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Lexmark Recalls 40,000 Laser Printers
ack154 writes "An electrical shock hazard has caused Lexmark to recall about 39,400 laser printers. The printers were sold under the nameplates of Lexmark, IBM, and Dell. From the article: "The recalled printers include Lexmark E232, E232t, E330, E332n, E332tn; IBM Infoprint 1412, 1412n; Dell 1700 and 1700n." Contact information is provided in the article in order to get your free replacement."
See, if the printers were open source, then this problem would have been caught much earlier!
or is Lexmark implementing a no-refilled-toner circuit on the sly in the replacement printers? They're known for some sharp practices with their inkjet series of printers, aren't they?
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I never was a real fan of Lexmark printers but they are actually pritty popular because they can take a lot of paper trays. I have seen some 4 or 5 high with paper trays. They are very popular at banks. I havent been to a bank yet that doesn't use Lexmark Printers. That may just be because banks are cheap. But reparing some lexmark printeres and seeing where there are a lot of oversights in the design process of the printers where there could be a problem like that. There not like HP or Xerox (I am talking about Laser Printers not the others) printers which are designed quite well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No reason to recall these printers. Who here, wouldn't mind getting a nasty little shock every once in a while, besides me ? I wont be participating in this recall, no thank you Lexmark.
My first good discharge, when I was 13, working on the circuit board of a commodore monitor. Not sure what I touched but I could feel the wave of electricity going up and through my arm, couldn't move, literally I was stuck for at least 2 seconds. Pretty scary but thrilling at the same time. I wouldn't call it a near death experience but it was damn near exciting.
Peace.
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
That would turn the tables a bit on the normal Lexmark materials issue.
Contact information is provided in the article in order to get your free replacement.
and.. for those already electrocuted?
Thanks for the great gift idea, slashdot. With Christmas just around the corner I know that my PHB will just love a printer in his office that's his very own.
...you can't set a laser printer on 'stun'?
If you REALLY want to tweak a Dell rep, when you have them on the phone, talk about the nice Lexmark printers they are selling. They are very adamant that they aren't Lexmarks, they are Dells. It's pretty hilarious. Our rep kinda jumped down our bosses throat when he called them Lexmarks. It's fun to mess with them. Especially when you see articles like these, and others, talking about the Lexmark printers.
...we used to called Lexmark "Lex merde" cause of the crap they used to churn out.
I am NaN
So now you have a "get out of lexmark-hell free" card. Return your old printer for the recall and get the new one fresh in the box. Sell the new printer as "brand new in box" on ebay or in local papers. Then go out to the store and get a decent printer.
Don't Tread on Me
Do to massive copyright infringement, whenever someone prints out copyrighted materials they will receive an electric shock!!
A color shock hazard has caused Lexmard to recall about 39,400 laser printers. The stories were posted under the editorship of Timothy, Michael and Hemos. From the article: "The recalled stories include Lexmark Recalls 40,000 Laser Printers, Interview of Danger (Sidekick II) CEO Hank Nothhaft and Is Intel Making Too Many Chips? Contact information is provided in the article in order to get your free replacement which is easyer on the eyes. Oops, no! The replacement has the same eye-shocking colors! The dastartds!
And I am not surprised they only sold 40000 of these, people usually rush and get other stuff, like my HP Deskjet 510 which still works perfectly 11 years later :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I find it weird that people (or stockholders) would react so negatively to news like this. Making millions of consumer electronic items, there will always be some mistakes made. What matters is not that shit happens, but how it is handled.
Ofcourse it would be nice if products were perfect, but I don't regard a manufacturer any worse because of a mishap like this. If they handle such a recall in a painless and professional way, that would more likely boost my confidence in them. Problems like this are often very minor things, and say nothing about the overall quality of their product.
I would think worse (and less likely buy something) of a company that tries to look good, sweep problems under the rug, and pretend nothing happened.
Netcraft confirms: Lexmark users are dying.
Hey, wasn't there a device on /. a few months back that could actually recharge a laptop or a mobile phone just by putting them onto a mat?
Well, perhaps this is just a prototype in a field test? ;)
You, my dear, have never worked in journalism.
In journalism, 39400 is a difficult number. Many reporters have trouble understanding numbers such as those. Thus, it is rounded up to 40000, because that's both easier to comprehend and it looks cooler (lots of zeros).
Next in line are the editors. The editors like round numbers, that's why the reporters always round their numbers up. Most editors like round numbers so much that they round them up to, let's say, 50000, which obviously is half of 100000.
You might also have noticed that lexmark stock is down $3.46 from this morning. Let's apply the same techniques that we learned earlier. Let's make this a nice, round figure of $5.
Now, Lexmark has about 129.5 million shares outstanding. This means, in journalist-speak, that there are 200 million lexmark shares on the market. Multiply this with the figure you got earlier (this part is very difficult for most reporters and editors) and you get $1,000,000,000.
This looks very impressive, right? Still, there's something missing. Of course there is! Let's add the word "over". What do we get?
LEXMARK MAKES OVER $1,000,000,000 LOSS ON PRINTER RECALL
Isn't that a headline to be proud of?
Of course, you might ask what the heck I'm smoking and what this has to do with reality. If you do that, you've uncovered one of the greatest secrets about journalism - it has nothing to do with reality at all.
Oh, and by the way, where did all those $1,000,000,000 USD go? Well, I'll tell you. In fact, I could use a bit of help in transfering those to a private bank acount. If you care to help me out, I can offer you a 30% share of the money...
Fire in the Lexmark
Fire in the rebadged dell
Fire in the Lexmark
Fire in the gates of hell
Don't you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It's my Lexmark, It's my Lexmark, It's my Lexmark
Don't you want to know how we keep starting fires?
It's my Lexmark, It's my Lexmark, It's my Lexmark
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, When we print
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
When we touch, when we print
when we touch
~~~
Yesterday my dad asked me to order a new toner cartridge for our Dell 1700... I was going to order it tonight (for $130) but then I saw this article. It turns out the 1700 is one of the printers being recalled, so I decided to get ours replaced hoping that it would come with a new toner cartridge. The process was extremely simple. I typed in the service tag, and on the next page the name and address were correctly filled in already so I hit submit. It's coming in 2-3 business days and they're also giving us pre-paid packaging to send the old printer back. I'm not sure how the other companies are handling it, but with Dell it couldn't have been any easier.
Together with the IBM adapter recall last week , it would seem the CPSC is getting better at picking out product safety faults than UL whom the manufacturers actually pay to do this kind of thing.
they should recall ALL lexmark printers. I've yet to see one that was worth using.
That particularly lovely model of printer also had "electrical problems"; that is, the power supply melted away! Then after a quick search I found I was not the only one with the same melty problem. So this news surprises me, but only because Lexmark is actually recalling a faulty product!
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Back before there were laser printers for PCs, the first laser printer I encountered was an IBM unit the size of about 6 racks and had a drum with a diameter of about 3 feet. It used the old pin-fed paper and like the line printers it stood next to, took paper by the box. It could go through an entire box of paper in 7 minutes.
Thus, you had this huge fast spinning drum in a very dry environment. When it was first installed it was improperly grounded, and soon afterward one print room employee got severly shocked, with the static charge arcing about a foot, knocking him across the room. The details weren't made public, but I believe he got a decent settlement from IBM.
I guess you could say this isn't the first incident of electic shock from a laster printer...
e to the i pi equals negative one
Call the 800 number. I have a bad feeling about this. I don't think Lexmark has to replace them with a new model. They can give you a refurbished model. Of course it will still be under warranty but warranties are worth sh*t. What kind of condition it is in counts more, especially for mechanical devices. If you think otherwise, you should buy the merchandise in Best Buy in obviously crushed boxes to save $10. So the box was dropped hard enough to partly separate the components from the boards and misalign the mechanical parts. It's under warranty, right?
Do you understand how to read? He didn't compare inkjet and laser, but rather the practices companies use to disallow 3rd party product usage.
No, really. That's shocking.
An electrical shock hazard has caused Lexmard to recall about 39,400 laser printers.
Is it really Lexmard?
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
Headline reads "Lexmark Recalls 40,000 Laser Printers" then the story goes onto to say "An electrical shock hazard has caused Lexmard to recall about 39,400 laser printers." so infact they did'ent recall 40,000 printers! :)
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
Lexmark was spun off of IBM, which is why many were sold under the IBM nameplate.
But still, I've got a bone to pick. Many people here are saying that Lexmark printers aren't "real" or "decent" printers, but why?
I often gaffed at people who owned Lexmark printers because I never had used one and I never had one myself. With my last computer I got a Lexmark for free and I let it sit in the box for a good month. I refused to hook it up.
But it works very, very well. It's an inkjet and after lots of bad experiences with HP and even Epson brand inkjets I'm convinced that that this one will stay on my desk. The ink is waterproof (dropped a piece of paper in the sink, you'd never know now), prints fast and yes... it's supported by Linux.
The trick with any printer under any operating system is knowning that most work the same. While there was no "driver" for my particular model it was easy to just test a few before finding the one that worked with mine (Z705). I think I tried a total of two before finding one that worked.
No matter. I find it silly to continue to support companies just because that is all you'll use. I was like this years ago when I thought that brand names were everything... but now that I've grown up a bit I've realized that performance is what matters.
Sure, I'll likely go with HP the first time I buy a laser printer but that all depends.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Not only is there contact information in the friendly article, there is also this little gem:
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Great news for HP - they must be laughing their asses off!
This is interesting news in relation to HP vs. Dell (Lexmark, that is) printer war.
Dell wants to screw up HP by selling directly cheap(er) printers that are supposedly as good as HP's. Well, that's obviously not entirely true.
HP laser printers aren't cheap, but they're good.
The question is can Dell find a supplier that can equal HP in quality and newest technology?
Gee, and all this time [bzzzttt] I thought that was a Security Feature [pfftt] to address clueless users. [zzzZAAAP!] Sort-of like a bug light for IT idiots.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
Thought I'd purchased too soon when I got our E320, but now I have no regrets :)
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
I was 13 when I moved up from sticking knives in sockets and cut plugs in the outlets.
I found dead hemlock stems were very stiff, light, and, by leaving a bit of root on the end while trimming the leaves and flowers off the stems, I could make a javelin I could launch a good 100yds. at least.
So there I am tossing it over the highest wires of the telephone pole, when the javelin catches on the near high-voltage wire, then falls over onto the far high-voltage wire.
When it looked like it was bursting into flame I turned to run in the house, and saw the house light up in a big blue flash (nice noise effects, too)
Every house in the 'hood flickered, and a few minutes passed when a PG&E drone went by...
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
At my old company we said, "If the product was not tested, lawsuits could run us out of business. If we pass tests and someone does something stupid and gets hurt, then the courts will not award the person more than $100,000.
ZAP!
Victim: Stupid piece of shit printer, time to call Dell support. Why can't I grab the phone.
Annoying Dell spokesboy walks in
Spokesboy: Dude! You're going to Hell!
Victim: WTF? What are you talking about boy it's hot in here...
Sees Satan
Victim: Oh crap....
Good programmers drink beer to relieve job stress.
Great programmers drink hard liquor and work best hungover.
They're the ones who tried to use the DMCA to stifle competition in the aftermarket toner cartridge market. Take advantage of the recall to make them lose more money, but please don't ever buy another Lexmark printer!
Lexmark reports record second hand sales of its E232, E232t, E330, E332n, E332tn printers. Apparently most of the leather and printers were bought by members of an organization named GWSF (Geeks With Shock Fetish).[shudders]
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Ha! Overrated? Why yes, the Apache scheme is.
... the "illicit" third-party toner cartridges.
It all adds up now!
2-3 months ago, my company ordered a dozen or so new PCs. Three weeks later we call to see where they are, and they have no record of the order. We place it again, and they offer us two free Laser printers with it to apologize!
They were 1700s... Now I have to wonder if they knew about this flaw before & were trying to unload them on unsuspecting businesses... Guess I can't complain TOO much, since they were free & good-enough quality for my office.
With the way Lexmark makes their printers, that they're not instructing users to throw their printers away after removing the nameplate from the back, and mailing the nameplate back to lexmark.
I mean, after all, they are the maker of the famous $40 printer that takes $35 ink cartridge.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
S45 is an old A3 inkjet. The plastic tends to yellow, 5 of these with dead 24V rails and fusion damage.
Both big brands have issues with 'Network' servers that die, which may indicate something.
If network cards die, or loose settings, there is probably a chance that it is electricals.
The authorities should check on motion activated floodlight sensors - DC with a live capacitor dropper, and a piece of buss jumper wire for 'F1'
took long enough for y'all to post this I work at a branch of the countries largest office supply change. We pulled the machine in early august as ordered by lexmark. When the retail lexmark rep came in he told me their was a powersupply problem but if any yone asks just tell them we are bringing out a new model. I couldn't believe it they took long enough for the consumer recall and didn't want to recall them. This lexmark sales rep said the problem was do to grounding and anyone with a modern house would be safe, he said lexmark engineers believe most people have houses up to the NEC(National Electric Code) He gave me a gift certificate to keep quite. If I get some good posts back I will give out more info
Torvalds is god
File this under "Would that it be true."
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
..and banks bleed blue. Banks have Lexmark printers because of the historic relationship with IBM.
"I should have warned you. That clock gets incredibly hot if you leave it plugged in."
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.