Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Getting Around Printer-Manufacturer Abuse

Posted by timothy on from the probably-violating-some-law-somewhere dept.

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."

4 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. Unfortunately by SisyphusShrugged · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
  2. Re:third party toner and ink by jrumney · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

  3. Variables involved by rjasmin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Same thing with phone batteries... by mark0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...