet printers to anybody who uses Windows and wants an inkjet printer. However, I've read that Canon has given no help in publishing enough documentation to let Microsoft's competitors develop drivers to make recent Canon inkjet printers work on operating systems other than Windows.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have seen printers damaged from using 3rd Party Ink. Because they were using the cheap stuff and the fact that their printer broke. They decided that because their printer keeps on having trouble that they wont buy that printer again. While if they used the real ink the printer could have used for many more years. While there are good 3rd party Ink out their. But there are a bunch of Rip Offs that hurt the printer and this is like slander towards the printer maker.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The DMCA does contain such a provision, codified as 17 USC 1201(f), but the courts have in effect nullified it in Universal v. Reimerdes by refusing to recognize DeCSS as having been "reverse engineered for purposes of interoperability".
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is where you are wrong. Apple is a hardware company that writes their own OS and software.
Apple makes their money on hardware sales. Period. Remeber the clone wars? Power Computing, Umax and the others qucikly developed better and more powerful machines than Apple. This almost killed them. They spent more time and money updating the OS (no profit here) while everyone purchased everyone elses hardware. if Steve Jobs had not come back in the fold and killed the clones Apple wouldn't be here today. Don't get me wrong, I was as pissed off as everyone else when the clones were killed but in the long run I now see it was the right thing to do. This same reasoning goes to why you will never see OSX on x86.
Somewhere you've glossed over the fact that companies that create disposable junk increase the wear and tear on our natural environment.
Consider printer ink which you "could" buy by the liter. Instead, now we've got to buy the box, the plastic sealing, and the heavy plastic ink cartridge.
Waste, pure waste. Lexmark should be held accountable!
+100
A personal laser printer.
You can get a good b&w one for about $300, and the toner lasts damn near forever.
when you need them. Because people have exactly this type of attitude. Buy printer... printer sucks down in... find out new ink (colour+b&w) costs nearly as much as the printer, or even more.
Printer ends up in landfill... I'm sure there are a lot of non-environmentally friendly components.
So why aren't/weren't the environmentalists all over Lexmark's ass for this... they know it's what happens?!
> Or you could just not buy a lexmark printer. Let the market descide, don't legislate to death.
A take a couple issues with your statement:
1. Most, if not all, inkjet vendors practice this. In fact an inkjet vendor that didn't practice this would be cut out of the market because he would have to charge the real cost of the printer. Thus, everyone is undercutting each other and passing the cost in another form. This is arguably anti-competitve behavior and undercutting to drive someone out of business in many situations has been ruled to be anti-competitive.
2. The consumer may or may not know what ink really costs. Its important to know the mark-up and using ignorance to overcharge on such a level is ethically dubious. Worse, there is nothing the consumer can do except move onto other technologies like laser printers. Now, imagine if the $20 laser printer came out except toner was $150 and it had some BS DRM attached to it. Now what do you do? Move to a copy machine?
This is simply bad business and even in the US this can be seen as illegal undercutting.
3. Legislation like the DMCA gives DRM protected ink a ridiculous amount of legislative protections. In other words the law is part of the problem and claiming "dont change the laws" is silly when a law like the DMCA exists.
The problem with these old beasts is that they stayed powered up and hot to be able to print quickly at any time. OK if you are in an air conditioned office and really doing a lot of printing. However, if you have one one your home system you might not even print every day, but the electricity the thing will cost you to run day in and day out (not counting extra A/C costs) will be a lot more than the cost of a newer lower power printer. The old beasts just were not very "green". Consider the number like yours still in use, and it's a lot of wasted fule and associated polution just to have a printer ideling so that it can print quickly if someone wants to print. And many people (like me) may not have printed anything all day.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The thing is, it doesn't have to. Copyright law clearly has an exception for useful articles or things that provide a utilitarian function, so exactly the thing that Lexmark is trying to protect under a claim of copyright is likely voided by this exception. See more details of this here.
Note also that this same exception might well exclude the "copyrighted" code that Microsoft claims is a copyright violation in X-box mod chips. Copyright was never intended for this sort of thing, and the exception makes it pretty clear that the writers of the law didn't want copyright to be abused this way.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The Mac ROMs were reverse-engineered long ago using a white-box approach - the publicly available API descriptions from Inside Macintosh were used to get a start and then they just messed with it until it worked. There was a Mac-on-Unix emulator, damn, I've forgotten the name, but it came out around 1990. Apple killed it the old-fashioned way - they bought it, circa 1996. I think portions of it made their way into the Blue Box.
Apple doesn't license MacOS to OEMs. That's how they keep people from making Mac clones. Most people want to buy a machine with an OS, not a bare box and then have to schlep over to the Apple Store to buy OS X.
Apple does not have a monopoly on the desktop market. MS does. It's a whole different ball game.
Chee, if you did that, you'd have ... a PEE CEE!!!!
So if you want a PEE CEE, why not just buy one? You can get one CHEAPER! Go for it, man!
Dell operators are waiting for your call!
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Those who forget the past are doomed
You really shouldn't have to do this. How many little laws have to be created to sidestep 'unintended' consequences of the one law to rule them all before it can be declared a Bad Law?
Ever hear of a little company called Microsoft? They only sell the OS. Wait, check that, they only lease the OS. By leaving the hardware to clones, you sell more computers. Soon the profit from selling the OS will far, far eclipse the profit from hardware. In short, Apple would radically expand it's marketshare and make more money.
How will it benefit consumers?
Lower cost Macs with the same quality. You got a problem with that?
This worked well in germany with toy manufacturers. They were required to pick up the tab for any packaging that ended up in the municipal waste stream. Within weeks the companies were selling just the Barbie doll and not the giant cardboard box and plastic. What, was the Barbie doll going to spoil sitting there?
What many people don't realize is that a lot of our environmental problems are caused by regulatory environments that allow companies to shove costs off onto the government. When a cost is external, it doesn't affect the company's actions. When the cost is internalized and suddenly it makes economic sense to recycle components and use less packaging, then the environmentally correct action flows naturally. You can't impose environmental requirements that add cost, it doesn't work very well. You CAN make a company pay the real cost of disposing of its waste, and being motivated by profit, get companies to make the right decisions for economic reasons.
This law only applies IN North Carolina, there's no interstate commerce involved. Hence, no conflict with the DMCA or any other federal law because it's not in their jurisdiction. The law doesn't say anything about what goes on in other states, and doesn't affect federal courts. So, what this means is that a local company - one with offices/plants/etc ONLY in North Carolina can make these refill cartridges and sell them like mad. They can't be tried in federal court because there's no interstate commerce, and thus no jurisdiction. Now, a national company couldn't do this, they could still be subject to DMCA suits in federal court - but there's nothing preventing them from spinning off a unit to pursue this market. And of course the company can't sell them across state lines without coming into federal jurisdiction again, so this is no benefit to the rest of us except as a motivator to write our legislatures. If similar laws were enacted in the majority of states (and what voter wouldn't be in favor of this?) then Lexmark's victory in federal court would be largely void.
Just to share my experence, I purchased a used HP 4mv used for almost $400 about 6 years ago (That was a good price 6 years ago) and a brand new toner cart which was $100 or so.
Gave it to one of my parents who has never once changed the toner cart on it, and it prints off roughly 200 pages a month every month for her billings, plus a few random pages here and there.
Text still comes out crisp and black, and it shows no signs of needing new toner anytime soon.
The things are built like tanks.