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Is Your Printer Ripping You Off?
An anonymous reader writes "Are original inkjet cartridges really worth the high cost? Do third party refill inks do as good a job? This article looks at printers from Epson, HP, Canon and Lexmark, with a combination of original inks and the top selling third-party options, using a whole host of different papers. A panel of printer users judged the output in a blind test — the printer manufacturers may not be happy with the results!"
...and the top selling the top selling third party options Ok, Rainman.The worry with third-party ink is mainly that it will clog up your printer, not that the first few pages won't look good.
http://www.idg.se/ had an article last month or so, regarding this issue. According to the article only pure turkish heroin was more expensive than original printer-ink.
Original article: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.103164 (swedish)
buying inkjet cartridges is that most of the times they are almost as expensive as a new printer
I've had to service printers where people had used non-OEM ink and it can get ugly, at best just the printhead clogs up and needs to be replaced, at other times ink is just everywhere and inkjet ink stains everything.
For Lasers it is not as bad, but i've found the refilled cartridges to be more leaky and I had to clean out the printers on a regular basis. Also about 1/10 refills was DoA or otherwise defective.
On the other hand what HP charges for ink you would think they had to mine in on the moon. Canon printers with seperate printheads from ink resevoirs bring down the price of ink considerably.
I have a Lexmark printer I bough refurbed for $50. The ink cartridges cost $30. Try as I might, I cannot refill my cartridges or use 3rd party ink. the printer simply will not pass ink under those conditions. Consequently I limit my printing to the lowest quality setting on the backside of used paper. I also don't do much critical printing, although I did use this printer to print my wedding invitations.
Wow! Is it standard practice to have to click through so many pages of ads to read the full article?
Or instead of getting ripped off by buying ink after you run out, or it dries up you could just buy a laser printer instead. Toner is inexpensive per page, doesn't dry out, and laser printers produce excellent quality.
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure. I bought a used HP LaserJet 4 several years ago off ebay, and have used the same toner cartridge since I bought it. The old HP laserjets are tanks that can spit 20,000 pages without a hitch. The components are all replaceable, and really quite easy to change the pickup rollers, etc.
AccountKiller
click [next] to find out !
On one hand, saying 3rd party inks don't last a long is perfect FUD -- it's something the consumer can't judge for themselves (without extensive testing). OTOH, I know the durability if the ink is (or at least was) an issue for artists, and Epson sold a special ink that lasted 100 yrs. Also, that may be a corner that some 3rd party ink manufacturers cut to reduce their costs.
I've tried third-party ink and paper in my HP printer and I've had very poor results. The prints look fine at first but then fade over about a year or so. I know in the article they claimed to have tested for fade & there was none. They may have been lucky and selected paper that matched to the ink, or maybe simply sticking prints in the window for awhile isn't the whole story. Maybe other factors such as ozone and humidity come into play, who knows. But the point is, even though I pay a bit more buying from the manufacturer at least I know what I'm getting and I know my prints will hold up over time. Even at five cents a photo, if that photo can't hold up a year it's like throwing money out the door.
My mother and grandmother print photos 90% of the time so they need color. Plenty of people print things other than text, at home anyway.
Gone!
I do infrequent, low-volume printing, and my biggest problem isn't how the output looks or the reliability of the cartridges; it's how long the under-used ink takes to evaporate from the cartridge. Brand-X cartridges seem to come up "out of ink" months and months sooner than OEM ones do.
Have to agree. After going through two ink printers, I just bought a HP LaserJet printer. No problem at all.
Je ne parle pas francais.
"Yeah, but when the printer costs $50, and a new manufacturer ink cartridge costs $45, I'm willing to go with the $20 third-party cartridge and risk having to buy a new printer."
Depends on what kind of printer you have. The higher-quality printers you wouldn't do that.* Also the all-in-one jobs you wouldn't either (too much to lose, literally) Also one reason OEMs don't like them is that warrenty claims go through the roof, even if you void their warrenty (and we had to do that to a couple people).
*How many commercial printers use third-party ink?
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure.
Wow, you're still using an amber or green CRT? Wicked retro man!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow that's incredible. Just to inform those out there not in the know, my free (this is probably the key word; they get you on the refills later) HP printer/scanner takes $20 5mL ink cartridges. Guess how many pages 5mL is! 120. I can print at the student center at school 66% cheaper than this.
I've done the "fill it yourself" and the "let our company fill it for you" and the "Recycled compatible".
At the end of the day, I use new, sealed 3rd party cartridges, but you have to do your research. I've had a Canon 4200, Epson 880 and now a Brother 420cn, All using these new, sealed cartridges bought off of ebay for around 2.00 each including shipping. They come sealed, they last years (found a canon one after 4 years, working without a hitch) and are at a price I find acceptable.
I print "photo quality" pictures often enough and they still hang on the wall behind glass and no-one knows they're printed. I think the REAL trick is to:
1. print off at least 1 page of color/b+w a week (I setup a macro where it will print 1 test page a week whether I'm there or not).
2. Don't use refillable cartridges, and
3. get printers that are having good use by people using these 3rd party cartridges. (research!)
I use the printers for business too, never a problem with print quality. And before someone says "it's because you use it all the time" those old canon and epson printers went to family (replacing lexmarks!) and they RARELY print anything, but that trick on printing a page a week does wonders.
Good luck!
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure.
Because we, ummm, hmmmm, ohhh, HAVE TO PRINT STUFF IN COLOR!
Yeah, you read that right. Some of us have to be able to print color documents. Printing digital photographs is one pretty common example. Business logos on letterheads is another very common example. Certain graphs are far more readable when colorized. So take your foolish "people never need to print in color" attitude and get out of here.
Consumer Reports doesn't come to quite the same conclusion.
m puters/printers/printer-inks-7-06/off-brand-inks/0 607_printer-inks_off-brand-inks.htm?resultPageInde x=1&resultIndex=2&searchTerm=printer%20cartridge
m puters/printers/printer-inks-7-06/overview/0607_pr inter-inks_ov.htm
First off, they've received a lot of unusable 3rd party cartridges:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-co
And here, their recommendation is that the replacement inks are not quite as thrifty as they appear:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-co
My experience is that I bought cheap replacement ink for a Canon printer, and it clogged the print heads, didn't last as long, and produced poor quality color. I ended up throwing them out. Instead, I shop at the warehouse clubs where you can typically save 33-50% on name brand inks.
I prefer Canon because it allows you to replace individual ink tanks (which can be slightly thrifter). HP tends to do all-in-ones, which is bad if they mix Black, since you'll go through black 2-3x as fast. Overall, HP's tend to be expensive to run for that reason. In fact, with HP's your best bet is to wait until the computer stores sell new HP printers for $15 after rebate, use up the ink and then throw away the printer. It feels terribly wasteful to do that, but the ink is so expensive for HP's that it's really the most economical way to own them.
Epson is worse, mainly because the ones I've owned tended to clog their print heads if you let them sit for more than a week or two. Then you run 2-3 cleaning cycles which used up the ink even faster. Back in the day of tractor feeds and impact printers, the joke was "Epson" was a Japanese word that meant "Paper Jam". I hope they've fixed that.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Personally, I have had to physically show people on paper, what the difference and cost savings that are involved in color lasers.
(The following is Canadian Prices) People walk into a store, see a $99 inkjet that does photos, look over in the laser aisle and would see a $299 machine. If the customer isn't scared off by that, they will look closer at the ink of about $70-80 for a set of color and black cartridges, and about $400 for a set of toner cartridges. That is the killer. That is when you have to explain that there is pretty much 10 sets of inkjet cartridges inside of that single set of toner.
What they need to do, is do a test of the "best inkjet" that everyone says is so cheap (ask around and i'm sure you'll get a few responses). Then, take 4 different color lasers. Buy 4 sets of ink for each printer. Run through them all and see how many sheets you can get that "look good", and then just start printing with the color laser, stacking all the paper in piles. Then put THAT on the advertisments and bulleting boards.
Main issue here. The box stores get paid to sell inkjets rather than lasers, because people will have to replace them more... they sell warranties ontop of the inkjets... well inkjets are a money maker for box stores and wholesalers...
At work we have really-good printers (like the Phaser 8550 solid ink, or HP laserjet B&W) which are networked and get the brand name stuff and are the standard for high quality prints. Then for the desktops (that don't need laser) I pick up Epson Stylus 740,750, 760 etc. printers (the 740 has USB, Apple Serial and Parallel, very versatile) used and buy the $4 ink tanks (inkresq) the speed is not as fast but the cost per page is realistic and the tanks aren't chipped.
Of the time I started doing this I think I have only found one true 740 dud (most are recoverable from complete clogage). The other departments have gone through several of the later Epson models (C82, C84, and the fancy scanner ones - which the vacuum tube slips out on like the 5?00) I try not to deal with HP/Lexmark they seem to make their carts overly complex to retain control and the HP bottom feed printers seem to be notorious for the paper feed failing.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
they said they WILL be fade testing, checking back 3 months and six months from now.
not that they HAD tested, but that it was now underway
really, they were quite clear on that point.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Translation - "Since I don't need color I can't imagine why anyone else would."
We own a fax/copier/printer/scanner from hp that is an inkjet. Its only inkjet we own, we don't use hp ink either - old model officejet is very happy with 'wrong' ink.
So yes - I'd buy another officejet, i would not buy an inkjet for normal printing
Colour laser printers used to be very heavy when i last picked one up.
I agree that ink/cartridge prices are out of control, especially for the lower capcity ones with built in printheads, but this article is useless. Firstly, there would be no refilled cartridges if nobody bought OEM, so we couldn't _all_ buy them even if we wanted to. Secondly I'd consider cartridges with a high rate of failure and DOA unacceptable regardless of whether average printer users who have no knowledge or expertise may rate the prints as good or "better." Overall, I'd much rather have accurate color and superior colorfastness from a printer and worry about fixing the images at the source then have the printer ink "improve" image quality. In other news, some people prefer clothing they buy at Wal-Mart or a second hand store to what they find at the mall, and it's cheaper to boot.
I have a Samsung CLP-500 which is a very nice color printer except for the fact that the printer itself costs 250 while new ink cartridges (you need 4, CMY and nero) cost around 400. Of course, a brand new printer only comes with quarter filled cartridges. All I need to do is wait for the price of the printer to drop a little bit more and I might be able to start using the first CLP-500 I bought. Oh right...
The last printer I was using was a Brother 3240 all in one and I was spending 100 dollars a month in cartridges with color evaporating and black cartridges lasting 100-250 pages. Truly one of the most awful printers in existence.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Color laser printers are getting cheaper too. Bought a Samsung CLP-300N last year for the price of a few ink-cartridges (okay, maybe a bit more, 250 euros).
The quality is quite amazing for both b/w and color/photos, and now I don't have to run to the store every few months when the printer was out of ink (always at the worst possible moment) or deal with messy refill-kits. Having said that, I'd assume color laser printers run out of black toner a bit sooner than an old Laserjet, if only because the toner cartridges are a tad smaller.
And yes, I'm one of those people who think I need color. Be it photos, marketing material or simply making your invoices nice and shiny: it's just that extra touch.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Then they should be using Snapfish or one of the other photo printing services. Why pay for expensive ink, a temperamental printer, and sub-par quality photo prints when you can get real photos for $0.12 each.
Disclaimer: I am not a Snapfish or HP employee, just a happy customer.
...but I simply can't resist.
One should get the idea why ink is so expensive when you see the price tag on the printers. Did you see any modern printers recently that sell for more than 30 bucks? The material used alone costs many times more than that.
The ink actually pays for the printers.
And that kind of marketing is quite lucrative. It's a bit like the consoles that are paid for by the games rather than by the money you spend for the PS3 or X360 itself.
And thus ink manufacturers come up with newer and better "copy protection" with every batch of their printers. That's, btw, also why they are actually patenting a nose on some cartridge or why there is a chip on them. For the customer, this only means that it gets even MORE expensive.
Do I want to be part of that? Seriously, no. If a printer is not allowing me to use the ink I want to use by default, without me first trying to "patch" my printer, I don't want the printer. There's a copyshop around the corner that can print in really good quality for a fairly acceptable price. Keep your overpriced liquids.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Who would have thought that a) Inkjet cartridges are overpriced and b) refilled ones can be dodgy! My faith in humanity has been shattered...
This is truly a YMMV situation. My Universe includes a couple of Brother 4 in 1 inkjets that use nothing but refilled cartridges and are quite happy, and an HP 990cxi that insists on only HP products if it is to behave.
Really your only option is to try out the options with your specific machine, and your handiest supplier, and see what happens.
Three Squirrels
Because you don't want snapfish employees seeing you naked?
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure.
Work in a graphics house and you'll soon find out why people need color printing. You'll also see why the draft quality text dump you might use comes nowhere near the requirements in those types of venues.
Doing proofs, comps- and often finals- on a good quality injet printer may not be what you need, but you can bet your retirement fund places like that sure have a need.
As for third-party refills; No. We run mostly Epson printers here, including some legacy large format printers and plotters. We ran some experiments with a number of inks to see if we could lower ink costs and perhaps get away with cheaper papers and it was a disaster.
Even when the third-party ink didn't clog the printheads, the quality was absolutely horrendous. Printers that had previously output high quality prints that were acceptable for camera ready finals instead churned out banded, color-shifted, beaded crud and did horrible things to the prints. They weren't merely of lesser quality, they were useless crap. To our suprise, while the cheaper brands of paper didn't produce prints of usuable quality either, they produced much better quality using the OEM inks than the prints with the "best" paper using the third-party inks.
My advice? If you're not after best quality or just dumping text, get a laser printer or use the cheap stuff to your heart's content. However, when you want quality, you'll pay the premium on the recommended OEM inks and paper and be happy.
I have one of these with the multi-function scanner unit, duplex, envelope feeder and extra paper trays. Cost under $300 on eBay and prints 25,000 pages on a single toner cartridge. Cost per page is $0.015-0.04 per page. I'm on my second third toner cartridge in five years. (yeah I print a lot) True, it doesn't do color but I rarely need that and have a throwaway inkjet (acquired for free) for the odd color print.
Inkjets are the best option in certain circumstances but most folks would be much better served by investing the money for a laser printer, especially if they don't need color.
I have had a Canon i960 for several years. It was about 3 years before I even bought a new cart. I refill myself, have never had a problem, never get any kind of clog or even have to do an ink prime cycle other than the one the printer does itself when it first starts after a cart switch.
It has actual optical sensors so it doesn't complain about low ink until the ink is actually low.
After a few years (probably 30 refills) the felt sponge inside got kind of clogged up (I'd probably let it run too dry too many times and it got lots of dried ink in it) so I had to start actually replacing carts. But when one color would act up, I'd replace that cart once, and then get another 30 or so refills out of it.
I guess I can't say whether original Canon ink is better or worse, because it's been years since I had a printer full of Canon ink. I know there are some crappy ink suppliers out there, so I use one that I've had good luck with and which has special formulations for each manufacturer. I've tried putting that manufacturer's Epson ink in my Canon (I used to have an Epson and had some leftover ink) - it worked but the colors were way off. So I'd guess that any ink maker that has a "one size fits all" ink formulation is going to be universally mediocre.
I am sad that apparently Canon has gone to putting chips in their carts. I guess I'm going to have to keep my i960 running forever.
The only problem with color laser are all the parts, on the Xerox there is the OCP cartridge, Fuser, Charge Grid, Fuser Pad, each color toner etc. Some of the manufacturers hide the fact of all the bits by only offering say the toner and drum and the rest are a site maintenance stuff.
After the first color laser we are using a Xerox Solid Ink printer (I call it a "Crayon Jet" as the 'ink sticks' are very similar crayon material) It prints fast, the colors are as vibrant on a laser and it is darn fast (I think it has page-wide printheads) Besides the ink there is a maintenance kit (cleaning roller) which is replaces ever 30,000 copies (we're upto 69,000 on one of em). Cost per page (inks+maintenance kits) come to about 5.6 cents a page.
There is a downside though, given it is a wax based more then a toner based ink the ink is not as abrasion or heat resistant (I.e. if you use it for bus cards some color rubs off on the adjacent card, or if you heat-laminate it you get a really awful bleed from the ink liquefying during lamination.)
Most of what we do is short term signage, certificates, reports and brochures which is just fine.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I had the same printer throughout college, the HP 5550. It cost me about $120 or so back in 2002. I've literally only bought two or three black cartridges for it in the last five years and have printed thousands of pages for papers, handouts, etc. Of course, I always print in "Fast Draft" mode, so the black ink is light, but it still looks great in my opinion. Oh yeah, it's also very fast when printing in Fast Draft, so there's another plus.
The best part is, the black cartridges cost $20, or at least they did last time I bought them. So I would guess I have spent less than $200 on my printer alone over the last five years, which sounds pretty darn good for all the printing I did in school. Best printer I will probably ever own.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I don't have proof yet, but I'm pretty sure that mine is trying to kill me.
I also have a little samsung 2010 mono laser for the non-colored stuff. again, fast, quiet. I don't plan on using another inkjet unless absolutely nessesary. In fact... I'm unloading the inkjet on a poor sucker--I mean friend of mine.... as soon as I can find someone who'll take the bloody thing....... any takers?
Inkjets are crap, you should always go for a laser. The initial outlay is more, but you'll buy consumables less frequently. As usual, people are idiots who only focus on the purchase price without thinking about long term TCO. If you need to do color printing often, then save your pennies and buy a decent color laser if you don't want to be running to Kinko's all the time or don't have access to a color printer at work.
I haven't used an inkjet since the early 90s. In January 1994 I plunked down ~$1400 for an Apple LaserWriter Select 360, and that's still my printer today. I'm only on my second ~$90 toner cartridge-- it took me YEARS to use up the one that was included in the box with the printer, not like the bullshit, half-full "starter" cartridges that come with inkjets.
In November of last year my Select 360 died, but I got my hands on another one (for free) that didn't print well and was headed to the dumpster, swapped out the mainboard and power supply from it into mine, and I'm back in business again. I'm gonna keep using this puppy until it is beyond repair.
~Philly
Explain this to me!
Damned Lexmark, they got the camels nose into the tent. Now even Epson will start making it so you can't use 3rd party cartridges in your printer.
And in Australia HP is selling high end inkjets that you can't buy. Instead you pay as you go.
Why doesn't the article have a 'print' or 'printer friendly' view?
Is Your Printer Ripping You Off?
... but the people that decided to sell the printers at a loss and make up the difference (and then some!) on the ink most certainly are.
No, I haven't caught it stealing yet, in fact I have it watching over my girlfriend's jewelry
There's a reason that Lexmark tried to sue a plug-compatible cartridge maker out of existence: without the artificially-inflated price of the ink the current business practices of all printer makers just aren't sustainable.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It looks great, too bad I can't buy Samsung anymore since their Linux deal with Microsoft (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/04/20/1440218.shtm l).
I have a Canon Pixma 3000, and prices for ink are very reasonable (4-5 euro, 2-3 afer market). It's an awesome printer in general, if it was still on the market I would recommned it to anyone.
- Nice colour photo printer
- full duplexer for double sided printing
- Can print CD's and other unfoldable items.
- separate ink tanks for each colour.
- Quite small, about the size of 4 stacks of paper, or 3 flat-bed scanners. I often take it woth me.
- new price was about 100 euro, 2 years ago.
Cheap ink and general good experience with Canon products is what made me buy this printer. But i am especially happy with the double sided printing and great colour prints.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Because, if you get one of those overzealous save the children vigilantes who've watched one too many "Nightline" (or whoever had that child predator sting) episodes sees that you took a photo of a child taking a bath or changing their diapers, the next thing you know, you're spending 6 figures proving your innocence.
No thank you. I don't want somebody with a perverted mind reading things into my photos of my children.
"Epson is worse, mainly because the ones I've owned tended to clog their print heads if you let them sit for more than a week or two. Then you run 2-3 cleaning cycles which used up the ink even faster. Back in the day of tractor feeds and impact printers, the joke was "Epson" was a Japanese word that meant "Paper Jam". I hope they've fixed that."
That's why cleaniness is very important on the Epsons (all inkjets really). Look at the cap that keeps air away from the printhead. A plastic piece with a foam pad and a rubber ring around the perimiter. One needs to keep that ring and were it rests against the prinhead clean. Anything that breaks that seal shortens the ink's life. One also needs to keep the slider clean and oiled (the part that the printhead moves on).
I myself use a LaserJet 5MP, and I'm on my third toner cartridge (the first was used) after almost 4 years. I bought it for about $75. Each gets something like 3000-4000 pages, I think, and costs about $80 directly from HP. The print quality compared to inkjet is simply fantastic, even for an older printer which does at best 600dpi.
What amazes me, though, is that even brand new LaserJets are quite affordable. My LJ 5MP is painfully slow with some PDF documents. New B&W LaserJets start at $100, and new color LaserJets start at $300 (caveat: these include smaller toner cartridges). With personal HP LaserJets, the drum is on the cartridge, which contributes to it being relatively expensive. If you're so inclined, there are refill kits, but the drum does eventually need replacing anyway. I'm not sure what the market is like for other brands, but I'd presume that personal laser printers are more affordable everywhere.
However, the quality of the color is pretty much useless for photos. However, if you print out colored graphs/diagrams, getting those to look readable in grayscale can be difficult. Still, I was never very happy printing photos on inkjet, as it always seemed more economical to use an online service. They're down to $0.10-0.20 per 4x5 photo, with a quality that's tough to match at home with reasonable printing costs.
So if you don't need color, laser printers are cheap. If all you need is simple color, laser printers are actually still affordable. If you print photos at home, I'm not sure I'd use the same printer to print documents anyway. It is surprising how popular inkjets still are.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I bought an HP 2550L at a discount since it was one of the last ones in stock after the new model came out. I bought a 1/2 ream paper tray that cost nearly as much as the printer and the 4000 page color toners cost 1/2 the price I paid for the printer. I haven't replaced the toner yet but all 3 low toner lights are on and I'm not going to replace it until after a page I care about comes out ugly. The thing is big and noisy and not real quick but it does seem to always print even when its been ignored for a few months which is better than many ink printers and fits my printing needs better.
Has anyone else noticed that the ink for the point of sale printers is far cheaper than the ink for cheap home printers yet is better quality?
S'ok, I think the feeling is mutual.
If those are amazon affiliate links, brilliant marketing!
You may still come out ahead with 3rd party cartridges if you do a lot of printing even if your printer is trashed after awhile. Take the money you save buying 3rd party carts over the life of the now-trashed printer and apply it towards buying a new printer which does come, of course, with the first set of "teaser" carts.
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
It is more cost effective to buy multiple video screens and forego printing altogether.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Kind of reminds me of ANY subsidised product. e.g. cell-phones. Price it realistically and people complain it's too much. Hide the true cost and people complain it's too much. It almost makes one wonder why any sane businessman would want to deal with the consumer?
the bottom line is that if you have an inkjet at all, that yes, you're being ripped off.
I had a similar issue, back when I had a POS (and I don't mean "point of sale," either) Lexmark inkjet. I only really used it about once every few months, and about one in three times I'd go to use it, it would be clogged. I ended up using most of my ink printing "de-clogging" test pages, and I was burning through ink -- both OEM and remans -- at a rate that could have bought me a pile of new printers.
Eventually I got myself an inexpensive laser (Samsung ML-1740, but there are better/cheaper ones out there now) and I've never, ever looked back. For occasional or low-volume printing it's just no contest. The toner doesn't go bad, it doesn't draw much power at idle, and it's at least as fast as my old Lexmark (feels much faster, particularly on multipage documents). It even does envelopes and sheet labels just fine (it has a "through and through" mode where it doesn't spit out on top, so it doesn't bend the labels and make them peel off).
I recouped the cost of the laser printer and the toner cartridge (factor in a toner cart with the printer purchase since they give you underloaded "starter" carts when you buy it new) probably within a year to 18 months, certainly under two years.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
what is the quality of print on the email printouts?
how are we supposed to advise you if you don't even say what the brand of printer is, let alone whether or not you're buying 3rd party cartridges!
If they're printing photos at home then they must be made of money anyway.
It's quite a bit cheaper to just go down to Wal-Mart/Costco/Sam's Club with a camera card or USB stick and have the run off on a lightjet. And you get real photos (actually on photo paper, if their chemicals are okay 100-year archive life) instead of ink prints. Or wait a few days and have one of the many submit-electronically/receive-by-mail print houses do it; they're the 21st century equivalent of the old mail-in color labs.
I guess if they can't easily get out and about then they're stuck with ink, but for the vast majority of people I don't see home photo printing as a particularly economical endeavor. It's one of those things that is a lot easier and cheaper (not to mention better quality) when it's scaled up. Unless there's some real need to product photos right the hell now, like take-home photos at a party or event, it just seems like a waste.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I appreciate most of your post. But the color option doesn't have to appear as expensive either. Okidata has several color laser printers in the 300-600 dollar price range. The starter toners are normally 3000 pages so the cost per page is still 10-20 cents each (considering the cost of the entire printer, not just the toner) and this is STILL less than a lot of the cheap/freebee inkjets that float around in most homes. Sure, the initial cost is high but if your kid just printed out 15 pictures of sponge bob you're not going to have to run to staples to throw down a few more bills. Not to mention that these printers are all of much better quality, both in design and printing quality, than any common inkjet.
Inkjets are the best option in certain circumstances
Name one. Just one. OK, so my fancy color laser is cost prohibitive to a small section of the community that is well off enough to afford a PC but too poor to shell out a few bucks. They're going to be just as bad off buying ink, if not worse. Like I said, I'm printing at 10-20 cents a page (make it 11-21 if you want to include paper). By the time you buy enough consumables to print 500 pages on an inkjet you're going to be spending just as much.
If they need to go B&W to get a laser on the cheap that's fine but still Kinko's is a much better route at getting your odd color print done economically (and quality wise).
The makers of the report make the grand claim that "Our panel preferred prints produced with third-party inks over those produced with manufacturer's own products."
But also state: "A comment that was made by several of our panellists was that many of the prints were of very similar quality and quite difficult to differentiate between."
The only printer I really care about is the HP one, for personal reasons. In looking at the charts for it the HP ink received an average score of 43.55, the CartridgeWorld average was 44.12 (0.57 difference), The InkTecShop cartridge had problems (no yellow, second cartridge had to be cleaned 3 times) and received a 34.83 score, JetTec came out with 41.52, and Green Tech with 35.40.
My conclusions: 2 brands didn't come close and/or had problems, 2 others were comparable but were "difficult to differentiate between" and fall within the realm of a couple points of deviation and error.
Bottom line: I don't print a lot so the cost doesn't really matter to me and I know HP isn't going to get pissy about my warranty if I use their cartridges.
Yeah, but the other unseen charge here is the drivers. People that change printers like they change diapers, end up with crap sitting in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monito rs that will keep the next printer from installing properly. Next thing you know is that they have a $100 geek(quack)squad bill to fix something that takes less time to fix than it takes to fill out the paperwork.
Well according to PC Pro, printers are deliberately set up to fail after some time in a way which requites return to base.. and blame it on the ink and blame it on the ink .. I don't really see that we should particularly trust printer manufacturers more than "Mad Dave's really Good ink" down the street.
Off-topic, but I've not had a printer in 10 years. I do stop by kinkos now and then for the occasional resume or ultra high quality hard copy project, but I do so less and less each year as electronic document formats become more acceptable. For me, PDF's make flawless wysiwyg documents, if any recipient ever does feel the need to print it. High resolution monitors and multiple monitors relieve eye strain and create the screen real estate I need when the desire arises to see everything at once. Internet fax services have never failed me for outgoing/incoming. Flawless syncing with/emailing to your palms/pocket PC/phone/mini-PC makes on the go documents easy.
At work, I am just stunned that the technology that can drastically reduce the need for paper has buried us even deeper in it. I guess their are times when a printed page is easier to use than a computer display, but come on. Printer queues easily take up 25% of a terminal servers resources and who knows how much bandwidth. When I look at the queues, what are people printing? Not invoices for customers...typically users print their email, web pages, PowerPoint presentations and the same document over and over and over. I know some people need them, but I would guess 90% of printer use is frivolous. Oh, and not to mention the cost of paper, toner and fixing the damn things.
Ah well, I guess they keeps some of us geeks employed, so they are good for that at least.
I bought a cartridge for $25 and it's lasted me for years.
Sure it's big, slow, b&w, and 300dpi. But it serves my purposes and costs practically nothing. I have read that HP thinks they made a mistake with series II and IIIs in that they made them too reliable. I figure my HP II is at least 15 years old.
My wife has a much newer HP laser, it's not bad either.
I fought drying ink jets for years, and finally made the decision to go laser. Managed to find an HP 2550 color at Wal-Mart (yes the evil empire), for $250US, on clearance. 2 years later, and I am still printing off the original carts!
About 2 weeks after I bought the printer, I found all 3 color carts in the clearance aisle for $12.00 each! They are normally $70 which is still not bad.
If you get the chance to get a laser printer, do it!
I have a 6 yo brother 1240... I am such a cheapass when the toner ran out I bought a refurb cartridge for 25$. Still printing!
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For my >$150 Inkjet I go for the refill, after a few refills I buy a new one.
I cringe when I see a 3rd party "recycled" toner cartridge placed in a $1000-$3000 laser printer...
Although these 3rd parties are claim to cover repairs if your printer is damaged by their cartridge.
I have seen so many examples of recycled cartridges causing
-Bad/Inferior Print Quality
-Run out well before the advertised page count.
-Printers require more frequent servicing and can cause to greater wear and tear to the printer itself
-Printers require cleaning as they get filled with toner dust a lot quicker than the genuine.
-Your printer complains of not having the "Geniune Cartridge" which disables some features(Cartridge Page Count) on some printers.
When the part is recycled the manufacture usually doesn't replace parts in the cartridge that are subject to wear and tear.
I don't want to be a "buy geniune manufacture brand cartridge" but until I see decent quality 3rd party toner cartridges I will only go for the genuine article.
and the 17$ colour cartriges? Anybody has tried them. They don't sell them in Canada yet but on the US website they are advertised. That's going to be my next printer purchase. And I'll probably get the camera to go with it.
For the most, part, most people could live without a printer. They could send their photos out, and go down and make prints at the copy shop cheaper than buying a printer and cartridges. For those that do want a printer, a laser printer for document and dye sublimation printer for photos is not a bad deal. The later is a cheap for a few single prints as the photo shops.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Bah. I'm still using an HP LaserJet 5p printer manufactured in 1995. I go through a toner cartridge about every 3 years or so. Prints B&W at 600dpi. Never jams paper, never fails. The occasional color print goes to a lab or Kinkos. I tried shotty inkjets, but none were as robust, reliable, or cost-effective as my good ole' Laserjet.
Even the 3rd party refill/refurb market is charging around $450 / litre, so they still have a decent profit margin.
I used to work for Kodak designing commercial inkjet printers with a $40K pricetag. Our customers would pay about $450 for an ink kit, which worked out to about $250 US / litre. Again, there was still plenty of margin in that.
I think the biggest concerns with 3rd party inks for consumers are:
Nozzle clogging - TFA mentions clogging in passing, but doesn't say they are going to test for this. In my experience, clogging occurs over time, as crystals form at the print head. More expensive inks contain a better (or just more) biocide to prevent crystal growth. Clogged print heads (or even worse, clogged ink lines) can be expensive to fix, and usually the cheapest repair is to toss the printer in the dumpster and buy new.
Archival quality - TFA does mention pictures fading over time and they will be testing for this. Subtle differences in ink and paper composition can have a dramatic effect. Remember, color is the effect produced by the combination of ink and paper. I think there are some techniques used in both paper and ink that can lessen the effects of UV rays. Again, this will cost money.
Color accuracy - TFA has side by side images of original vs. 3rd party prints, using the same driver settings, and it is pretty easy to see a big difference. Fortunately, you can correct for this by creating a custom ICC profile for your ink+paper combination. Profiling is not something that your Mom will want to do (unless she's a graphic designer), but it can be done. Profiling might be cost effective if you are a small design shop, producing some color-critical work, but you need to optimize costs.
As for me? I've switched over to laser printing for most of my work, and when I do need color output (which is rare), I use HP multi-function printer that cam with my PC and use geniune HP inks, just so that I won't have to worry long term nozzle clogging from infrequent use.
If my HP inkjet ever packs it in, then I'll switch over to a color lazer and be done with it.
I don't print that much, but when I do I want a good quality printout without having to mess around. I print out a page or two a day, and directions on where to drive to places. Occasionally I print out a manual or a book. I prefer to use duplex because it saves half the paper, and takes up half the space of single sided printing.
Everytime I took a week off and tried to print from any ink jet I have ever owned the print head was always clogged and needed multiple cleaning cycles to clean it. The cartridges always ran out of ink after just a 100 pages of printing, at most.
I got 3 ancient huge tektronic phaser 740's off ebay and made one working printer from them with plenty of spare parts left over for about $200. The cost was mostly shipping. Spent another $100 getting the print stand with 2 paper drawers, duplex and legal paper drawers, toner cartridges, and maxing out the printer memory. Throw in a scanner with sheet feeder and scsi cable for $60.
I have a color laser printer and copier for less than $400.
This has lasted me for 2 years now and is still going strong. The only pain in the ass is that the printer is over 100 pounds and I always nearly kill myself moving it.
What I generally recommend to my customers (I work at an OEM/retail) is that they get a nice little multi function, usually canon or epson (they are the best of the bad lot, meaning ink jet printers) and get a hp or Fuji/Xerox basic laser too, the laser printer will pay for itself in in an about 6-12 mths :)
The only good thing about inkjet multifunction machines is that they're probably the cheapest way to get an automatic-document-feeder scanner. Since they're selling the machine at or close to a loss, hoping to make it up on ink, you can go out, buy one, and then never print a single page on it and just use the scanner functionality.
Compared to the cost of a standalone ADF scanner, there's no contest -- "real" ADFs are out of the price range of most home users, but for under $100 you can get one built into a MFP that basically does the same stuff. Probably a little slower, but the key functions are there -- drop in a stack of paper and it scans.
Sometimes you can even get them for free, if you find someone who's throwing one away because the print heads are jammed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Or else you could use gmail paper:
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
...but in the spirit of the article, I think I need to split it up over ten posts to get the maximum amount of clicks...
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure. Wow, you're still using an amber or green CRT? Wicked retro man!
You nouveau geek types. Everyone knows that teletype ribbons come in one color - black! Why anyone would need more than one color ... or a TV tube ...
Because naked baby == kiddie porn :(
Do color lasers look as good as inkjets though? In my experience, they have not, but I won't discount the possibility that newer models have improved their handling. The printers I've had experience with, I'd use for presentations or cartoons: they were pretty sharp, but the color was very discretized. I would not use them for anything photorealistic.
Has this changed in the past couple years?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The Epson replacement ink is outrageously expensive. I can get "generic" replacements for half the cost. The drawback is that the generic cartridges have leaked and my printer is now a mess.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
-b.
Similar story really - I bought a HP Colour Laserjet 5 from a friend about a year ago. It does A3 too but only in B&W (I rarely need A3 printing though) and it cost me £40. It gets fairly regular use but it's not quite photo quality so we still keep an inkjet around. As a bonus I've seen a full set of 4 toners on ebay for £15, for this printer they're not cartriges but bottles you pour in (or so I'm told, not had to do it yet). It's quite bulky but we just shoved it into a cupboard out of the way and hooked it up to the network.
How come the article doesn't have a conclusion page?
el burro hablando de orejas
I used to spend money on ink cartidges. Then I bought a b/w laser printer. However in the last few years I almost never print. When I really need to print something (like IRS confirmation that they received my e-sent taxes) I print to PDF. Why bougher to keep track of your hard copies when you can save it on HD and print on paper in the future if you really need.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Whenever I need to print something, I go buy an old inkjet from the 90's (at a garage sale or some such). They usually cost in the range of $5 to $15, and come with a half-full ink cartridge. That cost is less than the average ink cartridge, and they can last for years and never clog up. When you're out of ink, discard the printer and buy a new one.
Before I discovered this, I would buy a cheap new inkjet printer, print until it clogged up or ran out of ink, and then buy a new cheap printer (they cost less than the cartridges.)
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Where are these mythical ink cartridges that cost $45???
It seems when someone wants to complain about manufacturers ink cartridges, they always use some cost pulled out of their ass.
For example, HP uses cartridge 96 (Black), and 97 (Tricolor), in many ink-jet printer models we use at work.
I can purchase these cartridges in multiple places on the Internet for less than $30 each, in factory sealed packages.
If I buy at Costco, it's even lower cost, by buying 2 or 3 at a time.
I understand some people want the best price, but at least use real prices!!
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
Darn right, damn inkjet cartridges always dried out,
had to clean the heads over and over just to get a so so quality print job.
Bought my Samsung laser 3 years ago, love it. Never going back.
Even refilled the toner cartridge. Got 3 refills for 10$ LOL
As for the article, notice not one of the printers gets over an 8?
9-10 was for wedding or special birthday, and non of them got it, not even for text.
If I had a real need for colour I would trade my laser for a multicolour laser.
I recall hearing about:
"In re Epson Ink Cartridge Cases Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding No. 4347 Los Angeles County Superior Court"
from various places on the web, including: "Have an Epson Printer? File for a $45 Settlement" but being as I have never owned an Epson printer I didn't dig around to see what this was all about. If this was for real and someone knows more about the issue, please post here about it.
Aside from that, related news: "Epson wins initial ruling in ink cartridge suit"
The only issue I have with bulk ink dye, or the pre-filled options on the market, is with print life. It's not like the major bulk ink manufacturers (Formulabs/sensient, Image Specalists, OCP, Lyson, and others) can't make an ink which will be as lightfast or as gasfast as OEMs. They just don't as the market. Bulk ink at under $1.00/ounce ($2.00/ounce at the consumer level).
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I've gone through the same thing with my old printer - Epson Stylus Color 670. I used cheap cartridges, they cost me 3$; and I've used a LOT of them before the printer 'died' (the ink leaks made everything a mess). While it worked (which is 3 years of high-school, and the first ~3 years at the university; note that it was a 2nd hand printer, I don't know how long it was used before it got into my hands), the cartridges were long-lasting, and the print quality was ok.
Now I have a HP PSC1410, the cartridges are much more expensive and they don't last that long. My conclusion is that I would rather use a printer with cheap cartridges; even if it will 'die' one day, I'd still spend less than I would have, had I used a solution that relies on expensive cartridges.
The advantage of the Epson printer is that the heads were a part of the printer, which is why the cartridges were dirt-cheap. In the case of HP, the cartridge costs almost half the price of the printer itself, so this approach is not cost-effective for the end-user.
Another issue with this HP all-in-one printer is that I can't print b&w if I have no colour left, even if "use black cartridge only" is checked. It's really weird, why would they use a two-cartridge scheme, if I cannot use one without the other? I print colour once in a million years, so I am now crafting a plan - sell the unit before the entire world understands how inefficient such printers are.
The saddest poem
For photos, inkjets are still generally superior in my opinion. (hence my caveat) Thermal wax printers can get good picture results too but it's harder to get supplies for them. For office and presentation use the current lasers are generally more than adequate and cost effective. For text lasers are much better in most cases Personally if I had something that needed serious printing quality I'd be traveling to Kinkos or some other print shop rather than doing it myself anyway. I think it's fine to keep an inkjet around for printing pictures (I do) but unless that is the majority of what you do they're just too expensive to be worthwhile.
In Costco stores (Canada), there is an HP Laserjet (forgot which model) that's currently being sold for about 100$CAD. Yes it's black and white and yes the cost/page is very low.
Forget inkjet printers.
3rd party inks don't last as long. This is a very scientific test and shows that if you want your prints to last for your children to enjoy and their children to enjoy the actual ink used by the manufactures EXCELLS in all these areas, and you are actually paying for something when you pay all that money! -=Matt=-
Fortunately, you can correct for this by creating a custom ICC profile for your ink+paper combination. Profiling is not something that your Mom will want to do (unless she's a graphic designer), but it can be done.
Maybe the ink vendors should create and distribute ICC profiles. It could be a good advertising point: Our ink is consistent enough batch-to-batch that we have produced a colour profile for it! (But perhaps some of the manufacturers hard-code the profile into the printer driver?)
The last printer I had was some cheap Lexmark that I tossed out when it ran out of ink (back in '03). Now I do all my printing at my university where they charge $0.08 CDN for a b/w laser print (or 12 cents for a duplexed page). I looked at buying a laser printer and at the time it was going to cost about 4 cents per page for ink plus the paper so I just stuck with printing at school. It's easier because I'm usually there and I get to use high quality, high speed printers. I spend about $60 to $100 CDN per 4mo school term on printing which seems pretty reasonable as I was mostly printing proff generated notes (pdf or ppt's) which often replace the need for a textbook which usually run about $150+-$30 and sometimes much more...
See subject.
Get a good color laser printer, and when you need to print photos, do it online through wal-mart or something.
So when you're out of magenta, you can't print out that term paper that's due in 20 minutes, even though it's only in black.
There's another print technology you haven't mentioned. The colored ribbon. Basically there's a multi-colored film ribbon. It's slow, just like wax but it gives beautiful prints. Some brother fax machines use a black-ribbon. Oh that reminds me, bubblejet is another.
So...? York Color Labs will do 16x20 for $6 and 20x30 for $8, plus a buck-fifty S&H per order, and you get to not have a $1200 large-format photo printer sitting around.
At best, you're talking about a really niche market for machines like the Epson 3800 and its bigger brethren; you have to be very obsessed with quality and control (to not want to send your stuff to an inexpensive lab like York) and do a huge amount of work in very large formats (to make it uneconomical to just send it to a prolab for the occasional large print).
For anything smaller than that, like 12x18s, you'd be much better off going to a local place with a Frontier 500-series and having them do it. It's getting to the point where every drug store in the world has one of those, and as long as they're dumping Bottle A and Bottle B into the right amounts of water, there's not a whole lot left up to human error (particularly if you go to any of the ones where someone's produced a color profile for the printer).
I've been taking pictures and consider myself a respectable amateur photographer and a bit of a gear-head, but the idea of paying $1200 in order to run off the occasional 17x25 seems a bit ridiculous. I could see a good minilab keeping something like that around (and charging $25-50 per print, probably), but that's right up there with having an Imacon or drum scanner at home, because you think you might need it some day. I've only ever printed anything bigger than 12" (on its shortest dimension) once, and that was a 24x36 poster print which I had done by mail anyway. I just don't see the draw.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Got a Xerox Phaser 860 a while back - BLACK ink is FREE! Yes Free! http://www.office.xerox.com/programs/fbi/freeblack ink.html
Outputs like Laser (and is water proof! - but it is really based on inkjet technology) and is tons fast for color or B&W. Sure every 40,000 copies I have to spend 200 for a maintanice cartridge (chip and oil roller) but other than blocks of colored wax there is NO other consumables.
Color an't that bad of price too. OEM $220 per color per 7000 pages yeild - but I got well over 10000 per with doing just spot colors- can cost much less for 3rd party ink - about $80 per color for the same amount of ink. I figure that after 150000 copies printed - my cost was less than $0.07 per page on average doing color INCLUDING PAPER. Print just B&W was like less than $0.01 WITH PAPER (cost more for the paper than the ink!).
If you can Pickup a used 840/850/860 - the best quality for the price. The newer 8500 series is good too - but the Black ink is no longer free - cost just a small amount - but they include a free block or two of black when you purchase color.
People buy these older printers - get JUST the FREE BLACK INK and use it as a straight MONOCROME printer - The fill all the slots with BLACK - Dremel drill is your friend!
Is it cheaper than tattoo ink?
Save a bunch of money that way. :)
Seriously, I can go many months without having to print anything. But let the printer go down at work for five minutes and I have people ready to lynch me if I don't get it fixed quick enough. I guess some of it is necessary, but I would bet a fair amount of all printing is just a waste.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
People think they need color for some reason. Why I'm not exactly sure. I bought a used HP laser jet 4 several years ago off ebay, and have used the same toner cartridge since I bought it. The old HP laser jets are tanks that can spit 20,000 pages without a hitch. The components are all replaceable, and really quite easy to change the pickup rollers, etc. Hooray! With the exception of printing photographs I rarely see the need for color. And photographs should be printed at a local professional print shop because no ink jet, even the high dollar ones, do a job worth a damn. Personally I stole* my LJ 5MP from work, but the story is the same - been using it for a couple years and haven't replaced the toner cartridge yet.
But the real answer is "Don't Print". The only thing I've been required to print in recent memory was tickets to a concert and tickets to a baseball game, both of which were purchased online. That happened twice each. I know people, including my mother, who print emails and read them in front of the computer. %&@#$!!! WHY DO YOU DO THIS!?! My boss brings me stacks of printed websites, to which I often reply, "Couldn't just email me the link?" It's not like he's highlighted anything. Which by the way could be done if he printed it to PDF.
There's just no honestly good reason to print documents. Photographs I can get behind - I print my photography all the f'ing time. But I do that at work on a $45K color laser printer, not a $200 disposable desktop ink printer.
Personal printers are like personal scanners. They were cool in the 90s but now they're useless.
*It was in the junk pile - 'stole' just makes it sound more interesting.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
My eyes can take looking at a computer screen for only so many hours of the day.
It has an ADF scanner, and the included software will create searchable PDFs (it OCR's the document and embeds the text into the PDF's metadata).
Re-he-heeally...? Wow, I have an HP also, and I've never gotten it to do that. Maybe their Mac software isn't nearly that cool. As far as I can tell, either I can produce an OCRed text file, with or without formatting, or I can produce a raster file. The "Image and Text" scan option, output to a PDF option, at least in my few tests, seems to just produce a PDF file that contains the OCRed text (complete with errors), without the raster data at all. (The "Image" option to a PDF file, on the other hand, created just the raster; I can't seem to get both in order to produce a searchable file.)
Did you have to do anything special to get that to work?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, if you get a good printer, it does often cost more -- and generally, the ink is more competitive. My Canon i9900 was either $400 or $500, but it's indestructible, prints at high resolution on huge paper (it'll do 13x19), and the Canon ink cartridges are pretty cheap compared to the competition -- and are just plain plastic with no electronics or moving parts.
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They cost maybe $6 for Epson black and $7 for color. Never had a problem with them. Compare that to $30 or so for "real" Epson cartridges. And they aren't "refills" but originally manufactured cartridges, supposedly under ISO standards.
You'd have to be nuts to pay the kind of money for ink cartridges that the printer manufacturers want you to pay.
Given the crap software that HP wants to install on your systems now (750MB of crap for their OfficeJet 6310! plus drivers that port scan your system!), I'd say HP is going out of business at some point.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I have an MFC-4800, that's a "laser" (may really be LED) Brother multi-function device - print/fax/scan/copy. This is one of the printers that has a separate toner and drum. The one time I bought non-Brother toner for it, I had to buy a new drum to get it printing well again. Of course, the toner cartridge only costs $30 or so for real Brother, so it isn't a real hardship.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
at least you could have said CGA or EGA instead of boring Hercules ;)
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I used to work for a printer manufacturer at a call centre, and if you buy an ink cartridge printer, then you are just wasting good money on crap! It is the biggest scam you've ever seen! They keep coming up with new and innovative ways to ensure that the consumer only uses their ink cartridges, and since the printers themselves are worth almost nothing, then this blatant protectionism is going to only hurt them in the long run. They count on people who know almost nothing about computers, or technology in general, and they'll put together this fantastic sounding package deals, which will include the computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, joystick, software, and of course the printer, and some printing paper for your photos, and this is where the big money is with all the consumables that the customer will use up in the first year. Most of this first year is just getting used to the computer, and software, and the printer, and they'll go crazy trying out new stuff like printing photos, and boom...they got you! The printer manufacturer is so cheap that if you purchase a new printer, and if it has an issue that can't be resolved, and must be sent in for service, then they'll send you not a new unit, but a refurbished unit. OMG, the calls I used to get from customers freaking out because they had just spent all this money on a new printer, and then to have a 2nd hand one sent back to them in exchange for something new...the company has lost a lot of customers by using this tactic. We would have to tell the customers that it is in the purchase agreement, blah, blah, blah, and in most cases they would accept it.
Here's a tip: If they send you a refurbished unit, then the moment you get it just break it in some fashion (don't make it look too obvious), and then call up tech support again, and complain, and then they'll send you out another refurb unit, and then all you do is screw with it in some way again, and then call up tech support, and go through the steps to fix it...of course you could just say that you are following the steps, and not do anything to it, and then they'll have no choice but to send you another one. Now, here's where you'll make your money, and then some...you screw with it again, but this time when you call in you DEMAND to speak with a supervisor, and tell them that you want your money back because their products are crap, blah, blah, blah, and then they'll fall all over themselves to make you happy by sending you out an upgraded model, or whatever...don't accept that, just tell them that you want a Laser Printer with a couple of extra toner cartridges!lol Don't get too greedy, and demand the total top of the line Laser printer, but get one that will basically fit your needs, and you now have beaten them at their own game!:-)
Another tip: If you do have an inkjet printer, and are happy with what you have, and don't mind refilling the cartridges, then this is what you need to do in order to maximize the use of your cartridges. If you are going away for an extended period of time, like on a holiday, take your cartridges out, and even the nozzles themselves (yes, some manufacturers are making them separate again to get more money from you), and put them in ziplock plastic bags. Ensure that there is no air in there, so that they will not dry out. This will save you hours of aggravation, and tons of cash because you aren't wasting money on new cartridges in order to get the printer working again, when all it was dried out nozzles, or cartridges! Nice scam, eh?
Seriously, get rid of your ink jet printer, and just go with a laser printer, and if you really, really need to print something out in color, which is probably never, then just do as everyone else is suggesting, and go to your local copy center. I foresee that printer manufacturers are going to phase out ink cartridge printers because slowly but surely people will not buy them because of the high cost of the ink cartridges.
Flourescent lights, CFL or otherwise, are fairly binary in their operation. Either there is enough current to sustain the UV emissions which make the coating glow, or not. That's why dimmers do not work with them.
Please troll somewhere else. Laserjets are much more cost effective thank ink jets, otherwise every business would be running inkjets instead of their fleets of laser printers.
lets go back to writing by hand! and using pens! Those ink cartridges are much cheaper. pens rock!
Balderdash!
My wife and I have tried Snapsfish, Shutterfly and others, and have found that HANDS DOWN, the best quality for final prints nad photos comes from York Photo.
Not only are they cheaper per-print, but the paper and the finish and the overall speed and quality blew all of the others away (and we have the prints from all of them to hold side-by-side to prove it).
I don't work for any of these companies, but when it comes to printing keepsake photos for albums, family members and framed photos we give away as gifts, nothing we've tried so far beats York.
Last time I cracked open an Epson cartridge, which was a long time ago, I saw the ink was a semi-solid (and not just old, neither.) Heat from the electrodes melts the ink a few pico-drops at a time. Pouring wet ink into those vessels doesn't sound like any quality of substitute.
I print photos to look and sell like photos. If I want cheap colour I'll buy a laser.
Duh ... there's a reason they give you a printer whenever you buy a new PC. To get the revenue from the ink replacements.
= 0&t=490344&highlight=samsung+printer $57 for a ML-2010 laser printer isn't bad. Folks say the ML-1720 is a better cheap printer tho.
A few years ago I counted the number of color pgs and black/white pgs. Only 5 color prints happened that year. I gave away my printer and waited for a slickdeal http://www.slickdeal.net/ on a cheap laser printer. A few weeks later, a Samsung ML-1740 Laser was available for $65. That was about 3 or 4 years ago. I replaced the starter toner (1000 sheets) about a year later. We're still using the replacement toner (3000 sheets).
The inkjet would dry out at the most needed time - April 14th - USA Tax prints. That problem will never happen to me again.
Did a quick search http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid
"None! They use laser!"
I realize you're young and everything, but...INCORRECT!
"Sure is, but then again, any computer that didn't come with an Ethernet card is probably going to have a parallel port since it'll be > 5 yrs old."
Um, no. I have a MB that's under five years and it came with legacy ports AND a giga-ethernet port built in (some models even had firewire built in). Throw in SATA and built-in sound and it was a good deal (and no it's not a Nvidia chipset)
For non-chip models* I would recommend taking the cartridges out. Cleaning the ink off them (don't forget the nozzles), and putting then into ziploc sandwich bags. Press all the air out first, and store in a cool place.
*This procedure messes up the ink counter on some models.
Some people do need color. Professionals and serious amateurs in the digital arts need their own color printers.
At the moment I'm a post-professional, serious amateur with about $3,000 invested in digital cameras, equipment, software, and supplies. I have a Canon i9900 that I think is wonderful: I could produce photorealistic prints up to 13 by 19 inches with it. But I usually don't; I like to digitally sculpt the images I get from the camera and usually only a few details remain photorealistic. I might spend a week or more working up an image in PaintShop Pro or the GIMP, and do a dozen or more test prints on cropped areas using different papers and printer settings before I'm ready to do a production run. When I'm in the mood, it is a very satisfying hobby.
The Canon i9900 uses 8 separate print cartridges that are priced at $12 each. Six of these I've been refilling myself for the past year or so using a kit from IMS that cost $18. I have not found a 3rd party supplier for the Red and Green inks, but they last about 5 times as long as the others. I have been very satisfied with the results from the reloaded cartridges, both for quality and resistance to fading or discoloring. I end up with funny colored fingers every now and then, but it is worth it.
I've run a lot of different papers through this printer, including a number of different watercolor papers. Some of these have very rich textures. I ruined the original print head by getting a little too wild with heavy papers, but I've gotten some incredible art done. But now that I'm no longer able to write things off as business expenses, I'm a lot less experimental and I'm getting a lot more life out of the print head.
Back to the point: anyone serious about digital photography or art will want their own color printer sooner or later, because the choice of paper and control of printer settings has a major impact on the final piece of art.
Printed pictures tend to look nicer in color. For a lot of text, a laser does look better.
I tend to use several different printers though, depending on the task. On my workbench, I have an old workstation beast of a computer (2.2GHz Xeon) hooked up to four printers, one inkjet for pictures, one duplex laser for instructions, documents & sales slips, a label printer for mailing labels and an engraving/cutting laser. I'm thinking of buying another label printer dedicated just to printing out stamps too.
Perhaps you should get a better brower... no problem with IE.
They have a 10 for $10 deal at a shop in chicago that I used to go to, but dont visit often these days since i moved.
Companies can't sell ink past the experation date, and have to either send them back or throw them away. Their headquarters then sells it to resale shops for a little profit above manufacture price, if none.
Aka, ink is very cheap. Don't worry if its a few months past the exp date. I've seen people use ink that's years old.
Why pay up to $100, when I can get it for $1.64?
about getting a deal with unlimited free (as in beer) ink.
Trust me, the Snapfish employees don't want to see you naked either.
Has anybody had luck refilling the toner in the Epson photoconductor unit (1104) for the CX11 laser printer? These things are supposed to last for 40,000 pages BW, 12,000 Color, but I've been getting far less than that. Luckily, the printer was still under warranty, and I had it replaced twice for free. But now, I'm faced with $260 price tag for an OEM unit now that it's out of warranty.
Believe me, in this case poor print quality can only be an advantage.
And you think Snapfish has good quality? If your doing little prints and don't care about color or quality in your little 4x6 of your kid eating a banana your set. Otherwise go elsewhere or do it yourself.
I had been seriously concidering buying a color laser, just because the damn ink cartridges for the inkjets are sooo expensive.
I have been getting ink cartridges at www.printpal.com
These are *new* (some no-name bridge) - cartridges are insanely cheap - $6 or $7 for color or b/w for my Epson-880 with free shipping! The quality is good, and they last a LOOOOONG long time.
So - they're cheap enough to justify keep using the inkjets!
[This may seem like a shameless plug, but I have *no* affiliation with this company]
Color prints should be created within a color management system, such as ColorSync on Macintosh. When a print is made the lighting environment in which the print will be viewed must be taken into account, be it indoors using incandescent lights or outdoors under sunlight. Each viewing environment has its own color temperature of the lighting source that is used. For example, sunlight is approximately 5000 Kelvin. Every lighting environment must use a continuous tone light source, which is to say that the light has a full spectrum of colors from red to blue in various proportions. Fluorescent light does not qualify as a continuous tone light source. All fluorescent lights have distinct bands of specific wavelengths which means that some colors are not at all represented in their light. The result makes it impossible to properly judge the color of a print. This study therefore has two huge faults: (1) There was no color management used. (2) All prints were judged under fluorescent light. We don't even know what kind of fluorescent bulbs were used. There are a number of different kinds, each with their own overall color balance. Conclusion: For judging black in prints as well as other qualities of the print other than color, this test was useful. But the folks who performed the test do not have an adequate background in color technology or they would not have made the blunders noted above. There are some terrific books about color printing. I wish they had read one. Testing such as this needs to be carried out by professional print specialists. Meanwhile, I can't say I disagree with the results. I have worked with all four manufacturer's printers and I would put them in the same order of quality as the results of the testing. In other words, I have always found the quality of prints from Epson machines and inks to be generally of lower quality than those of HP despite hype to the contrary. I don't even consider the other two manufacturers in the running for color printing. One thing that should be added to this testing is consideration of pigment inks, such as from Epson, versus dye inks. Pigment inks provide a longer life of color accuracy in prints. However, recently designed dye inks have claimed improved longevity. There have been problems getting pigment inks to reliably print with the same color balance from cartridge to cartridge, making it difficult to use color management. Are the benefits of pigment inks worth this problem?
You seriously think that for 12 cents some employee actually looks at your order? I'm guessing it's all automated, with just the occasional QA check.
dom
A few years ago I made the mistake of buying an Epson Stylus CX 4600. I've been an Epson fan for a long time. I had the old FX80, MX80, and MX100 dot matrix printers (back when dot matrix and daisy wheel were the options). I then bought an Epson ActionLaser that was a fantastic printer and served me well for years.
The CX4600, however was a scam in a box.
I don't know how many inkjet printers do this, but here's how it works:
1> You can only print when both black and white as well as color cartridges are in the printer. In other words, even if you only want to print in black and white, you must have color.
2> The cartridges have the timeout period where they stop working and it's not very long.
3> At some point Epson modified the cartridges such that they stopped working with this particular printer model. Many people were victims of this change. At this point, I got fed up and post a rant on my web site which actually got a lot "me too" comments.
Epson finally relented to the pressure and agreed to replace peoples' printers (though I was an early caller and when I called, they denied there was a problem with the cartridges).
I went out and bought a laserjet and have never looked back. I rarely need color and laser is just so incredibly cheap in comparison. In the year and a half since I posted my rant, I've gone through one toner cartridge (where I was going through an entire set of ink cartridges at about $70 total replacement) every month or so. Need to print photos? Go to WalMart. Need a printer at home, get a laser and save yourself a lot of headaches, money, and aggravation. That's my opinion.
Maybe Canon is the Nintendo of printer manufacturers. :)
The problem is just that people only see the huge ad for a cheapcheapcheap printer in the snailspam. But so far it is not illegal to benefit from dumb people, and as long as it isn't, those cheapcheapcheap printers with their a-buck-per-drop ink will exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
> Perhaps you should get a better brower... no problem with IE.
No problem that you could SEE, sure!
I had been using a Lexmark of some kind for a long time. Ink cost came to about $50-75 a month. The cartridges would get clogged up constantly, requiring constant test pages. Eventually, the printer would print everything streaky, nomatter how many times it was cleaned or the carts were replaced. Time for a new one. I bought an Epson CX3810. It was a few clicks away from Just Working in Ubuntu. It is slow, but I like the fact that it has seperate ink cartridges for all the colors. What I really like is the amount of ink the carts hold - enough to print around 500 pages of normal quality black text on a single black cart. I found third-party carts, and have over the 9 months I have owned it printed over 1,000 pages on them. They work great, and ink cost works out to around $0.01 a page. I now print off 100 page documents with barely a thought given to it. Had I gone with the manufacturer's cartridges, it would likely have been around 5 times that.
If there's anyone I hate more than stupid people, it's intellectuals.
Scary thing is, the ink really DOES cost a buck a drop :/
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I bought a HP 5m with a duplexer from my university surplus for $35 bucks, it rocks, it prints 2 sided and I can do 2 or 4 pages a side too (but the print is tiny) It had a relatively low page count... like 43,000 so I bought it. The last one I bought had a count of 120,000 and it dies, but it was 20 bucks and I used the hell out of it. Toner carts are fairly cheap and they are good for 6500 pages... more than I print in years.
For photos I use an epson r1800, it is an ink hog but I am a photographer and the results are good. I would never run the 3rd party inks they mention. They had not profiles, and they did not test the prints for longevity, so of course their results were bad. Photo output requires profileed ink and paper for proper color accuracy. I have tried other companies who made pigmented inks for my machine and with the right media profiles I have had suitable results. Inkjets really aren't for printing lots of text in my opinion.
I work at a place where we refill cartridges, and I would have to say that it's way cheaper than buying a new cartridge, and you get more. OEM cartridges have been found not to be entirely full when you buy them, but maybe 75-80% full. When you get them refilled (depending on where), they can fill them to the full capacity, but not over-fill, because then it simply won't print. Where I work, we test the cartridges that have the print-heads on the cartridge and not the tanks to ensure good printing. It's definitely cheaper, and you're getting more for your money. Can't go wrong?
Most commercial photo processing labs have a human operated QA station to check things like exposure levels, bad prints, etc... The prints fly by them at high speed, and they do their job very quickly, but your picture almost certainly gets looked at by at least one human during processing.
Or you can open the Sunday paper, cut out the coupon for Walgreens photo processing, and have the same thing in 20 minutes.
I stopped by Office Depot and they have the lower end for under $300. The toner comes in small cups and it's about the cost of inkjet ink. The Samsung uses four, and the higher end model ($600) has a scanner/copier and a fax machine built in. I'd recommend getting some print samples first running through what you most likely print.
In the time it took you to go to the thrift store and find those three printers, I made 4 times what it costs for a brand new printer and 3 cartridge refills.
:)
When you have the time, doing things that way can be very rewarding.
I don't have that kind of time.
I didn't test it yet, I'm no millionaire, but I'd guess you won't get a full drop for just a buck. I just didn't find a better analogy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, you don't get a full cart for $70, so getting only a half-full drop for a buck probably seems reasonable enough to them...!!
[goes off, looks up how many drops are in a ml]
Apparently about 25 drops per ml. I've seen carts with as little as 25ml of ink. So... a buck a drop is a pretty good guestimate!!
But I ain't about to mortgage the farm to test that theory either.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Is this /. or Savage Love http://www.avclub.com/content/savagelove? === ALERT! ADULT CONTENT=== I'm confused.
So you'll need to do some serious documented convincing
IANAL but write like a drunk one.