Getting Around Printer-Manufacturer Abuse

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a guy that demonstrates how printer companies abuse their clients. He found that Lexmark cartridges are a perfect replacement for Xerox ones, with only minor modifications to the printer. It's well illustrated with may photographs."

Comments

Unfortunately

[SisyphusShrugged]

Unfortunately these kinds of abuses are prevalent throughout this industry, this specific one brings to mind the advert with for OfficeDepot, I think it is, where the guy reads out the cartridge numbers like it he is reading out lottery numbers.

It is annoying that standardisation has spread through the majority of hardware issues, but still remains stubborn when it comes to printer cartridges.

I want my dot matrix back

[rsilvergun]

I remember buying my Epson 880 thinking "I only print once in a while, it doesn't matter that the cartridges are $40 bucks a pop, I'll buy one a year tops". Boy did I feel dumb (and taken) when I found out the ink drys in about 3 months or so. It ticks me off I can't find a decent 24 pin dot matrix (not counting high end check printers) new anymore. Used just doesn't cut it, by the time I get ahold of 'em they've been run into the ground (usually the paper feed mechanism jams ever 4 pages or so). The printer market is probably the best example in history of the market working against consumers. Maybe some gov't regulation is called for. Europe did it I think. At least they should do something to keep all those printer cartridges out of land fills. It's ridiculous to needlessly waste resources so companies can sell more product.

nice hack

[The Clockwork Troll]

This is a nice hack but I fail to see the evidence of "abuse" on the part of either manufacturer. Maybe the more expensive brand has a better warranty that the parts costs subsidize? Maybe the cartridges are nearly the same form factor but one brand goes through a more rigorous quality assurance process?

The lack of compatibility certainly gnaws at the engineers in us but it's hasty to assume that the cost to make them compatible would have been zero, especially when you take into account intangibles such as warranty, service, support, etc. Maybe it's just MuVo 2 (4GB compact flash)-type opportunism but the article doesn't bear that out on its own. More research is due before simply calling it "abuse".

I want my dot matrix back-Tanks for the memories.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Used just doesn't cut it, by the time I get ahold of 'em they've been run into the ground (usually the paper feed mechanism jams ever 4 pages or so). "

Take them apart and fix them. And yes I use to be a printer tech. Those printers were built like tanks.

As for the situation mentioned in the story. HP and Lexmark could be using different ink formulations. Not all inks are equal. I don't need to tell you how many printers I've seen in bad shape because someone used a third-party cartridge.

lexmark is crap (xerox is probably as well)

[Indy1]

every lexmark printer i've had to work with (and believe its been a quite a few) has been a cheap piece of crap. Most inkjets are pretty cheesy too. And the scary thing is, you can get quality lasers (samsung ml-1710) for under $100 if you shop hard. No funky multi-meg drivers required either.

3rd party Continuous Ink Systems.

[Night0wl]

I found a rather nice solution to the cost of cartridges and "refil" kits. 3rd Party CIS systems.
My mother works for Head Start, and does a hideous ammount of printing. This of course adds up when you have to buy cartridges all the time, as we all know.

One day I heard about Continuous Ink Systems. We decided to give it a shot, 99$ for an Epson Photo 820 printer, and 180$ for the CIS kit, and we haven't looked back since.
It is a bit of a kludge to make the system work, but with a little care it will work, and work hard. As opposed to a contained cartridge, it's a tube fed 6 bottle setup. 4 oz. bottles of Ink provide hundreds and hundreds of prints. Full color.

We've certainly saved on cartridges this way, at the cost of some mild frustration from the kit. But in the end it does work.

Re:3rd party Continuous Ink Systems.

[Night0wl]

I suppose you could call it that, to an extent. It's a standard cartridge with tube feeds.

And no, I never said it was portable. Deffinitely not portable. :)

the particular system I've used was just a modification of the retainment clip for the cartridge, and a few support struts for the tubing.

Re:This compares low-yield vs. high-yield.

[Jason1729]

But if you refill the cartridge, you're better off with the low yield model because it's cheaper and it has the same heads, so as long as you don't let it run out of ink, you'll get just as much life out of it for half the price.

I have an HP Photosmart 7350 printer, it takes a C6657a cartridge which costs $35. Cheaper HP printers take a c8728a cartridge which is $20. What HP doesn't tell you is that the two cartridges are exactly identical except that the 28a has 8ml of ink while the 57a has 17ml. When I refill, the 28, it even takes about 17ml, so for a $15 savings all I lose is half of my first fill.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:abuse?

[mightymik2]

I just bought an ink set and a chip resetter for Epson, and it works like a charm. A little googling goes a long way to find the right stuff.

Re:abuse?

[craigbeat]

While I was a student, I worked for a plastics company who made the Lexmark cartridges (in the UK). The amount of work to make sure the cartridges were of a good standard was rather surprising, with spot checks on yields every half hour using very fine measuring equipment and magnifying devices. The plastic that was used (I think it was called Noryl and was supplied by GE) seemed temprimental, with many cartridges being rejected. Add to that the fact I destroyed one of the moulding tools at a cost of 50,000 and you can see where the costs are. To have someone then come along and take the 'good' cartridges and fill them with their own ink without incurring those costs does, perhaps seem unfair.

However, if other companies are able to produce the cartridges (without infringing patents), where's the problem? And indeed, if it is the cost of the cartriage itself the companies are worried about, why don't THEY have a recylcling scheme? Clearly, the 3rd party vendors are making money from it...

I hope this post makes sense, I've just woken up...

Re:third party toner and ink

[jrumney]

Of course, this means that whenever a repair technician comes out, they will invariably diagnose the fault to be the cause of the third-party component

At a company I used to work for, we had a high-volume Ubix laser, which kept having problems with paper jams. Eventually the Ubix engineer blamed it on the fact that we were not using Ubix branded paper. We reluctantly switched to the overpriced paper, and the jams continued, but Ubix continued to refuse to honour the warrantee if we switched back to non-Ubix paper.

Re:abuse?

[orzetto]

A lot of people get this impression of capitalism as being TINA (there's no alternative). Capitalism is as good as gravitation, magnetism, chemical kinetics: it is a number of phenomena that obey social or physical laws, and the result can or cannot be good for society (depending also on the definition of what "good" is)

Simple capitalism theory, including the demonstration that perfect competition is the most efficient way to produce goods, rests on three pillars:

1. All producers are irrelevant in the market
2. All consumers have perfect knowledge of the market
3. There is only one market

When some of these assumptions go bananas, so goes efficiency, and that's when your wallet starts aching.

It is maybe worth noting that all requirements are in open contradiction, since you can't have perfect knowledge of a infinite market, nor is everything packed in only one market - e.g. ordering from abroad will cost you an "access fee" in the form of mailing costs, that makes buying a 1% cheaper ice cream in Bucharest unattractive if you live in Miami. This simply means that capitalism is achievable only as an approximation, how good depends on the people who set the rules.

In the case of printer cartridges, 1 goes bananas because every producer is a near-monopolist of his printers; 2 goes bananas because few know that it is possible to hack printers to pay less; and 3 because every printer manufacturer has his cartridge market, sometimes more as their printers are normally not cross-compatible.

So, this is indeed Capitalism 101, but at the distortion of market chapter. What needs to be done is a state-imposed standard on printer cartridges, to reinstate competition and fair pricing. Start bullying your politicians today!

TCO: Easy refill Lasers and bladders for Inkjets.

[openmtl]

In the last year I've bought 10 ink and 2 laser printers for a school (and 1 ink and a Laser for me)

For Lasers I use the Samsung ML4500 because it is easy to refill its toner - a simple plug pops out and in goes the cheap toner. Also at around USD 100 for the whole laser gets you the first 2000 pages anyway.

For colour inkjets I've used Canon S200/250/300 models as they all have the (same part across many models) bladder-only style refills (no head - the head is a separate part). These are cheap (less than USD 15) for Canon-branded refills and even cheaper for generic brand. No refilling kits needed. If the head goes - I'd probably throw out the whole printer.

Time is money and I'm happy to refill a Laser toner (if its easy and this Samsung is but not all Lasers are) but all inkjets are so fiddly (from experience of refilling HP, Lexmark and Oki).

So don't complain about how expensive ink is or how hard it is to refill - look at the whole of life of your purchase including how expensive and how easy it is to refill.

Also at the school I always reject anyone trying to donate printers to us: this is one thing thats more a burden than a gift ! old monitors are fine !

Re:HP

[darien]

I know how you feel - there's an Epson Stylus printer at work that uses four separate colour cartridges and refuses to print if any of the colours is empty. So if you've run out of Cyan, you have to install a new Cyan cartridge before you can print your page of black text. There can't possibly be any technical or logical justification for this - they're very clearly just trying to force their customers to keep buying new cartridges. It stinks, and I certainly won't be buying Epson in the future.

My personal printer is an HP, and they seem to be a bit less brazen about this sort of thing. Admittedly their cartridges are expensive, but my local supermarket does compatibles for a fiver (about the price of two cappuccinos), so as far as I'm concerned HP can make up whatever stupid price they want for the official ones.

Variables involved

[rjasmin]

As always there are two sides to this:

One is the fact that ink is too expensive, and manufacturers know that. Price of really cheap printers is intentionally as low as it can be, and by using proprietary ink cartridges, manufacturers are only protecting their investment. They sold you a cheap printer, and hope to get their money back on cartridges. It's not just the cartridges. Ever wondered why most of the printers are shipped without printer cable?
A printer cable can cost as much as $25 for a 3m cable, and yet the real price of the cable must be under $1 in bulk. Talking about profit...

The other side has it with print quality. Printer HAS to know, because of the way it's designed, what kind of ink is in the cartridge. Electronics has to be able to direct correct amount of ink at the right time. Replacement ink usually has different physical properties (boiling point, composition, amount of pigment), and the printer has no way of detecting what really got through to paper surface. So with different cartridges you will get different quality and even different colors on paper.

Re:third party toner and ink

[darien]

Of course the ink is patented; but it's still just basic ink, and any reputable supplier will make stuff as good as, or better, than the original manufacturer.

Fair point in general, but actually not the case with Tektronix (who made the particular printer the original poster was referring to). These chaps make high-end colour printers that don't just squirt CMYK ink onto the page - they actually generate "ink" of the desired colour on the fly by melting tiny amounts of coloured waxes together, then applying the mixture to the paper, where it dries. The result is very nice solid blocks of pure colour, but it's obviously a precision process which needs the wax to stay at exactly the right consistency for exactly the right length of time at a particular temperature. It's easy to imagine that another company trying to replicate the Tektronix wax formula would end up with something very nearly the same, but it will almost certainly solidify very slightly more quickly - or very slightly more slowly - than the official shizzle, increasing the risk of congealed wax ending up in unwanted places and clogging the mechanism.

Canon, too, in my case

[MickLinux]

My mother in law owns a Con S450, which started generating the error code (flashing orange/green) ...-o-o-o-o-o-o-g-... repeatedly.

Looking it up on the web, we found this (google cache) and this (google cache).

I'll let people make their own opinions, so that I don't accuse them ... but it seems to me applicable to this topic.

Anyhow, we don't have a fix, nor much expectation of getting one.

This Slashdot article will thus force changes

[0x0d0a]

All it takes is adding something to the ink that makes it a bit more viscous or a bit less, and then modifying the mechanism to cope.

I'm surprised the Big Inkjet Printer Manufacturers haven't already done so.

When I used a printer, I used a laser that someone had tossed out, which worked nicely.

Now, though, I just plain don't print anything. Everyone likes having things in electronic format, anyway. These days, most things handed to someone on paper just get entered into a computer.

RFID and consumer lock-in?

[whovian]

If they really wanted to, couldn't manufacturers embed a passive RFID tag inside the body of the cartridge to ensure "their" printer only uses "their" brand ink?

I think for that to happen, they would however need a way to make the cartridges non-refillable.

Re:RFID and consumer lock-in?

[SharpFang]

RFID are ranged devices.
Scenario 1.
Put 3rd party cartridge into printer, place original, old cartridge on top of the printer. The printer works, receiving ID from old cartridge, drawing ink from the new one.
Scenario 2. two printers of different brand, each with original cartridge, on one desk. One printer receives ID from 2 different cartridges and thinking you try to cheat it like in scenario 1, locks up.

Of course if it was implemented on-chip in the cartridge, read through wires...

Nothing new here

[dcavanaugh]

Back in the days when dot matrix was the only game in town, ribbons were exhorbitantly priced, with little "features" to ensure a revenue stream to the manufacturer. The first workaround was ribbon re-inkers. You could place a little block of felt near the ribbon intake and put a few drops of ink onto the felt every so often. Ultimately, generic knock-offs solved most of the problem.

Re:Nothing new here

[dcavanaugh]

Most of the ribbons ran in a perpetual loop, no rewinding involved. After some number of runs (2 or 3?), the characters would fade and it was time for a new ribbon (or 3 more ink drops on the felt pad.) The ribbons all had a little knob, but that was merely to take up tension and advance the ribbon. If you were twisting the knob thinking it was rewinding the ribbon (and extending it's life), the joke's on you!

The Okidata 8x and 9x series were real beasts; far and away the most rugged printers I ever saw. They used spools that were compatible with typewriter ribbons. In fact, you could install a typewriter ribbon and it worked! The print head allegedly needed some kind of lubrication that was built into the genuine Oki ribbons. Now that I think of it, the ribbons had a little eyelet that caught a lever so as to reverse the ribbon direction. The printers were fairly expensive, but the ribbons (even the genuine ones) were cheap.

Panasonic had a neat little gimmick. Their ribbons were very expensive, but they had an ink reserve; you could push a button on the cartridge and it would use its ink reserve to start re-inking itself. That trick only worked once; after you did it, you were supposed to go buy another ribbon.

More common

[N8F8]

When I ponder the ink cartridge issue in my head I try to relate it to the auto industry. With manufacturers oursourcing their pars more and more, the chances of two products from competing products containing the same or very similar parts increases. On the one hand the manufacturer is trying to determine the value of manufacturing a component over its lifetime. On the other hand the consumer wants the parts as cheaply as they can get them. Either way the R&D and engineering that want into designing the component should be reimbursed. Same thing with drugs. Same thing with art.

But then again the gas and fuel filling recepticles on cars are universal. But in that case the engineers in one industry (automotive) were makeing their product compatible with a system designed by another industry (petroleum). Maybe a company should come along and supply really good ink at commodity prices. Maybe printer companies wouold then have an incentive to standardize. Of course they would also probably have to char 5X for the printer or just plain get out of the printer business.

Re:More common

[Anonymous Coward]

This is *old*. The original Volkswagen Beetle, designed in pre-World-War II Germany, was designed as the Porsche but had various parts cheapened down at Adolf Hitler's insistence to make it affordable for the "Volks". For many years, you basically got Porsche enginie parts by buying them at a VW repair shop if you had a clue.

This also led to some VW Beetle owners replacing part of their transmissions with Porsche transmissions. At about 110 MPH, unfortunately, the standard VW Beetle body produces enough lift that you have little chance of staying on the highway, even if you put several hundred pounds of cement in the hood. (Old VW Beetles had their engine in the back, where it belonged to hold down the drive wheels and keep the transmission *short* and robust and avoid all the weirdness of differential ratios for modern front-wheel-drive cars.)

Why, no, I would never actually take such a vehicle out onto a a 5-mile stretch of mostly straight 8-lane highway at 3 AM and test it out. Why do you ask?

Re:HP

[aposch]

And then they were three ...

Option #3: I bought an expensive Epson Stylus Photo 1290 (>600 Euros) _and_ have to pay expensive cartridges (>50 Euros)

I should feel lucky ...

Re:third party toner and ink

[jellomizer]

I work for an Authorized Xerox/Tektronix Repair site for the 840 - 860s, 3rd party ink can really mess up the printer. (I have seen stalactites and stalagmites of Wax (Well it is a resin) Ink forming all around the printer. and heads getting clogged where they normally don't get clogged, The 3rd Party Ink has a slightly different melting temperature and/or Cooling temperature. Which can ruin the printer because it is fairly well timed for the use of the original ink. If you think you can just put in some "Tek" ink in the printer when you need it repaired, we can normally tell that you used 3rd party ink before (Sometimes we let it slide (but give you a warning afterwards) or sometimes we can't. When you use 3rd party ink the ink when dried is more flexible then the original stuff. The 3rd party Ink is actually different stuff and can cause major (and expensive problems with the printer)

Ridiculous price policies

[Animedude]

They way printer manufacturers try to sell cheap printers only to then make money by selling the ink has gotten really ridiculous. Let me tell you an example: Somebody I know has a small PC shop in addition to his normal job. Some weeks ago, he got an offer from one of the sellers he gets his hardware from about a pretty cheap Lexmark printer (Z65pro IIRC, some color ink printer with integrated 10/100 print server). They offered the printer to him for about 60 Euros, including a "high capacity" color ink cartridge. Since this was pretty cheap, he ordered fifteen printers and then sold them to some of his customers who were looking for a cheap printer to go with their new computer. Some of them also wanted an additional ink cartridge, just in case. My colleague then looked what a new original Lexmark ink cartridge for this printer would cost - 70 Euros!

End result: he ended up buying ten additional PRINTERS, stripped them of the ink cartridge (which he then sold to his customers) and sold the printers, without ink cartridge, for a few Euros each on eBay. It was actually FAR CHEAPER to buy a WHOLE NEW PRINTER than to buy an additional ink cartridge.

Instead of buying ink - just throw the printer away and buy a new one ...

Re:HP

[geoswan]

Do the math, people and stop yer bitching.

I question your math.

Somone pumping out 500 pages a month, on an inkjet, would go through a lot more than 6 refills. Inkjets generally claim that a cartridge is good for 500 pages. So, correcting the frequency of refills, your price per page is more like ten cents a page.

Any printing with graphics, or colour, will be even more expensive.

The figures the manufacturer's claim for 500 pages are open to question too.

Re:HP

[jcupitt65]

I had a quick look and the expensive HP printers are 69ml for $33, the cheap ones are 10ml for $17 (prices off the HP website), so that's about a factor of 3 saving on ink. Although it's hard to make a direct comparison because the high-end ones have separate ink reservoirs and printheads. Also, of course you're right to be skeptical about HP's margins on the 'cheap' refill. But it is less of a rip off :)

No idea if these links will work: big and 'cheap' vs. small and expensive.

Re:What do you want to bet

[Zeinfeld]

...That Xerox tries to sue this guy to take down the information?

Apart from the obvious jurisdiction issue (Xerox could still file suit in the US, might be tricky enforcing judgement, it is not clear that this is illegal even under DMCA. The DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering for discovery of interface functions.

Sure the courts bent over backwards on the DVD/CSS thing to outlaw a program sold as a DVD copier. It is far from clear that a pure DVD player would be illegal. When the patents expire in 2015 it will be 100% legal to sell players without the zone encoding of playback restrictions.

What is going on here with Xerox and HP is a 'razor and blades' business model. Some management guru wrote a book about them thirty years ago and ever since then people have tried to copy the model - even in areas where it simply does not fit.

With a razor there is a major advantage to having a new, sharp blade. If someone could make an electric razor that good there would be no competition. Actually you can make an electric that good - if you keep replacing the blades...

If you look at the Canon printers they make a whole series where you can fill up the ink from stock. They also make refil cartridges at a fair price and the basic cost of the printer is the same as an HP.

The big problem with canon printers is finding a place that stocks them. The computer stores would much rather sell a printer that gives them a refil cartridge sale.

As someone in the industry...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no problems with people using refilled carts. HOWEVER, what most people using these fail to realize is that there is no way in hell I'm going to support your "poor print quality" when you are using the 4.00 refills that you bought at a convienance store. I'm a tech support supervisor\2nd level tech and we constantly get people calling in saying that ink has leaked all over their printer after they refilled their carts. Should HP, Lexmark or Epson be responsible for fixing or repairing the printer when the customer does something with it that we do not support? Or how about when someone overrides the chip on the carriage and now no cartridge is detected properly? Is that the companies fault? If AMD and Intel don't support mods to their chips in the form of overclocking why in the hell should the HP?

Same thing with phone batteries...

[mark0]

I have Panasonic cordless phones -- two phones with one battery each, and one spare battery recharging in the base station. The Panasonic batteries were expensive and hard to find, but I found an identical, generic battery at Sears. The battery didn't fit -- until I removed an extraneous bit of plastic with a Dremmel tool. Works like a charm...

Ink Jet Mfgrs suck!

[gone.fishing]

I really hate the fact that the cost of replacement carts can and often do exceed the cost of an inexpensive printer. I don't do a whole lot of printing anymore because of the excessive cost of these danged carts.

When you buy replacement part for a car, you have several choices. You can buy parts from the OEM, you can buy parts on the secondary market from after market manufacturers and you can buy parts from rebuilders. There are advantages and disadvadvantages to each. You know those advantages and purchase accordingly.

It used to be the same with replacement parts for printers but with the DCMA and other regulations, it is now more or less a thing of the past. It is wrong. The manufacturer is now able to say "One of the things that you do when you buy this printer from us is you enter into a relationship with us for as long as you own the printer." This is not what I expected. I wonder what's next - will they develop a printer that only works with the paper they make?

I've contemplated buying a printer and modifying it so that I can easily refill it using syringes filled with ink. But I understand that Lexmark, HP and others have started building in "smart chips" that kind of count the ink that the cart dispenses. These chips then simply shut down after a perscribed amount of time. I don't know how true this is but I think I'll try this with my $35 Lexmark just to see.

OpenConsumables

[DavidDeLux]

Perhaps I've come up with a good idea - OpenConsumables. Why do us users get together to try and encourage the manufacturers to be more open with the consumables and not lock us into purchasing only their brand consumables.

Let's be honest, no manufacturer forces you to stick their brand on paper into their equipment (so the free-market applies)... but when it comes to consumables they will, if they can, lock you in.

Yes, I know that a lot of mnufacturers sell their machines with hardly any margin and recoup all their profit from the consumables, but when the same consumable is sold by two different manufacturers at at 50% price differential, it does make you think.

Time to form the Free Consumables Foundation - with free as in choice

Re:OpenConsumables

[DavidDeLux]

Nobody wants to pay $300 for thier printer when they can pay $100 for it (and later pay $40 for the cartridges).

Of course, but its the total cost of ownership that is important... not the initial capital outlay (which is usually low but with high running costs.

Sadly, many people just do do the math.

I was once at a company that were sending out CDs to clients. They printed nice labels on their inkjet, and were getting through expensive labels and ink like no tomorrow. I told them to get a dedicated CD label printer... I even did the math for them... sure the cap ex was a lot, but the running cos was minimal (like $0.2 per CD printed)... so, it would actually work out cheaper after only 14 months. Did they get it. No. Stupid, but that how it goes... cap ex spending was frozen, but running expenses could be sky high... and to hell with the bottom line.

Side-Note

[LacroixDP]

Interestingly enough, if you think that it might not yield the full cartridge with this metering system, you would be correct. I did several tests on all their printers available in the past two years and have noticed on every single one there is usually some ink left in the cartridge when it says it is empty. It is much worse on the C80/82/84's however. Those had quite a bit of ink left, enough so that when I reset the chip, it was able to print about 200 or more pages after it claimed it was empty. The 800/825/925, however, had enough for a few pages at best due to evaporative losses. If you want to play around with yield comparisons, this device is available in a few places which you can find on goodle.

Re:Epson Heads

[karnal]

Take it out for more than 30 seconds.

Then the printer will report it "full". Read your owners manual for more information.

Most epsons I've used do not interface with the cartridge whatsoever -- at least the older ones.

PCWorld Tests

[algf2004]

At PCworld, they have an article explaining this exact issue.

I only mention it because I'm in it :)