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HP Invents A New Way To Print
Sushant Bhatia writes "Forbes is reporting that HP is introducing new technology in its inkjet printers that should help the company and consumers save time and money. If successful, the strategy may alter the economics of the printer market. The new inkjet platform, which will initially be geared toward the high end of the market, will incorporate the print head in the printer itself rather than in the ink cartridge. It means cheaper prints for consumers (about 24 cents per photo print) and faster output. HP says it has more than halved the time it takes to print a 4-inch-by-6-inch photo, to 14 seconds. The press release from HP has details on the new technology."
Print-head-in-printer has been around for a long time. The advance they've made is using photolithography for more of the construction process.
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now if they could just lower the price on ink cartridges. 45 bucks to refill my ink is a bit steep.
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
I blame Carley for this concept seeing the light of day. If she hadn't left the company so abruptly, such innovation technology would have been soundly buried, the employees sacked, and the tech developed by a competitor. Instead, HP is producing equipment based on this!
It used to be that you could count on HP to produce absolutely nothing of interest and sap up every failing tech company on the market. What is the world coming to?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
HP makes their money off of ink, not printers. My prediction is that this will allow them to produce cartridges more cheaply, but they will still charge as much for them.
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...is to not print at all. I haven't had a printer for a decade now, and those two or three times that I've missed it were easily remedied by a trip to a Kinko's or some such similar service.
I have to believe that with the greater reliance on web and email for communications, along with bigger and better monitors, that most of the rest of you will cease missing their printers as well within the next few years.
So HP invented a new way to print, just it time for nobody to care.
Nice article about the new system and printer here.
How is this "inventing" a new way to print? Hasn't Epson been doing this for years in their printers?
I know when I replace my printer cartridge on my Epson I just replace the ink, unlike the old HP I used to have where I replaced the head every time.
Of course, this might be a new thing for HP to sell new printers, as when the ink dries in the head the whole printer has to be replaced. One of the downsides that we've always had to deal with in an Epson.
-Alyred
Being able to produce your own photos inexpensively from your digital images could worry businesses that print photos for you. If this tech hits the mainstream it could change the digital photo industry.
Voice your opinion!
This is nothing new, hp already has some printers with the printhead separate from the ink. Instead of worrying about replacing ink, you now have to worry about replacing ink and then every few ink changes replacing print heads as well.
Which is how every OTHER manufacturer of inkjets makes their printers. Way to innovate, HP.
So now with HP printers, it'll be just like epson: "Your print head is clogged? Throw away the printer". At least with HP if the 'head' clogs you throw away the cartridge and replace it with a new one.
So now will the whole printer expire instead of just the ink cartridge?
HP needs to make their driver problems the top priority instead of putting so much engineering effort into printing speed. Most people at home would be happy with a printer that last 5-6 years, printing at normal speed.
Most of the complaints against HP printers surrounds their replacement cartridge prices. Looks like, from the Forbes article that the new ones will be in the $10 price range. Curious to see how they turn this into their new cash cow. (Maybe 6 really, really low-capacity cartridges?)
I had an Epson in 1998 that had that. The print heads clog up when the ink dries in them. Now you have to buy a new printer instead of new cartriges, awesome.
Epson has been doing this for many years.
I've always heard that other manufacturers have not done this since it's more likely to result in clogged print heads. With the head-in-cartridge paradigm, the heads are replaced with the cartridge, and clogging is less likely or at least easier to fix.
This is different from what Epson has been doing in the last ten years exactly how???
Oh, I see, HP will patent the concept...
I thought that keeping the print heads in the cartridges was an advantage that HP had over its competitors.
The thing I liked about HP Inkjets was that the Printheads didn't die in them, since they weren't part of the printer....so much for that :(
I thought that's what Epson printers had/did anyway. Which is why, I believe, that after a while I coudn't get good print output from my Epson since it gummed up between the cartridge and the head, so I chucked it.
Epson has had print heads in the inkjet printers for a long time. That's why the ink cartridges are only $7 retail (I got a dozen for ~$15 on ebay).
Canon used to have theirs seperate from the little ink wells so that you could replace the heads independent of each other.
The 'heads' are just micro-voltage actuated valves. The ones built into cartridge heads have short lifetimes (hence why you shouldn't refill more than 3 or 4 times). The quality of heads in the Epson are much sturdier, but then you waste alot of ink trying to purge clogged valves.
I used to work on a LARGE printer (printed directly to custom cardboard boxes). The printheads were made by Marsh printing (~400 just to have them repacked) and was bigger than my fist. (can you see me clenching).
Anyway, not a new idea. Just a 'new specific implementation'.
(PS to mods: I'm not trolling, this is a joke...)
Similar to the upcoming US election results
HP ink cartridges have always been too expensive. Way too expensive. I stopped buying their printers because of that. Also, the way they clean the heads by spraying ink into a tray on powerup limits the life of the printer. On my HP3820, this resulted in a column of hard ink that grew so tall it jammed the head (of course, I only discovered this after destructively disassembling the printer). I hope they have an improved method of cleaning the new print heads.
For now, I'll stick with my Cannon printer, which I'm happy with. But I want a wider format printer, and in my price range HP is the only game in town. I hope these improvments work their way across the product line in time.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Come on! "New Way to Print" my ASS.
This is just corporate newspeak saying "we are taking over the technique our closest competitors have been using since 1995".
Single ink tanks&co arent innovative in any way. The same with permanent printing heads. It was just HPs idea of product marketing up to now to maximize running costs by making everything disposable.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Now if they'd just invent a way to make their computers not suck.
From everything I've seen, ink jet technology is more expensive, slower, produces lower quality, and less durable printed pages. With the cost of laser/LED (Okidata uses LED instead of laser) technology so low, why would anybody, especially in a professional setting, consider ink jet?
I don't respond to AC's.
I thought the reason to put the print head in the cartridge in the first was to make some free money! I think it's Epson or Canon who's been doing this "new way to print" for years...
Having the print head be part of the printer instead of a cartridge???
Wow.
Every 9 and 24 pin ribbon printer I've ever had could claim the same thing.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
HP is pretty much the only inkjet company that has(had) the print head as part of the ink cartridge.
I guess we should be thankful it is not a dupe.
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Hasn't canon been doing this for years?
Print head in the printer itself? That's been around since the days of dot matrix and daisy wheel printers, hasn't it?
I guess we can blame Lexmark for taking the print head entirely out of the printer and into the cartridge: if they didn't invent it, they certainly mastered it.
And now putting the print head back into the printer is inventive. Go fig.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
this isnt even new..canon and epson use separate ink tanks and print heads and have for years...
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this is a very old idea, going back to the time that manufacturers tried to conserve materials and only put as much junk into the waste stream (and expense on the backs of consumers) as was necessary to get the job done.
Maybe it indicates that the market has spoken and where these companies were unable to knock down ink cartridge competitors with legal maneuvering, they'll now try to do it by bring the price down to the level that consumers want.
wait wait wait.
i am totally confused by this article.
Canon has used a dual print head/ink tank design for ages and ages.
Maybe the true innovation is the use of photolithography to produce the components.
i think the writer was either confused or hornswoggled. Maybe both.
Come on, they outsourced their inventing long ago.
And as others have pointed out, this isn't innovation this is just copying. Print head on cartridge was something most other makers do anyway.
Pathetic. There was a day when HP led the field in printing. Now look at what they've become.
This could make it easier to have alternative vendors for these new cartridges. Unless HP has some devious plan. I actually did read the FA and did not see reference to it...
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Canon has a printhead that is seperate from the ink carts, but also replaceable if it gets fouled up, thus allowing you to replace only the parts that need it.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
A startup company that produces monitors has invented a new display process called "green screen". Company spokesman states, "No longer will you have to be bothered with ugly, multi-colored displays".
Improving the speed of printing is a good thing. However having owned many photo printers over the years ... each time I seem to switch between Epson and HP. The problem with incorporating the print head into the printer is that when it gets clogged, the entire printer has to be serviced. Much easier to simply throw away the offending print cartridge than to get it serviced ...
I just snagged a Canon ip1500 for $45 at Circuit City. What I thought was most interesting was that the printer head itself came in a separate anti-static bag, just like the ink. I snapped both into place and viola, cheap printing (it's actually surprisingly good.)
So next time printing starts crapping out, just slap in a new print head. Of course this may cost more than the printer itself...
Currently bidding on sig
HP used to promote their printer-head-in-cartridge system for years because, honestly, it was a great idea - instead of having to repair your printer every year or two because the print head had worn out you got a "free" print head change every time you changed cartridges. I honestly thought their way of doing this was better than the rest. This turnabout is just plain dumb IMHO, it'll make cartridges cheaper but the printers themselves will be of lesser quality, meaning when they start having print head problems people will just replace the entire printer.
Damien
You can tell when a reciew is a review, and an advertisement is an advertisement.
Ripped from the FA:
"it will also breeze through black text at up to 32 pages per minute (ppm) and colour documents at remarkable speeds of up to 31 ppm."
Now, come on. This is just getting ridiculous. There is NO WAY that this printer can print out a page every 2 seconds. I would bet money that the only way you'd get a page per minute count like this is to print a blank word document in black and white.
And even then, I doubt the paper feeding mechanism is that fast.
I really wish someone would hold manufacturers to their specs. This is just insane.
Karnal
Except that people use printers diffrently now than they used to.
The biggest change is that you really can print photos at home now. Ten years ago that wasn't practical. People like having physical copies of their photos for an album, and you just can't replicate that with a screen. There are services that let you do it online, but a lot of people like the control that they get from having it right there: they can choose the paper and do a lot of tweaking right at home.
In addition, new kinds of paper have opened up new opportunities to use your printer: bumper stickers, tee shirts, even tattoos. You can't get those at Kinko's.
So I'd hardly say that nobody cares. In fact with the digital cameras many people care more than ever. (Not to mention that most schools still won't accept your homework on a CD-ROM.)
It means cheaper prints for consumers (about 24 cents per photo print)
Because, as we all know, printer manufacturers have been selling ink for cost, rather than vastly inflated prices, for years now.
The consumer end of the market is all about giving away the razor and charging double for the blades. Buy enough blades and they make far more than they lose from giving away the razor.
Though this explains why it's aimed at the high end of the market where companies are generally smart enough to factor in total cost of ownership (which this will effect), rather than a cheap purchase price and cursing $40 tiny ink tanks ever after.
Something tells me, we're either not going to see it filter down to the consumer end or, if we do, the ink tanks will remain pretty similar in price while HP takes a slightly larger hit for the initial printer and an even bigger profit at the consumer's expense for the ink. After all, why sell a $40 ink tank that costs you $20 to make when you can sell a $35 one that only costs $5 and tell the user what a great saving they're getting?
Wow, this sounds all nifty keen, but its still using aging printer technology as the core...
Now if you're looking for a new way to print, this guy at the office was showing me something. Its a long transparent stick, with a blue line down the center on the inside. He moved it across a flat, thin, rectangular peice of processed tree matter, and voila! Words were being printed on it! Technology amazes me sometimes...
-FL
This now allows for aftermarket ink. Because alot of companies tried to duplicate the cartridge but HP had chiped it. Companies were afraid of being sued. Now of it's just a straight ink cartridge and no printer head then you won't have to mess with thos crappy refill kits and you can just get aftermarket ink for much cheaper.
If you dont believe me, watch this guy fix it: http://lap.umd.edu/computer_rage/movies_2/printer. mov
If you get the xerox phaser you can print to really good paper for around 3.2 cents per page.
HP Color laserjets cost around 9 cents per page.
If you're paying 24 cents a page... you might as well get the petroleum jelly out...
I have a Canon BJC-600 that is over 11 years old, and has a seperate (replaceable) print head, and 4 individual ink cartridges.
ELEVEN years ago Canon made this printer, yet Epson and HP love to brag about innovations such as seperate cartridges, permanent print heads, and the like. Meanwhile most HP cartridges come with the print heads clogged for you already (save you the trouble of printing anything) and Epson does you the service of gouging you on the cost of "economical" individual cartridges.
Better still, the Canon has printed many thousands upon thousands of pages, the ink is cheap, refills are cheaper, and it still works fine...oh and its ELEVEN YEARS OLD. I wouldn't hold my breath for an HP to last eleven days.
HP is finally admitting that their strategy to force customers to buy ink from HP by incorporating the patented print head in the cartridge is not working since everybody and his dog not simply refills the HP cartridges. So now they are finally willing to sell you a printer that just take cheap ink cartridges. However, the HP marketing department feels the need to spin this as some sort of "innovation" to save face, rather than admit that the "print head in cartridge" was a decision driven by HP marketing to screw customers in the first place!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
-> do not pay executives $42 million just for quitting, this should lower cost per page by at least 2 or 3 cents
-> do not hire executives who just came from worldcom, this will easily lower cost per page 5 or 6 cents
-> do not build DRM chips into ink cartridges, which can obviously lower the price per page by 10 cents
-> use the money saved by lowering executive pay to hire some actual engineers, so that the company, you know, actually might build some products
How is this "inventing" a new way to print? Hasn't Epson been doing this for years in their printers?
Heck: The first inkjet printer I ever dealt with was back in the early '70s, when they had just been invented. It was a prototype with a spinning drum holding the paper, a carriage with the ultrasonic-driven spitters, and three bottles hooked to the carriage by flexible tubes.
Quite an advance at the time. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It means cheaper prints for consumers (about 24 cents per photo print)
Don't worry, this is HP. They'll make up for it somehow, probably by raising the price of ink even higher. And as an added bonus, they'll make their printer drivers even more unstable and difficult to install.
Canon did this ages ago....
But thats no surprise for slashdot.
On professional archival quality paper, using professional quality ink, ink jet (particularly pigmented ink jet, though dyed is improving) is archival quality and will last longer than many lightjet-style prints, to say nothing of simple laserjet prints. Many museums and artists use epson 9600s and what not for their display prints. I know I do.
As for 'lower quality', thats entirely subjective, however, modern inkjet produces smaller drops than what most lightjet prints will achieve on their filmgrain like surfaces, therefore they tend to be a bit sharper. Of course this somewhat depends on the type of paper you're using.
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..that the first comment i saw would say this isnt new.
It's not the fact the print head is in the printer, it's the fact that the print head has 3,900 nozzles allowing it to print width swaths at a time.
See Here
And on an unrelated note, HP invents a new way to make money from consumers.
Voice your opinion!
Remember this previous story from early June? Here's the direct link.
...the whole printer when the head dries out, you just have to submerge the printer in rubbing alcohol and hope it doesn't catch fire when you plug it back in.
No, no... that's just silly. With this new printer, it will automatically liquify your money to use as ink every time you want to print (pretty much what they do already) and take your soul as down payment.
...MS invents and subsequently patents the GUI, version 2(TM). Nobody bats an eyelid. Film at 11.
Trends, huh? Just like their making the printers with bizarre hump shapes so you can't set anything on top of them. The wide black mouth of the 5550 printer gapes and laughs, like some sort of plastic ink-guzzling sinister giant clam: "Yes, you have IRREVOCABLY lost this desk space!" This is an example of outright poor design: form defeating function. Canon is at least as bad.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Puhleeze.
Try making the fix/buy decision on an $800 Epson inkjet that's a couple of years old and needs a new head. They simplify their cartridge making too. Win-Win for HP.
It gives one comfort in knowing a huge ruthless comptetitor like HP can shoot themselves in the foot on a regular basis. I'm glad I'm not an investor in that organization.
HP Parody:
Invent nothing. Reorganize everything. HP 2005 = Xerox 1999.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The HP Press release does a good job of explaining what's new, and why it matters.
/., nobody even RTFA's much less the source material, and is now bashing HP for claiming to have invented the wheel, when what they're actually doing is rolling out a new process for making tires.
Forbes reads this release, and decides that the defining feature is that the printhead isn't replaceable. "Below the fold", they finally get to the point, but not before going screaming by it.
Morons.
Of course, this being
Morons.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
save trees by reducing printing paper consumption0 5/03/30/1111862448387.html?oneclick=true
more info
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Tips/Save-the-trees/20
I ain't say'n nothin' till I see the prices of the cartidges. So the print head's in the printer, now, instead of on the cartridge. This supposedly will reduce the cost of the cartridges...(which have been the money-maker behind the printing business for the past decade). I'm not holding my breath, though. If I do, I'll probably wind up efixiated and broke.
...Both Canon and Epson printers do that already.
Canon printers have a removable print head that is separate from their ink-only (No electronics) cartridges and Epson has non-removable print heads that are part of the printer and ink tanks with level and ink type sensing chips.
If any printer manufacturer wants to drop ink prices, all they have to do is simply charge less. Sounds obvious, but replacement ink has very very high margin for their manufacturers, and has even been referred to before as liquid gold.
Claiming that they have some new technology and then only charging a dollar or 2 less for ink sounds like a marketing ploy.
so what? other manufacturers have been doing this forever.
also, there is a much higher chance of the nozzles getting clogged on a built-in head system (people with cheap lexmarks and canons know what i'm talking about). I actually prefer having the printhead on the cartridge - you'll never have to throw the printer away if the jets have been clogged with dried ink.
It is possible to clean them out sometimes by running some isopropyl through the heads instead of ink, but i've run in to several printers that got caked up so bad that nothing would clean them.
I wish that the printer manufacturers would make the HEADS and the CARTRIDGES easy to replace. On most of them, you have to take the carriage assembly half way apart to get the heads to slide off.
on a side note, I don't think that inkjet market is going to change direction any time soon - they make most of their money on cartridges. As long as you'll be able to buy a printer for $39 at wallyworld, ink will not be cheap.
--- sig moved for great justice.
This isn't news this is bullshit, Cannon already do this except the print head is separate from the cartridge AND the printer which is much better - otherwise you have to buy a new printer if it goes wrong, and that brings us neatly to where HP wants it to go...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I swear if one more stupid ass moron posts a "Didn't Canon/Epson do this years ago" comment I'm going to scream. Look you idiots, do you really think after 100 people have already posted, that you are the only person that has come up with this idea!? RTFA and the older posts before spouting off your brilliantly insightful thoughts. Gawwdd!!! It's like teaching highschool.
If you hand someone a disc with hundreds or thousands of jpg/mpg/mp3s of their family, and they can show it with the automatic slide-show program in their video player (today, DVD), with music or sound on a huge screen, and then copy it for the entire family for basically nothing, forever.
Nonsense; Printing services have bumper stickers and more.
HP introducing new technology in inkjet printers that should help the company and consumers save time and money aren't those terms an oxymoron all those printer companies are happy when consumers lose money on their catridges
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Coming from the same company that's making their own magical meisures of how much ink is left in my cartridges ?
Canon's Replacable Print Head
I don't know why on earth one would want a permanent print head when you can get one that is both removable and separate from the ink.
More
My VERY VERY first ever inkjet printer (and the arguably the first commercially sucessful color inkjet printer) had the print head in the printer. Ink cartridges just had ink in them.
And you know what? That was an awful printer, for exactly that reason. If you didn't print regularly, ink in the print head woudl dry out and clog it irreparably. That printer "died" not because it "didn't work", but because it got to the point where Canon was selling print heads for more than the cost of a newer inkjet printer.
I have a CP1700 it has seperate print heads and ink cartridges. If the Heads were actually built-in and non-removeable, I would have had to throw it away along time ago. With the cost of replacing both parts, it's even more of a hassle. HP just like the other printer manufactures are just trying to jade the public by putting a shinny new star shaped sticker that says "NEW" on an old overpriced technology. They might as well put an "AS Seen on TV" sticker on it too! It's just another way to seperate you from your money.....
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
My Canon iP6000D has the best of both worlds - separate print heads and ink tanks. Keeps the ink relatively cheap ($10-13/tank), and when the print heads wear out or clog up, they're replaceable. Shameless plug - I've used both Epson and HP printers before the Canon...I won't be swiching back.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
You have a very good point. There was much more "embracing and extending" going on than there was "inventing anything" on Microsoft's part!
What did Xerox contribute?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Canon has also been doing this, too (at least since I bought my Canon 1860).
Epson and Canon have been building the print heads into the printers for years. HP has always had more expensive ink because you replace print heads every single time you buy cartidges.
Does HP think that we should praise them for doing what others have been doing for years now? I remember a time when HP stood for innovation. Now they take an old idea and pass it off as a consumer-centric innovation? Stoopid.
HP printheads did wear out. They lasted longer than one tank, but you were lucky to get 2 refills from a cartrage before it was too worn out to use. I'm sure it cost HP 7 times more money to make the print head wear out that quick, than it cost to design to printhead in the first place.
Planned obsolesce is expensive to engineer correctly, but if you make money on the replacements it is worth it. It would be easier, but they need to make sure there are few warranty issues.
-> Do not come out with 9e99 printer models, all which seem to do relatively the same thing(at least with the Injket series).
I mean, my ghod. I ask for a HP deskjet 648, and I'm like, 8 numbers off from what the drivers have(I think. I'm not at home right now).
Epson and Canon have had their heads integrated into the printers for YEARS.
Actually, I preferred the old HP way of having the heads in the cartridge. Why? Heads get scratched. They get clogged. They wear out. Instead of buying some insanely expensive and hard-to-replace printhead, all you have to do is swap out the cartridge and you're printing like new. It's the same thing with HP's lasers...The imaging drum and the toner cartridge are in the same package. It might increase the price of the carts a little, but maintenance isn't as big of a deal. Besides if you want to max out your drum life, you can always refill the toner.
I guess all HP's announcement means is that their inkjets will suck even more. As it is I am quite displeased with Epson and Canon products (take a guess...printhead problems), but now I guess HP can join the team. My experience with inkjets have completely driven me away form the technology. I'll gladly shell out $600+ for a laser printer that I never have to worry about over an inkjet that prints blank pages or lines if it decides to work at all. Besides a toner cart capable of printing 1000's of pages only costs, what, just double what a little inkjet cart prices out at?
Even if you need color, the lasers have dropped through the floor. At work we just picked up an HP3550 color laser for under $1000, and that's with networking. Granted, HP really screwed the pooch and provided not an INTERNAL JetDirect like I expected, but rather included an external USB print server with no price break, but at least it prints nice.
I thought things were supposed to get BETTER after Fiorina was ousted
-R
HP has announced along with numerous other printer and cartridge makers that they are again reducing the amount of ink stored in printer cartridges.
How much you want to bet they'll do that too?
I've got a HP Photosmart 8450 printer here, really class printer.. I use it to print out all my holiday photos (no complaints about HP printers), but the thing eats through printer cartridges like nobodies business.
I work at a print company and quite frankly I am amazed at the size of ink cartridges in comparison.
For example, we have a old(ish) A4 colour printer (one of the printers used for proofs to show customers) if memory serves that has about 6 ink colour cartridges which are quite big, especially in comparison to my A4 HP printer which has 3 ink cartridges which each have 3 ink colours in and are tiny.
Now, the works A4 printer is oldish. How much you want to bet if I were to look at a newer model it'd have significantly smaller cartridges?
It seems year on year the printer manufacturers make smaller ink cartridges for their printers in new ways to screw over their customers.
Well my Canon i9900 has 6144 nozzels so...
The REAL story IS that HP is now making a printer with the print head in the printer.
Its a HUGE deal for them and of course their marketing team is making... a HUGE deal about it.
But as far as general printer tech goes? It's nothing new in any way. They are merely catching up to Canon and Epson, whee.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
1994 called. They'd like their inkjets back.
As imsabbel mentioned, this is absolutely wrong. If you're printing on quality paper with a decent printer, you're not going to see either of these problems. If you're printing on thin, crappy plain paper, then yeah, it's going to deform and it may run. Typing paper isn't intended to hold that much ink.
You can stick a modern print in a glass of water. It's not going anywhere. I tried it myself with a print while evaluating Epson's stuff.
If every inkjet printer was doing these horrific things, high-end Epsons wouldn't be in the houses and studios of photographers across the world.
The Epson photo printer I have uses ink cartriges that are separate from the print heads, so how is HP "Invent[ing] A New Way To Print"?
Epson printers have had the head on the printer rather than the cartridge for at least 10 years. HP didn't invent jack.
Secondly, I buy HP printers precisely because the head is on the cartridge. When it gets clogged on an HP you just buy a new cartridge. When the head gets clogged with an Epson you buy a new printer. The cost of repairing the head is many times more than the cost of a new printer. Keep all of this in mind and then realize that Epson cartridges are not significantly cheaper than HP cartridges.
The only thing HP has done here is find a new way to dick over customers.
Thanks HP.
I doubt printing on paper will go out anytime soon. I'm civil engineer & we do all our drawings on AutoCAD/Microstation. Howver, once the project is done, we print paper copies of the drawings for submittals. For our last project we printed 14 copies of 2000 sheets of 11"X17". Imaging the amount of trees we killed!
Now, we're pretty hi-tech. All our internal documentation is digital. But our clients are the govt agencies & they want paper copies.
HP is the evil of the hardware world, we may like to pretend that Intel is - but HP is the Microsoft of hardware - only their stuff sucks more. I can honestly say I don't have a problem owning Microsoft products (I know I know) -- but I will NEVER BUY ANY HP products. They are like those old IBM PCs but on Acid - you know the ones that had 15 plastic and metal plates that had to be removed just to get to the mainboard? "are you sure the hyperdrive [-- hardware --] has been deactivated in millenium falcon [-- general public --]"
"the problem with common sense is that its not that common"
Normal capacity cartidges, $99.9 for a replacement print-head when the ink dries up in it...
No, not a troll, but an honest opinion by an EX HP user.
I once bought HP because they gave excellent support with the (back then) HP Deskjet 500 series printers.
5 years after purchase, they would still send cleaning material to customers so the rollers could be fixed, for free nonetheless.
I first got the deskjet 640c which I used quite happily. I still didn't really see the huge price I payed for the cartridges until I got my 940c.
With 20 ml content in the black cartridge, it would last 2 months top and I had to buy a new one!
Never talk to me about the color cartridges - they didn't last half of that simply because the "one color runs out, buy a new cartridge" problem.
I got so dissatisfied that my last hope was to hack the HP 40 ml cartridges (970c...) by taping them so they could be used in a 40 euro cheaper 940c.
And now, I sold it and buyed a Canon.
An eye opener it was: the sheer number of possibilities my Pixma offers just by default.
And the ink cost: Affordable.
That is a word that is not in the HP vocabulary, which starts and ends with the letter P for Profit...
So I say screw HP once more, now you know what I mean with it.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
So far the only new thing that HP has done is reduce the cost of their high end print head manufacturing costs to use the same technology in their desktop printers. Everything else has previously been introduced by either HP or its competitors.
Price wise, I suspect their profit margin on ink will go up. They are selling a reservoir of ink for 9.99. On a volume basis the price probably has gone up.
HP has been selling printers with seperate heads and ink cartridges for years. Look at the Business Inkjet 1200, for one of the latest models. You just have to pay the high price for the printer in order to get the low ink costs. Of course this doesn't make sense for someone who doesn't to much printing, because you are never going to make up the cost of the printer in ink savings, and you are just going to clog the heads from not using them.
Our HP 800 DesignJet plotter uses separate print heads and ink cartridges. They're not all-in-one units.
Sounds like HP's marketroids haven't looked at their product line recently.
-AC
I bought an HP printer for this exact reason. My Epson lasted about a year before the head started to go, and I could not fix the problem with anything short of buying of a new printer. Now it looks like I'll be holding onto my current HP for a while.
After "inventing" the internet, Al thought he could help HP "invent" a few things. Maybe this was a key manuever for HP after all...
-> do not pay executives $42 million just for quitting, this should lower cost per page by at least 2 or 3 cents
...
Man, the way you think, one would think the shareholders were supposed to own the company
But, yes, this is a major expense.
My question is: is this just an attempt to make us change our ink for something easier to patent - and thus maintain a monopoly or oligopoly on, thus keeping profits high?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The cost was higher at first, the toner cartrige are horribly expensive.... But I only need one each 5000 leaf, and the printer don't mind if it waits two month between jobs...or if I need 5000 leafs right now...
7 /03/2037207&tid=194&tid=133
I always considered that Ink printers to be a steal on my budjet after I had to get my first replacement cartridge...
It was almost cheaper to get a new printer with the included ink that to buy more ink...
And that was a black and white. I don't even want to think about ppl doing color...
There was an article some time ago about printer ink costing more than champagne (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/0
Well, Cheers HP... I'll stick to my Canard Duchesne cuvee Henri VIII and you can have a glass of blue...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Well you learn something new everyday. I didn't relize Canon had released a wide print head already.
The nozzle count was the only thing 'new' I could see in the specs. HP has been building reservoir printers for a while now (mostly with their wide format printers). With the wide head they could get the speed up which seems to be the general gist of all their yelling (look, we can print really fast).
HP is just going to the next logical step.
While they once made rock solid printers, HPs recent units are shoddily made unreliable plastic crap.
So now they'll have replaceable in carts like almost everyone else... Lexmark being the only holdout.
Even though Cannon has issues with Linux support (none) IIRC they are the ONLY printers with both separate easy to refill in carts AND print heads.
(But one can buy a new printer for what the heads cost IIRC)
Disposable printers ARE the logical next step afetrall.
Ribbons, I kid you not! :)
Publishers used to have to request letter quality instead of dot matrix in their submission guidelines. It was the dark ages, man.
Honestly, I'll bet this doesn't make the carts any cheaper. Inkjet printers are like safety razors, the money's in the ink... not the printer.
Like many others, my first reaction on reading the headline was "Epson's been doing this for ten years; what's the big deal?"
The headline implies that HP has introduced a previously unmarketed way to make picoiliter application of ink to paper, but they have not; all that's news here is the process used to build the print heads.
Piezoelectric print heads are still the method used to get the ink from the cartridge to the paper, and while HP has moved to Epson's model of separating the head and the ink reservoir. Big Whup.
I think the news here, if any, is that HP could be firing the first salvo in a serious consumables price war.
Aside from TFA:
I know it's something everyone complains about at some point, but I've really started to get frustrated at the skills (or lack thereof) that The Editors display in writing/rewriting of press releases. It would be gratifying and and incent me to subscribe if there was some quality control and critical scrutiny in place here.
The charm of a "geek news" site largely fades when the "geeks" haven't appeared to learn anything in the past eight years about "news".
The printer market had matured, all printers were more or less equal, and only the print cartridges themselves made a difference.
I said that one company would sidestep in a risky way the lucrative catridge business, make a fixed, high quality head, and then - when the printing consumer becomes more educated, sell high quality inks.
The ink will become a competative factor someday, with metalic, gloss, matte inks, special effects etc.
Of course, with a fixed catridge head, cleaning and changing inks must be very effective.
ZSOTRAK
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
The technology's a bit older, according to this very nice article on Stanford spinoffs. Canon loaned Stanford a small laser printer in 1979, and Stanford folks integrated a microprocessor with it and then spun off Imagen to commericialize it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As has been discussed previously, Walmart (and other places) will refuse you prints if they feel they are "too professional".
Home printing (or using professional printers) avoids this issue.
I also like home printing for some things as I feel I have more control over exactly how the final output will look. The only real alternitive is a really good lab that really understands profiling. Yes you can gte profiles for some places like Costco but then you're back to the trouble that they may not let you collect the print.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Let alone the many other printer manufacturers out there. I have an HP Deskjet 2000c (killer printer I might add). It's almost 8 years old now and still prints like a champ, and at almost twice the speed of many of these new printers. Granted I'm not doing photoprinting, but still.
But I digress...in the 2000c Professional series ink jet, not only are the colors seperate (I hate tri-color cartidges) but the print heads are seperate and removable as well.
Basically, this is NOTHING more than marketing speak to try and say HP has something new when they don't to boost sales. Quite frankly, I used to be an HP shop (peripherals only) and their computers would find their way off the back balcony of my second story *grin*, but I haven't seen products coming from HP that warrent staying exclusively HP for a long time. Actually, I've only seen 2 products in the past 3 years that were worthy of saying "this is a great product".
Xerox makes printers that use wax blocks to print very fast color prints with good quality. Unfortunately these are so uncommon thay're almost impossible to find. Why doesn't HP look towards this for innovation?
...I just rolled my eyes when I read this tidbit:
HP's new printing platform features intelligent ink level monitoring...Before printing a photo or document, the HP Photosmart 8250 Photo Printer checks that sufficient ink is available to complete the job. This means you never need to experience the frustration of wasted ink, paper and time you normally get when you run out of ink mid-photo or document.
They sure put a positive spin on it. Course, we all know what that really means. Printer'll crap out on you once remaining ink reaches something like 20% so HP can make more money. Yea, let's talk about "waisted ink" for a moment, shall we...
HP does that to me with their 4650 color toner also. Bugs the heck out of me, because I'm used to taking the toner, shaking it, puting it back in the printer, and getting another 30+ pages from it. But on the 4650, it craps out when the toner gets to about 10% and says that it needs to be replaced. Let's do the math...each toner is $180...10% is $18, x4 cartridges per printer, =$72 extra profit for HP.
But I guess that's a good thing, because heaven forbid I waste $0.02 on a piece of paper and the bottom of the inkwell, as well as the 2 minutes it takes for the waisted photograph, when I can just spend $72 to avoid all the hastle!
Since Lexmark lost that lawsuit, HP probably sees the incoming flood of cheap ink and is trying to head it off by seeming to make thier ink cheaper.
It makes one really suspicious that perhaps the seeming ability to lock out third party ink is eaxctly what made the whole print-head-in-cart so appealing to HP in the first place.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If they can integrate the printhead into the printer, rather than making it a separate replaceable component, at least you'll have to buy a new printer body when the head wears out - it's not quite as good as buying a new one when the ink runs out, but it's a good start.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
> will incorporate the print head in the printer itself
In exactly what way is this "new"?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I was hoping for a printer that would crop the corners of my paper, BSG-style.
The photo-quality printers will still be expensive, and the all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax combos, but if I was able to follow the not-very-specific PR well enough, the low-end office-quality printers will be about $49, with ~$10 print cartridges, so at least for printing mostly text and maps, at 1200x1200 resolutions, it'll be a lot cheaper. (The resolution is "optimized" to 4800x1200-equivalent, and it's hard to tell whether the second 1200 is really 1200, or is "1200-optimized" and really some lower resolution like 600, but for just about anything other than photos, it's still really enough.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I buy hp inkjets for the fact the print head was replaced each time! I had two canon's die from bad print heads.. the first one i had repaired for over 100 dollars (1995). This is terrible!
:(
Maybe i'll have to use laserjets now.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Lets see, simple calculation, probably not completely correct but it shows the advantage:
:)
Take one canon printer with 5 ink-pods. Define one 'cycle' as the complete usage and refill of all ink-pods.
Take it that the printhead keeps working for 10 complete cycles, quite pessimistic but ok.
One ink-pod costs approximately 12 euros. For one cycle you thus pay approximately (12*5) 60 euros.
One printhead costs approximately 100 euros. The total amount of money spent on the basis of 10 cycles thus comes to (100+(60*10)) 700 euros.
Take one HP printer with a black and a color cartridge. Define one 'cycle' as with the canon: the complete usage and refill of both ink-cartridges
Printhead is included in the cartridge, so no costs there. One color cartridge costs approximately 40 euros, as does one black cartridge.
For one cycle you thus spend 80 euros. But, as HP cant separate the colors in the cartridge, say you throw away 10% of color each time you replace the cartridge...
For a total of 10 cycles you thus come to an amount of (80*10 + (10*3.9)) 839 euros. You can buy a new printer for the money you keep in your pocket now
And no, I didn't take into account the volume of ink you get, but I expect it to be more prosperous on the seperate ink-side.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
See other redundant posts about Epson and Canon doing this for years :)
I own an HP K60 and it has performed well, until recently when the printer started refusing to print, with the message "scanner failure". Why the failure of the scanner should render the entire printer useless is one obvious design flaw, but the worst part is after doing research, it became obvious the problem was dirt on a sensor deep in the printer. Someone had posted a solution to this problem on HP's support forum and they removed it. The process simply pointed out where to unscrew a few screws and blow out an area with compressed air, but apparently HP didn't want anyone knowing the solution to the problem was that simple. That sucks, and for that reason I'm not buying any more HPs, not to mention their software is lousy. I recently replaced the K60 with a Canon MP780 and have been very pleased. Plus it has a separate, replacable print head, so I'm not sure what the big deal of this article is in the first place.
The S400 ( http://www.yopi.de/Canon_S400_Tintenstrahldrucker_ A4_color ) to be exact, it separates the print head out as an ink catrage container. This has two advantages:
1. You can replace the print heads only when needed (eg, not with every catrige change)
2. You can change the print heads!
think about the new HP thing, a new printer every time you need to change the printer heads (changed my printers twice already, how much are new printers nowadays?)
Yeah, but the quality is horrible. Some of the pages produced by that device are illegible. Also I only get about 0.4 PPM. Not to mention that the printing process requires constant attention by an operator and you have to manually feed each page. I also saw one of those once that wasn't clear, but it had four manually selectable ink colors.
My Pixma ip5000 uses ink carts that cost ~$4 for non OEM. 4x6 paper is $13 for 100 sheets. I can easily cover the whole 100 in a single fill. That's 17cents or under per print. I guess it's an innovation for HP though. They've been lagging behind the rest of the photo printing inkjets in both price and quality for a couple years now.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Slashdot Introduces A New Way To Advertise On Its Site - "We're excited about this new approach towards advertising. It's going to change the way people view the web and make it exciting for both marketers and consumers," says CmdrTaco, as he unveils Slashdot's new innovative "Combined News/Advertising" technology. Advertisers fed up with having banner ads blocked, can now, for an additional fee, have a customized slashdot story published with their press release, represented as "news". "It doesn't matter how outrageous and ridiculous your claim may be," states Taco, "Adopt a ten-year-old technology and we'll help you unveil it as if it's the latest development in the field."
It IS possible you know. and it is not even in the 6 figure range.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What a total farce..
I got wise to the inkjet scam a few years ago.
I went completely, 100% laserjet and will never go back.
While my laserjets are old, they serve me well. Quite well indeed because I got them for almost nothing.
I have a Laserjet 4SiMX (17ppm) with a 100 envelope feeder, a 1,500 sheet feeder and a duplexer. I can print manuals in minutes.
I have a 4MV (16ppm) with a 500 sheet 11x17 tray for large mono prints
I have a 4500n (4ppm clr & 8ppm bw) for small, light duty color jobs
and I have a Ricoh AP3800c (11x17) with duplexer and other goodies for the big, heavy duty color jobs, it's 28ppm clr and 38ppm bw, and that includes duplex printing.
I keep them all loaded up with paper and envelopes and use which ever one suits the job.
I refill my own toner carts. I also buy them from ebay sometimes very cheap because all of these printers are considered to be obsolete.
They are plenty fast for me and being that they are "obsolete" they are plentiful and CHEAP...
Inkjets? Never again.. Never, ever again...
with the head on the cart you get a nice new head when you change it... now i guess people will be trying clean it on thier own and screwing it up. or worse yet, i'll be getting more spam from fake companies asking me if i want a printer head cleaner to go along with my viagra and anit-baldness pills.
who cares if your 4x6 picture takes 2 minutes to print as long as the ink comes out evenly.
Buy a canon i{anything} or for that matter, a canon pretty much anything. replaceable heads, separate ink from heads, separate ink for each color. (up to six i think on the dedicated photo-printers)
The software that comes with isn't bad either (I haven't found anything better at photo-stitching that doesn't take hours to do)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Just ask the two USELESS Epson printers in my basement that are packed solid with dried up ink.
We have a Designjet 5000ps, and it has 650ml ink tanks with the print heads seperated. Obviously you have to do this when dealing with printers this large. We only print about 15 feet a week on it, fairly light duty. The light cyan ran out about 4 years after it was purchased and I had to replace all 6 printheads(and the printhead cleaners) when I replaced the light cyan cartridge.
At $220 for each ink cartridge and 150 bucks for each printhead, I'm glad they last a long time!
StickMan
www.rageagainst.net
They will just jack up the ink price further to make the final price even again. Makes me think the whole reason the head was on the cartridge was to make thirdparty cartridges difficult to make or copy.
We should all be exclusively using laserjets anyway, why is anyone happy the inkjet technology has a new lease on life?
Where I work we have a $2,400 HP color laser printer. I also have experience with a color laser printer at a local university that I'm sure cost about twice that much. Both are absolutely worthless for printing photos. Any $50 inkjet photo printer can kick their ass for photo printing, not on speed or cost but on how the prints look. The worst inkjets I've ever seen didn't print photos as badly as the laserjets do.
Graphs and charts? Sure, go color laser, if you can afford the initial investment which will be around $500 at a minimum. Laserjets are great with big blocks of color, and cheaper over the long run. But a $99 Epson inkjet that uses Ultrachrome inks will get you an archival quality photo print with incredible color gamut and accuracy, and should last 70-200 years depending on what paper you use. If you print 8x10 or larger most of the time it's also cheaper than using a commercial photo printing service.
For monochrome and non-photo color business printing, laserjets all the way. For home and business photo printing there really isn't an alternative to inkjet besides dye sublimation, and dye-sub printers are expensive and very inflexible, plus studies show that dye-sub prints fade almost as fast as most inkjet prints.
It's all about using the right tool for the job.
I wonder how this squares with their green PR. See...n ment/
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/enviro
When their print heads get so hopelessly clogged that you can't clean them any more, you need to chuck the printer and get a new one. It's a damn shame, too, since they make the best ink in the business.
In my experience, even the dry-process Imagen printers were finicky. Last time I had to deal with one was in the mid-90's, and it was such a testy beast that the systems guys insisted that absolutely nobody was to touch it other than to pick up printouts from the output tray-- not even to refill the input paper trays.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Epson has been doing this for a long time, and so has canon. Epson print heads are permanent, and cannot be removed while canon uses disposable print heads that are however separate from the ink cartridges
Just another crappy blog
Seriously.... I have 3 printers
:)
:) My wife is such a bargin hunter, it is still one of her "BEST" deals when you ask... :)
..... Seriously, scat! git!.....
/ digits.html
(ok, one is my wife's... She has a Sony DyeSub printer for printing out pics for her scrappbooking --- When she needs a particular size,zoom, etc.. that would take too long to figure out at walmart photodesk...)
The other 2 are an IBM Lexmar Optra R and an OLD (in printer years) HP Photosmart 1115... (before my wife got her Sony...)
The Lexmark Laser is the best! 99.9% of our printing is dull black vs. white laser printing... web Receipts, mapquest directions, recipies from family emails, etc...... This printer was a "recoverd" printer that was due to be pitched by a previous employer because it was "icky."
Seriously, someone had shipped it back to the home office to be upgraded or what ever and left the tonor cartridge in it... Needless to say, it seemed to explode somewhere during shipping... so it was marked for the dumpster... I rescued it at the 12th hour with the overlords approvial... and gave it a good vac & clean at home in the basement... had a few 1/2 used cartridges that secretaries didn't know how to work or would just replace for no reason... so I NEVER paid for a toner cartridge... It has been going strong for 5 years now! Right now, my cost per page is about -.26$ a page.
As apposed to my HP... Ink runs about $25-30 a cartridge... My wife wanted to print out picuters... It maybe did 1 cartridge past the initial freebee (1/2 filled) tanks... and then it's done nothing but collect dust! It cost about $120 @ Bestbuy and I was offered (just this spring) to renew my 3 year service contract for a mere $70... yeah... right... don't think so. The sad thing is it works, I just refuse to put more money into ink for it...
No photo's are printed at walmart for pennies when you bulk print them. (trust me, with a new baby of 15 months, we do! 100's at a time!) and for the scrappbooking, we now print witht he Dye-Sub...
Oh, if your still reading this, your' probibly wondering how we can afford the dye-sub cartridges... Well, we lucked out... one of the CC's offered points we never used for anything and then near christmas one year it included an online retailer that would double the $$$ value of those points if we used them online... It took a few orders to work their system to limit you to only so much spent at a time, but eventually we turned all those useless free CC perks into free photo packs for the DyeSub printer!
Oh, the really nice thing about it all (if your still reading and care...) is that all the CC Perks were from buisiness trips! So they really were "FREE" in that respect... Finally getting something back from "The Man."
Ok, I'm done now...
Yes... Go away... Go on.. Read another post...
Ok, now your just freaking me out... Just leave us alone... don't read anymore of this post! I mean it! I just want to end it, and you just sit there like it's your "God-Given" right to keep me typing as much as you can read...
Nooooo Go aWAY!!! Quit reading already!
Thank you!..... NO!!!!!! I mean QUIT... Don't interact with me... Don't give me a "your welcome" smug look from your slack jaw'd facE! Git! go-on now... Read something somewhere else....
Still here! Damn... Ahh... I know... This should keep you busy.. if you must, read this:
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I was shopping for a printer (never owned one) and the ~$100 Brother printer (w rebates) already has this 'feature'. At least one person on Amazon said that the head died pretty quickly and made the printer useless. Makes me want to buy Canon even more if they do have a separately-replaceable head.
8-PP
And DEC VMS and the many other acquisitions would have succeeded at HP, if only they had found a way to make them cause the customer to need more ink cartridges.
" it's still a *lot* cheaper to use inkjets."
Its not even close.
Typically a color laser printer's consumable costs are under 10 cents per page, and will typically be about 3-5 cents per page.
Compared to a color injet where per page costs are approxiately 38-90 cents per page depending on the printer.
[all of these are estimates based on ink coverage, obviously]
Of course, the best way to print is to use a service like at Ritz, CVS or Costco, where its inexpensive and reasonably good.
Inkjets have three advantages over color laser printers:
1) most inkjet printers will do a better job at photos than even very expensive color lasers.
2) They take up less space
3) They don't require 1/5 - 1/10 the upfront money of a color laser.
However, cost of operations I've estimated will be break-even for a color laser somewhere around 2000-5000 color pages.
I'm rather happy with the Canon.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Xerox used to sell several ink jet printers and multi-functions that had seperate print heads. Although Xerox no longer activly supports them, you can still purchase the replacement heads.
Canon printers have individually replaced ink tanks and each tank is priced at under $10. While this may not be ultimately more painful, it sure feels better just replacing the black ink for $8 instead of the whole cartridge for $32.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The business model of ink-jet printing is perverse. Nowadays, the companies earn more for the ink than for the printer. Everyone knows that.
In this sad state of affairs, the more one company can do to lower the cost of the printer, the better for it, since the printer is posibly subsidized, and people buy them based on sheer up front value of the printer, without considering long term costs. Therefore, this is an "advancement" for HP if it allows them to lower the cost of the overall system, wether or not they pass on the savings.
But, although the business model is perverse, do not just post: "Why is people so stupid? Laser is better, do not buy inkjets!" Inkjet printing has quite a few uses were laser can not match:
* Printing giant billboards.
* Portable printers.
* Color printing (I bet is still cheaper on Inkjets)
* Printing on alternate media (texturized paper, fabrics, t-shit transfers, etc.)
* When your volume of printing is so low than the interest earned on the money you save up-fron versus buying a laser printer will more than ofset the savings on refills.
* Or in cases like mine: I'll be going to spain for 13 months for a masters degree, and I plan to buy a printer there and I will not be taking back this printer, and I do not want or need the wassle of selling it. What do you tink I'll do? Well, buy the cheapest one I can lay my hands on!
Stop reading here, unless you want to bask in the glorious past, and read a praise for Canon
It used to be that each manufacturer had a different method. HP would integrate the printhead in the ink cartridge, forcing you to replace the printhead each time (but at the same time making sure that you got perfect prints every time). Nonetheless, I still remember a niffty Pelikan replacement cartridge for HP, that separated the printhead from the ink tank (a-la Canon).
Epson had the printheads built in the printer, with all the known problems, but this allowed them (IIRC) to be the first company to break 1k points per inch barrier (in consumer printers).
Canon, depending on the line, used the HP method, or an even better method (from the customer point of view), of having ink tanks separated from head, and head separated from printer, and therefore, user replaceable. That gave the customer the best of both worlds (economy of replacing only the ink tanks, and use inktanks from alternate suppliers, and a non-dipossable printer), while giving Canon the WORST of both worlds (higher manufacturing costs and exposure to competitors in the lucrative ink market).
But that also gave them tremendous flexibility. Withnes the BJC-4300, depending on the Inktank you put there it could become:
* High Speed High def Black only
* Color printer
* Proto Printer
* One page Scaner
Those guys make superb printers, as a mather of fact, my BJC-4100 is still going strong since 1996. But, as some other posters noted, sadly, it served them for nothing.
And by the way, the guts of the first HP Laserjets were made not by HP but by Canon... go figure!
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
or if you need it to be easier to understand:
Current HP inkjet printers use a two part head.
The new print heads are made from a single piece of plastic. They use photolithography to make the printer heads. The head will be part of the printer, not part of the ink cartridge.
This process is cheaper, has higher resolution, and is faster.
This article is a press release from HP. HP's marketing department created it.
It might be helpful for someone with at least a 12th grade reading level could interpret articles...
Well it is nice to see that they finally seperated the print head from the cartridge. I used to be an in store sales rep for Canon and I always argued with the HP rep about who had the superior printer and the beneifts of the semi-permanent printhead vs. the printhead that stayed on the cartridge. to sell the Canon printer to the slackjawed yokels from kentucky all I had to do was show them a few print samples and show them the cost of ink. If they talked to the HP rep first they would sometimes ask about the printhead being replaced with each cartridge vs. the HP system. I would simply pop the printhead out of the Canon turn it over and compare it to the print head on an old HP cartridge I had saved when they had to change the ink in one of the store models. The canon print head is much larger and looks of way better quality compared to the nasty copper colored tiny print heads that are on each cartridge with the HP. HP will be able to make a cheaper printer because they do use some sort of software/blue light combo inside the printer that aligns the cartridge/print head. Canon's needed to be manually aligned, but only once for the life of the printer. They may retain this feature because it also senses which paper is in the printer and most HP fans are used to this :)
For the record I use Canon although the employee discount certainly helped.
Something I've been wondering about for a few years now...
Regular old-fashioned photopaper last much longer and keeps its color for much longer than printed materials, in my experience.
So instead of going through all this hoopla with "fade-resistant, smudge-resistant, water resistant, wallet-resistant" printer ink and paper...
Why not project digital photos onto regular old chemical photopaper?!!!
With a little work, they can get projector resolution up to a decent level.
And then, you'll be able to go into your local pharmacy and get your digital photos developed for much less than printing them, and for much less than regular photo development, because you don't have to pay for the film.
They are making a virtue out of having the print head built into the printer?
Epson do it this way which is why I DITCHED my Epson & bought a Canon with separate & replaceable print head / ink tanks.
The second question that comes to my mind is how much higher can manufactures drive nozzle density/droplet size before it becomes meaningless?
I have found quality of driver software far more important in the finished results.
If you are going to go old tech, go all the way.
Our good friend and frustrated hero of the Victorian age designed a printer for his Difference Engine. Using his blueprints, the Science Museum of London has got this printer working.
Naturally, it's easy to find some humour for the Linux crowd about this printer too.
Don't tell me /. is serious about this! This has gotta be a frickin' joke. Print heads in printers have been around for ages. All the other brands have it, Canon, Epson, etc. What are you dudes smokin' out there?
Color inkjets do produce better prints, particularly when using photo paper, but I find the current generations of color laser printers pretty stunning.
Even the cheap ones are impressive, the test pages that come out of the $800 models at Office Depot are as good as I'd ever need for my photos.
Plus as you point out, they'll be much cheaper in the long run to operate. Even the low end ones are rated at at least 10k pages a month and the toner will last for a long time relative to the ink.
So a duplicate of a duplicate...this makes this article a metaduplicate?
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I read an article somewhere that says ink cartridges actually only cost $1.50 to make. Also, manufacturers, lose $20 per printer sold, but make it up double when the first cartridge is bought. Just something interesting i thought id share.
Printers have had built-in print heads for a while. HP originally had their printers made with built-in print heads. Then, when deskjets came along HP et al decided to separate the print head from the printer because after a while the holes would clog up from dried ink. If you read up on these Refill the Ink Cartridge sites you will see that even they say to only refill the ink cartridge three or four times. This is because, just like with any tank, there is a build up of junk in the bottom of the tank which will eventually clog up the print head.
:-)
Which means keeping the print head separate from the printer is a better idea than putting the print head back in to the printer and just selling the ink. UNLESS they have come up with some way to flush the print head and thus clean it out. (And I mean really flush the print heads - not the Clean the Print Head kind of thing.)
If you were to ask me how HP could improve on its printers my #1 suggestion would be for them to increase the height of the printer by about three inches and to use this additional space to make the ink cartridges larger. Ink cartridges are rigged (by their overall size) to fail after a ream of paper. Some even earlier. This is a stupid, arbitrary limitation imposed by the manufacturers so they can sell more goods and make money. (ie: Planned obsolescence.) There are times when I am working on a document and I have to print it all out for review. These documents are sometimes two or three inches thick. This means I go through an ink cartridge in one setting sometimes. And sometimes I go through two cartridges. (Luckily a lot of times I can just send the document electronically now so this need is going down but then there is always the one or two managers who still want to read an actual document.)
In any event, a greatly expanded (like two to three times the current size) cartridge (especially the color cartridges) would improve everyone's thoughts about printing and I know I (as well as a couple of my other graphic artist friends) would jump on being able to buy a printer which had extra large ink cartridges.
My second wish would be for a cartridge which was made to be refilled. HP might want everyone to buy their ink, but whatever company comes out with a refillable cartridge that can be refilled easily (like how some copiers are easily refilled) would really make my day.
So here is my revolutionary idea: (Yeah - right!)
Let's say there is something called a print head.
Let's also say that there is something called a color cartridge.
Let's also say that the two are separate entities. That the color cartridge is the container for the ink that we use to print (No matter the color.), and the print head does all of the printing.
Let's say that the print head has some sort of part to it that allows a user/customer to screw the color cartridge on to (or off of) the print head. (In other words - it is not all one unit like it is now, but two separate units.)
Ok. Given the above, the way in which you change a color cartridge is by removing both the print head and the color cartridge from the printer, unscrew the color cartridge, and replace it with a new color cartridge. If the print head begins to print badly, you buy a new print head only, remove the color cartridge from the old print head, and put it on the new print head.
The manufacturer only guarantees that the ink they sell will work with their printer and that if stupid people unscrew the print head without first turning the thing upside down (so the ink doesn't run out all over the place) - it is their own fault.
With this idea, HP (or whoever) would only have to sell an initial print head and color cartridge (or maybe four print heads and color cartridges). All of the print heads would be the same size et al. Only the size of the color cartridge would change. Further, ink refills could come in cheap plastic squeeze me container
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
I don't remember having any trouble with ours, but that's a version of "no trouble" compared to the wet-process beasts. It's quite possible that there were things wrong with it that I've forgotten - paper jams or whatever - but photocopiers of the day had a lot of trouble with those too. The software didn't always get along with other things, but it was easy to hack BSD LPR to do something reasonable, and not too hard to hack System V LPQ once I got the hang of it (and by that time we had a Mac Laserwriter which was more finicky to talk to from a non-Mac shop...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Y'know, my Canon printer has ink cartridges which are just plastic with ink in 'em, and a separate print head with about 6,000 nozzles. (But it's not part of the printer; it's a separate thing you can replace. And it's user-replaceable.)
So, HP is making a big thing about doing something Canon's been doing for several years.
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i've always purchased epson printers because of the fact that epson ink is basically bottles of ink. hp puts the printer head on the cartridges themselves making them very expensive and hard to buy generics. when i was able to buy generic epson color ink for $3, hp ink no matter generic or not was $15 or more.
epson however later got smart and started installing chips verifying that this is indeed genuine epson ink, only to find out later that their chip system was easily programmable. it made the generic inks go up, but not by much.
saying hp invents a new way to print by saying hp is now starting to use printer heads inside the printer is like saying windows invents a new interface by introducing transparency.
HD Trailers
Consider 42m as a public service to discourage said executives from ever getting behind the helm of another large tanker.
I bought an Epson C82, which was $150 when it first came out, but I got it for the cheap ink (the C62 and cheaper models have cartridges that hold half as much ink, but sell for the same price).
First problem was that the head was crap to begin with. You have to hit the cleaning button after every 3 pages, or you'll get random drops of ink on the pages.
When I ran out of ink, I went to the local Staples and got some new ones. Put them in, and they didn't work. I messed around with all the options for a few days, then called Epson support. They checked the numbers, and said they were the wrong cartridges. After a couple more days, I returned to Staples, got the right cartridges, and installed them the next day. Too late, the ink was dried, and no cleaner in the world would remove it.
The warranty was over, so I have a $150 door stop, reminding me just how incredibly crappy Epson products have become.
I've looked around at other printers, but HP inkjets have incredibly expensive ink, and Canon has no interest at all in releasing drivers or just specs for their printers, so no Canon printers for anything but Windows.
After not finding any inkjet printers with reasonable ink prices that would work, I gave up. Haven't printed *anything* in a couple years now...
I even went as far as checking out solid ink/wax Xerox/Tektronics printers, but I generally don't like my printouts to be destroyed by any scratching. Not to mention the prices.
Laser printers are the only option, and at this point, color is too expensive for home use. I'll probably get a B&W laser printer again, but not soon. Color printing costs so much you need to do it in significant volumes to make it reasonably priced. Stick with Kinkos and the like, even for one-off prints.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Same here. I'm 22 years old, I've been messing with computers since I was 8, I do programming and administration 16 hours a day and I bought my first printer last week, a black/white laserjet to print invoices. It's the cheapest HP LaserJet model and I'm quite satisfied with it. Small footprint and extremely fast.
But what do I know, I'm just a newbie.
The Pixma series are completely square, and can even be backed up against a wall and still work.
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If you don't mind not using the top feed (it has a top and front feed), you can put stuff on top of it too. My mother puts hers in a shelving unit, it's only accessible from one side (the front), but works great. She has to take it out to change ink cartridges or whatever, but you don't do that too often on a Canon.
Check it out, go to the link below and click the text that says "Click here to see how the new PIXMA dual paper path works."
http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=C
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
What's the financial value for HP to research and produce inkjet printers with embedded printheads? Are they going to do it simply because it's the right thing to do, out of the goodness of their hearts? Yeah, right. Some of us old farts still recall when printheads were always integral to the printers and decoupled from the ink source, before HP and others perverted the process more than a decade ago, and changed the way that printers and ink was sold forever. Since that time, the printers have become dirt-cheap, while a mere two ink-and-head cartridges may cost you as much or more than the entire printer itself.
I'd expect to see this wondrous new printhead tech coupled with at least a 20% increase in the cost of the ink supplies. As we all know, the stuff is already more expensive per ounce than most fine perfumes. The last time HP "revolutionized" the printing process, we've all been getting screwed in the pocketbooks ever since; bend over and prepare to be screwed again. You might as well stay in that position this time.
more info on the 8250 from photo-i, a respected printer review site.
h tm
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/News/July05/HP%208250-1.
it's all about the ink for HP, that profit center isn't going away for them. I think they actually lose $ on the printers.
what is new is the way the printhead works, how it cleans itself, the air removal in the priming step and how it recycles the ink used for the cleaning process. it's actually pretty cool.
read this preview for a better description:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/News/July05/HP%208250-1.
And to add insult to injury, there was a story in January about region coding of ink cartridges. So, I wouldn't welcome our cheaper cartridge overlords just yet.