Kodak Challenges HP's Printer Sales Model

Radon360 writes "Kodak has decided to attempt to buck the trend set by HP by offering low cost printers and reasonably priced ink cartridges. Three of their new printers start at $149, with ink cartridges costing $9.99 for a black cartridge and $14.99 for a five color cartridge. To counter, HP has announced a release of lower-priced cartridges, though with less ink and they are still more expensive than Kodak's. It will be a matter of time to see whether Kodak can upset the practice of ink cartridge extortion."

Comments

Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[gbulmash]

I guess if Kodak doesn't underprice the printers, they won't be as hurt by cartridge remanufacturers and cartridge cloners as the outfits that sell printers at a loss, looking to make it up in ink. Still, even at their low prices... everyone loves a bargain. If someone can profitably undercut Kodak on cartridges or DIY refill kits, will they find that they've just changed the tempo of the game rather than changing the game itself?

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Marc D.M.]

My only issue with this is that the DIY refills are usually messy and of a lower quality than the original.

I'm looking forward to this as it could pave the way for cheaper photo-printing options.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[LurkerXXX]

If the price difference between Kodak and the remanufacturers isn't that big, who is going to risk f'ing up their printer prints with garbage remanufactured crap when for a very small bit more they could get guaranteed good OEM ink? I know I wouldn't. It's the huge disparity in pricing right now that drives people to take the risk.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Kadin2048]

If the price difference between Kodak and the remanufacturers isn't that big, who is going to risk f'ing up their printer prints with garbage remanufactured crap when for a very small bit more they could get guaranteed good OEM ink? I know I wouldn't. It's the huge disparity in pricing right now that drives people to take the risk.

Exactly. Particularly when the printer is $150, and not some $20 piece of garbage that's just a holder for the $40 or $50 cartridge. Nobody cares really about messing up their printer, when you can just get a new one practically for free -- but when the printer is a significant investment, and the replacement cartridges are cheap, who's going to do that? It's penny-wise and pound-foolish at that point to cut corners.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[jridley]

You just need to be careful to buy a printer with carts that are easily refillable. When I had an HP, it was a little messy. When I had an Epson, it was stupidly messy, bottom fill, poppet valves that leaked, ink all over.
I now have a Canon and it's rare for me to spill a single drop.

Lower quality means you've been using crappy 3rd party ink. Buy from a company that formulates ink properly per manufacturer. IMHO good 3rd party inks are at least as good as OEM inks. It's not like the OEMs have some secret process for making ink.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[DDLKermit007]

It's only a risk if your printer is an Epson generally with non-replaceable ink heads. Something like HPs you can buy the shittiest refills you can, and it doesn't matter. Ink head clogged? Oh well, hit it with a little alcohol, nope, new cart. Too bad I only got to refill that black cartrige three times for printing text.

Something else of note though. I find it highly suspicious these sites that have been doing photo ink print comparisons all of a sudden. In the control case they use OEM fresh carts, and OEM paper. Then they turn around, get the cheapest ink refill they can, and use garbage Office Depot paper, or paper that was made for a different printer entirely (the paper is the main factor in these instances). Just my 2 cents on the matter though.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. If they don't make much money on the ink, they won't care if people buy it somewhere else.

Kodak has priced these printers to be profitable on the printer sale alone. Compare the cost of these Kodak printers with similar HP or Cannon printers. The Kodak printers are much higher priced for the same feature set.

For years the printer market has been driven by the cost of the printer. People want to buy a $49 printer that can do near laser quality text and near lab quality photos and they make their purchase decision based on the price of the box. The printer companies sell the printers at a loss and make up the difference on the ink. People are waking up to the cost of ink and Kodak is trying to exploit it. Kodak is hoping that these people will now buy the printer based on the cost of ink only and not notice the more expensive priter.

You can give Kodak all their profit up front or you can make installments with HP.

What we really need is a printer company that wants to go out of business. They could sell the printers AND the ink at a loss.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[SythDot]

The last HP printer I bought (for "Free") is the last HP printer I will ever buy. Black ink goes for $3000 per litre. Yes, that is not a typo, a 5ml cart cost $15; that's $3 per millilitre or, $3000/litre.

I don't need to support a company that pulls that kind of crap. Besides, they given rise to the single most common class of spam email, the ink refill spam that inundates my server (more that penis enlargement and erectile dysfunction combined).

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[sphealey]

> Kodak has priced these printers to be
> profitable on the printer sale alone.

And the paper. Kodak make a very nice line of inkjet photo paper which comes in that nicely recognizable yellow box with the red logo - and a price to match. They could easily make their profit on the brand if their more cost-effective printers induce people to buy their photo paper.

sPh

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[UncleTogie]

It's not like the OEMs have some secret process for making ink.
No more so than Coca-Cola has a secret recipe/process for Coke...

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[linzeal]

Problems arise when you use some ink cartridges over and over again, I had to superglue the circuit board on my brother ink cart after about 5 refills. It just fell off during printing one day.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[simm1701]

Epson cartriges are not worth refilling. Unlike many other printers the printing head is not on the cartridge, its in the printer (atleast on all the epsons I've ever had). This means the cartridges are a lot cheaper to make, true epson still charge an arm and a leg, but the clones are very easy to find cheaply and I've never had a problem with them.

I think I pay about 3GBP for black and 5GBP for 3 color for my 740 - the printer is also 7 years old now and still works fine.

I think I'll stick with epson in future - mainly for the sheer ease of buying good quality cheap clone cartridges.

Having the printing head on the printer has a down side - if it breaks its time to bin the printer - too expensive to replace/repair - the up side it they can use a better quality one than the disposable ones on the majority of cartridges

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[zakezuke]

My only issue with this is that the DIY refills are usually messy and of a lower quality than the original.

I'm looking forward to this as it could pave the way for cheaper photo-printing options

FAIR COMMENT. And this is commng from someone who self fills.

You can keep the mess down to a minium. Bottles with blunt needles attached, if dye going with sponge type cartrides rather than sponge free which tend to employ vacuum filling. Better yet are CIS systems where big bottles are stored externaly.

As for quality, i've not met a self fill solution, with the exception of pigments, which come close to matching OEM. It's not that one can't make bulk archival ink, just the target market is seen as being cheap bastards. Going with swellable polymer paper and a coat of spray helps. For color quality, image-specalists / formulabs are two major companies who make compairable solutions.

Don't go for any kit which is universal.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Tim Browse]

And this is commng from someone who self fills.

Well, this is slashdot, after all.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[ThePromenader]

You're in the exact same situation as I - I'm still using my circa-1996 Epson Stylus Photo EX. Prints super-A3 size, and works like a charm. Some ink-clone companies are lower in quality, but with a bit of research (and perhaps some trial and error) one can find a suitable brand. May I also point you to This earlier Slashdot Article.

What it comes down to (for me) is this - since I will never be using any store-bought printer for publication-quality prints, my printer works just fine for all my personal and layout needs. It's when one goes publication-end that one needs to pay more attention. Yet I wonder how much the "big guys" pay for ink?

The high price of ink cartriges is an abuse, and it is no coincidence that virtually all printers have, until now, followed the same practice at almost the same price level. I'm glad to see that trend break.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[sa1lnr]

How do you know the $150 printer is not a piece of garbage too?

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Eivind]

Don't think so. They've got the upper hand by being the manufacturer.

If other people can profitably make and sell ink-catridges for their printer for say $5, then Kodak can still probably sell theirs for $7.99 because, well the original ink is perceived as better than copies. Sometimes this perception is justified, sometimes not, but in any case, it's there.

Currently it's more like, the non-original ink is $7.99 and the original is like $39.99 at *those* price-differentials people balk and go for the cheap route. I doubt many would go for refills or non-original ink if the savings where small to moderate.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[zakezuke]

Exactly. Particularly when the printer is $150, and not some $20 piece of garbage that's just a holder for the $40 or $50 cartridge. Nobody cares really about messing up their printer, when you can just get a new one practically for free -- but when the printer is a significant investment, and the replacement cartridges are cheap, who's going to do that? It's penny-wise and pound-foolish at that point to cut corners.

I'm reading the black as being equal to 3c/page, I would guess 333pages/tank or $15/ream. I read the Kodak 1215581 tank is 10ml, or $1.00/ml Bulk dye ink tends to run $1-$2/ounce or about .03c/ml to .06c/ml. From what i'm reading, the 5300 looks like it uses pigment ink, 1 text cartridge and a photo cartridge with CMYK and clear. That's closer to 15c/ml for bulk pigmented ink, 85% savings is to be expected on the black cartridge. I have no meter for the color cartridge, but 80% savings is not unreasonable for bulk fill pigment based inks.

3c/page is good, but on par with other inkjets including the classic hp 45a cartridge.

I read it has a 6.5pl head for text, 2.7pl nozzles for color.

For other printers, bulk ink pays for it self after 2 or 3 cartridge changes. This kodak looks like you can get 6 OEM cartridge changes for roughly equal to the cost of the printer. I would expect 7 cartridge changes on bulk ink before it paid for it self. This would be slightly more than 2oz of black ink, and I presume an equal amount for each color plus clear. I do base my cost estimates on epson compatable ink.

As far as who would risk their printer? Companies like MediaStreet seem to do perfectly well offering bulk ink to pro-sumer printers costing $500+. High profit retrofitting wide printers.

While I am not all that excited about this printer, it's nice to see another option other than Epson, esp since Epson pretty much offers a document printer (c series) and a photo printer (r series), but nothing really to cover both bases. Even better yet, Kodak is offering a thermal based pigment printer before canon releases their a3+ pigment model.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Moraelin]

Having the printing head on the printer has a down side - if it breaks its time to bin the printer - too expensive to replace/repair - the up side it they can use a better quality one than the disposable ones on the majority of cartridges

As opposed to HP where, at least for a couple of models, it's cheaper to buy a new printer than change the cartridge? Even though nothing is broken?

Not disaggreeing with you, just saying that if that's the only downside, I can live with that. Happily.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[simm1701]

Pretty much, that and hving to clean the heads now and then

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[JohnBailey]

That is the whole point. The money is made on the printer as it should be. The ink is then sold at a sensible price, so the refill companies can supply lower priced refills or not. Kodak have already made their money. And if the refills are not that much cheaper, only a few penny pinching fools are going to buy the third party versions. Years ago when I got my first inkjet, it cost about £130, and the ink was reasonable for a black and 3 color cartridge set. My current printer has individual ink refills for each color, prints CDs and can print directly from my camera if I so desire. Yet it cost me about £45 for much more complex engineering, and the ink costs as much if not more than the printer for the Epson branded ink. Good for Kodak, and hopefully more will follow. This ink racket should have ended long ago. If they make the printers Linux compatible too, then I'm a very willing customer even if I had to settle for slightly lower quality.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[WingedEarth]

Kodak's ink is both cheaper and higher quality than competitors.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[jonsmirl]

I get free printers and throw them away when the initial ink runs out. I've gone through about ten printers so far. Way cheaper than buying the cartridges.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[LordVader717]

Which is why there are a number of drinks that are virtually indistinguishable from Coke (along with a load of other crap)
I don't drink Coke regularly enough to care, but buying into the manufacturers game of "If you don't use overprice ink pre-filled into minute containers your prints suck", or Epson's "who can be the first to implement DRM into ink"

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[LordVader717]

My Canon has a separate print head that can be replaced.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Dan Ost]

If you're not printing color, you're a fool for not getting a laser printer.

Hell, even color laser printers are affordable now (though AFAIK they don't do photo printing).

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

The HP Laserjet 2580 or 2850 something like that, all-in-one color laser does photos and has PictBridge and memory card reader. That being said, the HP Officejet Pro L series printers that just came out claim 25% lower cost per page than color laser when using the 88XL cartridges although I haven't verified yet. The L series also uses 4 separate ink tanks and 2 separate replaceable printheads.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Linker3000]

Sorry, but a full toner set for a Samsung CLP-510 colour laser is not much less than the cost of a new printer.

Our first (and last) one has just demanded a new transfer belt and drum after only 3 toner kits and to buy those is about £5 less than a brand new printer.

I'll kiss the CEO of Kodak (and maybe even have his baby)* if he sorts out the colour laser market.

*Not really.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[jp10558]

Well, when I still used Inkjets, I used Epson, precisly because using 3rd party ink did not void your warrenty. So if you fucked up your printer within the 1 year warrenty (and if the ink's gonna do it, I'd think it would happen before a year's up) Epson would replace the printer.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[ahg]

While HP cares about ink refill sales since they practically gave away the printer with the assumption of gouging you on ink... Kodak will not care what ink you buy for refills since they've priced it cheaply and plan on making a reasonable profit on the actual printer. (Howeverm\, like any other OEM, you probably won't be eligable for warrantly service after mucking up your printer with junk ink)

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[zakezuke]

My Canon has a separate print head that can be replaced.

So does mine.

But... it's a thermal printhead which will burn out. I estimate 10 cartridge changes on your average ip3000+ model based on canon numbers. Reality is much higher, 15 to 20 in my experence.

Epsons are based on micropiezo technology. Printhead life is rated double or tripple that of canon. It is more prone to clog, but a clog is typicaly not a catastrophic condition, it typicaly can be resolved with blue windex.

It's a question whether you want to employ elbow grease, or throw money at the printer to resolve typical print issues.

Let's not neglect the fact that in the case of canon, the printhead is typicaly 2/3 the cost of the printer, where OEM ink is also about 2/3 the cost of the printer. You may want to keep your printer in service, but replacement is not a bad deal.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please consider the environmental cost of your printing solution too.

I'd rather you just found one that works and not help create a pile of waste.
I understand you may just be taking from someone else's pile of waste, but if
you make it easy for other people to dispose of their printers, then you are
not really helping solve the (big picture) problem either.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[zakezuke]

Epson cartriges are not worth refilling. Unlike many other printers the printing head is not on the cartridge, its in the printer (atleast on all the epsons I've ever had). This means the cartridges are a lot cheaper to make, true epson still charge an arm and a leg, but the clones are very easy to find cheaply and I've never had a problem with them.

I'd agree that epson(tm) cartridges are a pain to refill. They employ a complex multi chamber design which probally does a good job providing even ink flow its entire life, esp since it's micropiezo based which depends on good fluid balance, but make it a royal pain for end users to fill. Now... some of these third party cartridges employ sponges and a more simple chamber design. Sponges will not last forever, but if you just drill a cork in it you can refill with relative ease. Technicaly they are easier than canon to fill as there is a valve that prevents flow when not penitrated by ink feed tube. A sponge is "good enough" for most applications.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Hoi Polloi]

jridley, care to share your preferred 3rd party ink source? I have a canon MP830 printer that takes these pricy CLI carts. I'd love to stop save some $ on them.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[jridley]

it's a thermal printhead which will burn out.

Really? Because mine isn't. It's a piezoelectric print head which theoretically can keep going for a very long time. Thermal is what HP and some others use. Epson and Canon use piezo. I've seen Canon printers that were many years old that had been through hundreds of ink carts and were still printing fine with their original print heads. As long as you don't get an ink clog in there, the print head should keep going indefinitely.

Thermal print heads don't last very long; that's why HP carts are ink plus print head. I used to have an HP, and you could only refill them about 2 or 3 times before the print head fizzled out. My Canon is on at least 50 full sets of refills now and no problems with the print head.

Now if they'd just release Linux drivers for it. It's one of the last things keeping me from running Linux full time.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[jridley]

www.inksupply.com
I don't know about your specific printer, but they have a lot of solutions. 3rd party empty carts, different inks, continuous flow ink systems, etc. I've used them now for HP, Epson, and Canon for many years and their inks have never caused me any trouble.

Their sales will skyrocket

[ZoOnI]

I will be buying a Kodak if the cost of both toner and printers is low as well as a minimum reliability.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[ackthpt]

I will be buying a Kodak if the cost of both toner and printers is low as well as a minimum reliability.

I'd like to see them enter the low end laser printer market. These damn things are as bad as inkjets. Printer for $200, refill for $70 to $145. Feck that.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[Eskarel]

Yes, but that toner cartridge will usually print out several thousand sheets as opposed to the between 200 and 400 you get from an ink jet, assuming you use it often enough not to get drying or clogging. $100 for 2000 sheets is a hell of a lot better than $30 for 200. Especially when it doesn't dry out or have to get tossed because you haven't printed for two weeks.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[Fred_A]

Mod++
Exactly why I switched to laser at home years ago and never looked back. And I'd rather have my photos come out of a Frontier or some such than an inkjet. Ends up being cheaper too.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's anything like their X-ray products, stay the hell away. It will be a nightmare in every regard.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[MBGMorden]

Very, very true. I suffered with inkjets far too long. I don't print much - at all. As a matter of fact 90% of my printing comes down to recipes (and I don't cook much either), driving directions, or tax returns. Maybe a some other assorted lists, but I'm not the type to crank out greeting cards and banners on my printer. Inkjets were always drying up on me. When I did manage to avoid that, ink cost had me trying to do refills. After a loose needle on a syringe full of blue ink came off and exploded blue ink all over me, my computer (including monitor), and some of my clothes in the closet, I pretty much gave up on those (thankfully the stuff doesn't dry very quick and I was able to clean most of that mess up without any permanent damage). Once I realized that I really couldn't care less about printing in color, I switched over to laser printer and have been very happy. I use a tiny little Samsung printer (can't remember the exact model - I think an ML-2010). I've had it for probably close to a year now, paid $50 for it after rebate, and it's still running just fine on the original toner cartridge. If it ever runs out it's $75 for the real one (I'm still on the "starter" cartridge that has only 1/3 toner), and that's well worth it given that it'll probably last me 4-5 years at the rate that I print.

Of course, given my printing needs (ie, as long as it's legible it's fine), I'd probably be satisfied with a dot-matrix again. I gave my Epson AP-5000+ away years ago, but man, that thing would print FOREVER on a $10 ribbon cartridge :D.

Expensive!

[wwpublishing]

Is it me or does a $15 cartridge sounds expensive. I mean, like you go to a copying a store, and copies are like .03 each. $15 = like 450 pages. One of their ink cartridges can't even print that.

Re:Expensive!

[PhysicsPhil]

Is it me or does a $15 cartridge sounds expensive. I mean, like you go to a copying a store, and copies are like .03 each. $15 = like 450 pages. One of their ink cartridges can't even print that.

The $15 cartridge is for colour. It's $10 for b/w, but it's still more than you'll pay at a copy shop. The copy shop will be using toner-based laser printers, which have a cheaper per-page cost to run. If you're planning to print a lot, get a home laser rather than an inkjet.

Re:Expensive!

[Kruid]

what? compared to HP's $35 - $50?

Re:Expensive!

[jlarocco]

$15 expensive? A while back I bought an old HP Deskjet for $10 at the flea market, my logic being that if it didn't work it wouldn't be a big deal because I'd enjoy taking it apart. A win, either way. But then I had to buy ink. I ended up spending $80 for black and color, and I'll be shocked if they last to 450 pages. Fortunately the printer works, because I don't think they do refunds on ink.

But anyway, $15 would be pretty sweet given the alternatives.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

Yep, it's a rip-off. Comparing apples to apples, the B/W cartridge is $10. For three times that, I can buy a new toner cartridge for my HP laser printer which will print at least 5,000 pages. I'm sure these Kodak cartridges won't last for 1666 pages.

Plus, toner cartridges don't have to worry about drying out with too little use, like inkjet cartridges do.

The simple fact is that inkjet printing is just a bad idea, no matter what the costs are. It can't compete in any way with laser printing technology, except by using marketing to take advantage of peoples' stupidity and shortsightedness.

Re:Expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I buy Epson and generic ink. It costs me $2.50 for black, $2.75/color(3=RGB). That's $10.75 to fully restock the printer. They last just a tad shorter than the OEM due to dry-out, but have excellent quality.

I believe HPs generally require buying pre-owned cartridges refilled, or refill-kits. I believe it was about $11 for black when I looked it up for a friend.

Re:Expensive!

[macshit]

Seriously! There are always tradeoffs involved. These printers are intended for casual users, who want the convenience of something sitting on their desk but can't justify a big outlay -- and they certainly seem quite reasonably priced given that convenience! Obviously if someone needs to print a 1000 page tome, they might want to take their lunch hour to drop by a copy shop, or invest in a laser printer if they do it often.

From my admittedly uninformed ("casual" :-) viewpoint, these Kodaks seem to really hit a sweet spot though; 3-400 pages or so would probably last me oh, 4 months, and $2-3 a month for home printing, with a fairly modest initial outlay, seems awfully tempting... Granted I'd probably print twice as much if I had a printer at home, but hey....it's still less than a lunch per month! I think it's this "print more once you have it" effect that the ink-cartridge-extortion vendors rely on.

Hmmm.... I wonder if the print quality is OK?

Re:Expensive!

[alshithead]

I've been very happy with my HP Laser Jet 2600n. It prints great for our minimal everyday use and seems to be pretty economical for printing large quantity color tri-fold adverts for my wife's business. The print quality is wonderful and the variety of paper types that can be used is excellent. I've got it on a wireless print server by Linksys so all of our computers can use it as the default printer.

I would suggest that anyone using a bubble jet investigate a color laser printer. With the toner recycling promos offered by the office supply stores, replacement toners seem to be a lot less expensive than the little tiny bubble jet replacement cartridges.

Re:Expensive!

[Detritus]

Except for that little bit about color.

I'm tired of hearing how studly and economical the laser printer is in comparison to the ink jet, when they're comparing a color ink jet to a monochrome laser. If it doesn't do color, I don't care how cheap it is.

Re:Expensive!

[Urza9814]

...my HP ink cartridges are rated at exactly 450 pages actually. Of course. the problem there is that they're closer to $50 each, not $15.

Re:Expensive!

[michrech]

That's why I buy Epson and generic ink. It costs me $2.50 for black, $2.75/color(3=RGB). That's $10.75 to fully restock the printer. They last just a tad shorter than the OEM due to dry-out, but have excellent quality.

(guy-who-has-had-to-repair-way-too-many-Epson-prin ters)
Yeah. It's too bad, that ink dry-out. Ruins a lot of print heads that are, in some cases, just as expensive (if not more-so) than HP's cartridges.
(/guy-who-has-had-to-repair-way-too-many-Epson-pri nters)

Re:Expensive!

[billcopc]

I've said it before, and here I say it again: To hell with inkjets! Laser printers have gotten far more affordable than they once were, and a toner cartridge lasts a helluva lot longer than an ink cart. I've been seeing low-end color lasers lately for about $300 brand new, and you can usually expect a 3rd-party toner cart to cost about half as much as the brand-name ones, while still being top quality. It's not like the crappy inkjet refills where you inject new ink into a used cart, you don't have to worry about dried ink when dealing with a laser.

The other good thing going for laser is the 3rd-party toner suppliers don't need to cut corners on toner quality because they're not selling a $12.99 kit, they're selling a $60 kit where the savings come from bypassing the most expensive part of the brand name supply chain.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

How many TVs do you have in your house? How many cars (especially if there's more than 1 person in your family)? How many computers? How many pairs of shoes do you have? Would you only wear dress shoes because you need those for those few times you go on interviews, or do you have a separate pair for that?

So what makes you think you need one printer for everything? How much color printing do you do anyway?

For me, if I can't leave the printer for two weeks without printing a page, and not have the ink dry up in the printhead, then the printer is utterly useless. This is not a problem in lasers. If I have to buy new color cartridges every time I want to print something, there's no way that printer is even affordable. A $1000 color laser would be a better deal.

Re:Expensive!

[Grym]

Kodak Easyshare 5500

Show me a laser printer that can, scan, copy, print photos, fax and duplex with a price tag of only $300 and ink refills you can buy in a local retailer. It's simply not possible.

Oh... and that printer is fully Mac compatible. Remember that Mac special $100 discount off of a printer deal? Yeah, this will work with that.

Hands down, (based on it's stated features/pricing) this is the perfect printer for home users. Not only does it have the convenience of an all-in-one printer but it's much cheaper per page than a traditional inkjet. I've actually done quite a bit research recently with the intent to buy a laser printer for the reason you said and because I like the fact that laser printed ink doesn't smear. When I came upon this printer, I simply couldn't justify going laser. Ever since, I've been waiting patiently it to come out.

-Grym

Re:Expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you don't repair, you replace. The OEM cartridges cost more in the end, and a newer (higher-end on the home line) will offer better quality / more features. There's no point milking the printer's life when its the ink that sucks up money (especially when its OEM ink on older models cost a lot more).

However, I've never had to replace an Epson due to failures. I've used them since the dot-matrix days (early 80s).

Re:Expensive!

[Brett Buck]

>The simple fact is that inkjet printing
>is just a bad idea, no matter what the
>costs are. It can't compete in any way
>with laser printing technology, except
>by using marketing to take advantage of
>peoples' stupidity and shortsightedness.

      What a complete load. Ink-jet probably can't ever match the cost-per-page of laser. But even a $75 ink-jet will run rings around any conventional laser printer for photographs.

      Brett

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

Who cares what the initial price is? That's what this whole article is about: initial price vs. consumables cost.

You can get duplex laser printers quite cheap these days. Scanning can be done with something called a "scanner": these are quite cheap as well.

Printing photos? That costs me $0.11 per print at Costco. Why would I want to do that at home when I get better quality at a far lower cost from them?

Fax? Doesn't that require a landline? Who has one of those any more? I have fax capability through send2fax.com, but this of course requires a scanner, which again is easily had for around $50.

Mac compatible? Who cares? How about everything compatible? That's why you get a printer with Postscript support. Which many lasers are. Or at least don't buy a "winprinter".

For cheap duplex laser printing with postscript, you can get a used HP LaserJet 2200 on ebay for around $100 now. Add $50 for a JetDirect card and you have a network printer. $30 will get you a cartridge good for 5,000 pages, which will not dry up on you if you don't use if often enough.

BTW, I don't see anything on that Kodak printer page about an ethernet connection. What good is a printer that can only be connected to one computer?

Re:Expensive!

[CastrTroy]

In my experience, Inkjets are terrible for casual users. I need to use my printer about once every 3 to 4 weeks. Because it's inkjet, and I use it so infrequently, the cartridge is dried out every time I need to use it. So I've given up on the thing and it sits in a corner. When I need to print something, i'll use the printer at work, or go to the UPS store. For Photos I have Walmart. The next printer I'm going to buy will be a laser, because I don't want to have to worry about the ink drying out. On another note, what happened to dot matrix printers. I remember we had a dot matrix printer and the cartdges (ribbons?) were $5 each and laster for well over 1000 pages.

Re:Expensive!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The simple fact is that inkjet printing is just a bad idea, no matter what the costs are. It can't compete in any way with laser printing technology, except by using marketing to take advantage of peoples' stupidity and shortsightedness.

I really don't think that's a universal case.

Laser printing has many advantages, but I still keep an inkjet around for photos. I just saw someone's fancy new color laser today and it's still clearly inferior to the inkjet photo prints that I get with my inkjet. To get a laser that's competitive in quality is prohibitively priced. In other words, if you care about photo quality for something that is consumer-affordable, then you'll have to do inkjet if you don't want to shlep over to a Kinko's or the like for every print. I think energy consumption on lasers is pretty high too.

I don't print often with my inkjet, between print sessions, I just wrap it in a big bag to protect it from the elements and put it in a closet.

Re:Expensive!

[Hadlock]

I saved myself the intial $100+ cost of the photo printer and hassle of bagging my ink cartridges (you're kidding, right?? what a fucking hassle) by doing my photo printing online. Most photo sites offer free shipping, to boot. Of course, I don't print that many photos, because my photo archival is done on a computer, instead of a photo book, and there's a few rare photos in photo frames about my house.

Re:Expensive!

[dfenstrate]

The simple fact is that inkjet printing is just a bad idea, no matter what the costs are. It can't compete in any way with laser printing technology, except by using marketing to take advantage of peoples' stupidity and shortsightedness.

Coming from someone who has a color laser printer at home and loves it, I can't fully agree.

I may well buy one of these new kodak printers just for printing photos. I'm currently under the impression that you can't get good photo-paper prints from laser printers because they typically melt the glossy emulsion.

The printer I have is the Okidata 5500 . It cost $400 after a $200 mail in rebate (which I did get back in a month or two) and I haven't had to replace a toner cartridge yet*.

They are 'starter' cartridges but I've gone through two or three reams so far on them. Anyway, it can't be beat for copy paper printouts. I just want to print out photos for framing on occasion inkjets seem to do that better.

Kodak's little program here may mean I actually buy one instead of hitting the kiosks at Walmart or a photo store.

*Not counting that messy incident when I realized that the toner cartridges are two seperate pieces, and that the 'lock/unlock' switch didn't lock it in the printer, but locked the halves together. That cost me $120 and an hour of cleanup.

Re:Expensive!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I didn't bag my ink cartriges, that's silly. I wrapped the entire printer in one large bag. It only takes a minute to set up and a minute to take down and wrap up. I don't print a lot of photos either, but just enough that I keep such a printer around.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

How much is the total cost of printing those photographs, though, if you factor in the cost of all the ink, and the fact that if you were to wait, say, a month between printings, you'd have to buy all-new cartridges every month because they dry out and gum up the printheads?

For that cost and trouble, I'd rather just send my photos to costco.com for $0.11 each.

Re:Expensive!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Actually, you do have to be discriminatory which inkjet. My uncle gave my grandma one that prints crude photos and it was $90. To be fair, it was a multifunction, but none of those other functions were great either.

Re:Expensive!

[fotbr]

Dot-matrix went out because they're seen as "old", they're NOISY, and the print quality pretty much sucks compared to anything out now.

That said, I still have an ancient Epson (it was purchased with an old 8088 machine) that still works, and I've got a pile of ribbons for it. It'll print fine from some old dos programs, but I'm too lazy to put together a windows print driver. It is tempting though. Just for the novelty, not for any practical purpose.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

Thank you; I was starting to wonder if I was the only person who printed photos online around here.
Yes, bagging a printer or the cartridges definitely sounds like a "fucking hassle". I couldn't put it any better. It's ridiculous that one would have to go to such lengths to avoid the fundamental problem with inkjet technology of ink drying out in the printheads.

I do print photos sometimes, but it's not very often, and it's not very many. It's nowhere near enough to justify buying a printer for it.

Re:Expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Copies at a copy shop would probably be made on a high speed photo copier for under a penny per copy they're usually not done on a laser printer. Just because you add toner to something doesn't mean it has a laser imaging system in it.

Re:Expensive!

[Atlantis-Rising]

I have a laserjet 2600n, and can second this, most emphatically. At home, it's plugged into my network, and I've never had a problem with it at all (except for the fact that it seems to do its autocalibration routines in the middle of the night, which can be very startling the first few times).

Plus, I did the cost per cartridge analysis, and it was half the cost per page of an inkjet printer. Absolutely great. Even if the initial outlay was 399 or so, it was still totally worth it.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

Just how many photos do you print "for framing on occasion"? Even the big 8x10 and 8x12 prints only cost $1.49 at Costco's online service. You'd have to print a LOT of photos to make one of these printers worth it, after you consider the $150 initial cost, plus special expensive paper and ink cartridge refills.

Don't forget that you have to throw away the cartridges and buy new ones every time you decide to print photos (since you only want to do so occasionally) because the ink will have dried out, rendering the cartridge useless.

Re:Expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

In SE Wisconsin, USA nearly all copy machines are $0.20 each page.

Re:Expensive!

[Ankur Dave]

Color lasers aren't very expensive, and neither are the toner cartridges. I have a Konica-Minolta Magicolor 2300DL, and it cost around $450. As for the toner, black costs $80 for a 4500-page cartridge, and the three color cartridges (cyan, yellow, magenta) cost $60 each for a 1500-page cartridge.

So: $0.02/page for monochrome, and $0.04/page for color. That's much more economical than an inkjet.

Re:Expensive!

[Kamokazi]

Inkjets printers are cheaper than laser printers for many average consumers. Remember, Slashdot is a minority...most people go to Dell or walk into a Best Buy and pick up a $500 PC often with a free printer.

1) Color laser printers are still (relatively) expensive. Average Joe consumer buys a $500-700 desktop or a $800-$1000 notebook. Justifying a $400 printer for maybe 15 pages per week or less is not viableNow naturally if he's putting out 100+ pages per week, then a laser printer would pay off. But the average consumer is not going to get their money's worth by the time they would need to buy a new printer.

2) A complimentary color inkjet to a BW laser can be the best choice for many consumers with a higher printing demand. A $100 BW laser for printing out most things and a cheap color inkjet for the occasions you need color. Modern ink cartridges take AT LEAST 6 months to dry out (at least in my experience...I've had some work after 2 years of non-use).

3) Photos. Lasers can't output the same photos a nice $150-200 photo printer can. Epson and HP have small 4x6 inkjet photo printers that can get 20-25 cents per print, which isn't much more than Wal-Mart, and can be worth it for the convenience. The larger photo printers are more expensive, but when they double as a desktop, can be worth it.

So, inkjet printing is NOT a bad idea, it's just got a bad ink scam system that finally someone is trying to rectify. For the average consumer, this will be very welcome.

Re:Expensive!

[lakeland]

Color lasers can be had for as little as $200. I was looking at a $500 one this morning that does duplexing, PCL level 6, 30ppm, 17ppm color, ethernet (DHCP client), print spooling and ...

Yes, it is more than a B/W inkjet, but it does not take long at all to justify the price difference.

Re:Expensive!

[RealGrouchy]

The simple fact is that inkjet printing is just a bad idea, no matter what the costs are. It can't compete in any way with laser printing technology, except by using marketing to take advantage of peoples' poverty and my colourblindness.

There, fixed it for you.

- RG>

Re:Expensive!

[digitalchinky]

I have one as well, it's just a pity that HP wont release drivers for x64 based systems.

Re:Expensive!

[squeegee_boy]

Don't forget that you have to throw away the cartridges and buy new ones every time you decide to print photos (since you only want to do so occasionally) because the ink will have dried out, rendering the cartridge useless.

Do lots of people leave their inkjets in front of a south facing window or something? I print only a few photos a month, if that, and I've never had this problem in the 3 years I've owned it. Not once. Canon i960 with the 6 separate inks, if that matters. My Mom's old i860 was the same (until the electrical part of the head went, but that's another matter). Maybe integrated-printhead cartridges are worse for this? I dunno, but my printer is in a cool, dark cabinet. I have a Laserjet 4000 with a duplexer for text work.

Re:Expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had this happen with an HP printer. My old canon printers used to dry up rather quickly. From my perspective, spending $40 on a new printer isn't a big deal every two years. I'm a college student who could never afford a $1000 laser printer. Most of the sub $100 black and white models do not work with Macs. As I do most of my homework on my iBook, this is a problem. Plus I'd rather have a model with a built-in jetdirect or some other form of ethernet based connection. I could then print from any system in the house.

Currently, we've got two HP inkjets connected to two different Macs. My wife's printer is one of the last "good" HP inkjets and I have a $40 wonder.

You have a strange list of items. I could see having an inkjet and laserjet in the home if one did print in color often enough. Thing is, I'd rather not have so many printers as they take up space.

Re:Expensive!

[aardvarkjoe]

How many TVs do you have in your house?

One.

How many cars (especially if there's more than 1 person in your family)?

One.

How many computers?

One. Maybe two, if I put together all the spare parts in my closet.

How many pairs of shoes do you have?

Well, you got me there. Three.

I use a black-and-white laser printer myself, but if I frequently needed to print in color I certainly wouldn't want to mess around with having to deal with two separate printers. One is aggravation enough.

Re:Expensive!

[evilviper]

On another note, what happened to dot matrix printers. I remember we had a dot matrix printer and the cartdges (ribbons?) were $5 each and laster for well over 1000 pages.

They're hiding, but still a couple models being made (mainly used for carbon-copy forms that need impact printing).

They might be okay on ink, but I sure as hell wouldn't recommend them. It's only been a couple years now since I last used them, and they are a nightmare.

They're painfully slow, crawling through plain-text printouts, and god help you if you need graphics.
They're noisy as hell. Imagine a slower, high pitched jack hammer in the same room as you, going for hours a day...
The quality is ridiculous by today's standards (60dpi). It's readable, in the same way that simulated alphabetical text on a 7 segment LCD (pager) screen is readable, but dot matrix makes a typewriter (or Daisy wheel printer) look like fine art by comparison.
You can get cheap ink, but they don't take plain paper... You need old ratchet-drive paper, and perhaps with time you've forgotten the nightmare of accidentally ripping finished printouts while removing those perforated strips.

Dot matrix printers were killed by laser printers long ago, and for very good reason.

Re:Expensive!

[jayratch]

Is it me or does a $15 cartridge sounds expensive. I mean, like you go to a copying a store, and copies are like .03 each. $15 = like 450 pages. One of their ink cartridges can't even print that.

On Long Island, NY, gasoline is $3.15/gallon, a typical car gets 20ish mpg, and a copy shop tends to be a 3 mile drive for most people. So the base cost of prints is $1.00 or so plus other trip related expenses. (This is just a small example of how increasing energy costs are having an adverse effect on the entire economy, but that's offtopic).

If it costs me $1.00 fixed cost plus 3 cents a page, then for anything less than a 20 page job it's just not cost effective to outsource casual printing.

I on the other hand purchased a disposable laser printer a few years back for $30 (rebate) at Best Buy. Refill toner is $40. Even on the 5000 sheet toner it came with, for text prints on plain paper, it's barely over a penny a page plus electricity.

That being said, I'm not really sure how much longer I'll be able to afford to be pumping oil fired electricity through applicances such as said laser printer; still, my printer uses less petroleum than my car.

So yes, home printing can still be cost effective. But inkjet printers, I am convinced, sell only due to price point. With color lasers as low as about $300 to consumers, with $100 refill kits good for 5000+ pages, the consumer inkjet market exists ONLY due to the low initial investment. Because of that, I would almost doubt Kodak's success in this venture, but they have been selling inkjets in this price range for a long time with huge success and incredible brand recognition.

However, am I the only person surprised to see this as news? Didn't the old Canon BJC printers use simple, cheap ink-sponge only carts that were cheaper than high quality dirt? The Canon that hides the dust bunnies under my TV seems to also use similar sponge carts, but I'm not sure, in the age of cheap lasers, that I'll ever actually use up an entire suck cartridge. Note that Canon and Kodak are both imaging companies whereas HP, Epson, and others are more "generic profitable consumer technology" factories.

Re:Expensive!

[fuego451]

On another note, what happened to dot matrix printers.

I recently worked receiving in a very large warehouse and our 24 pin Okidata printer was a real workhorse and relatively new. Yes, they are still sold, mostly for special business applications. Ours was used to print company orders to process what was shipped to us and it printed about 200 pages on a slow day. We used a dot matrix printer for this application because they are very reliable, fast and inexpensive to maintain. Hook up a fifty pound box of tractor feed paper to it and let it rip. Any other kind of printer would have been a major pain in the ass.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

I'm a college student who could never afford a $1000 laser printer. Most of the sub $100 black and white models do not work with Macs. As I do most of my homework on my iBook, this is a problem. Plus I'd rather have a model with a built-in jetdirect or some other form of ethernet based connection. I could then print from any system in the house.

$1000???

First, I have a HP LaserJet 2100M. It's about 7 years old now; I got it used on Ebay. They cost about $50-75 on there now in working condition. They support Postscript, so macs aren't a problem (or Linux). They have an EIO port so you can get a 600N or 610N jetdirect ethernet card for $50 on Ebay and have a network printer. Cartridges are $30 on ebay. For duplex printing, or just to have a slightly newer model, the 2200 (with both duplex and postscript standard) is usually $100-125 on ebay. The newest ones, the 2300s, are usually arend $250-300, and a little fancier, but the cartridges cost a little more. These are all office printers, not consumer-grade printers, and are very reliable; the used ones are usually off-lease from offices that upgraded to something larger or newer. Get something with a low page count (10000 or 20000 or so) and you shouldn't have a problem.

If you look at the Samsungs on Newegg.com or similar, they're around $100-150 for a brand new model that comes standard with an ethernet port, and they also support macs and linux out of the box. The cartridges are about $70 though, I think, and last around 3000 pages (someone feel free to correct me if my info is outdated).

Either way, for B/W printing, inkjets can't touch solutions like this. There's no way you need to spend $1000 for a good B/W laser for home use.

I had problems with Canons and HPs drying up long ago, and swore never to get another inkjet after that.

Re:Expensive!

[Tyrdium]

Also a student. My HL-2040 is under $100 and works perfectly on my Mac. If you want networking, there's the HL-2070n for a bit more. Works fine on Ubuntu, too.

Re:Expensive!

[edwdig]

Dot-matrix went out because they're seen as "old", they're NOISY, and the print quality pretty much sucks compared to anything out now.

Dot-matrix can get some really nice quality if you've got good software running. The bigger issue is people don't like dealing with the pinfeeds and jagged edges they leave behind. Or the fact that your paper isn't flat anymore after being printed on.

Re:Expensive!

[edwdig]

The quality is ridiculous by today's standards (60dpi). It's readable, in the same way that simulated alphabetical text on a 7 segment LCD (pager) screen is readable, but dot matrix makes a typewriter (or Daisy wheel printer) look like fine art by comparison.

You must've had a bottom of the line dot-matrix printer. The better ones hit 360 dpi. Low end ones were around 150 dpi.

If you sent raw text to a dot-matrix, you usually got a so so quality font out of it. If you sent graphic data, you could get pretty good quality at the expense of much longer printing times.

Re:Expensive!

[Tim Browse]

So: $0.02/page for monochrome, and $0.04/page for color. That's much more economical than an inkjet.

And you only have to print 7,500 pages in colour before you break even on the fact that you spent $450 on a laser printer instead of $150 on an inkjet!

Re:Expensive!

[Fred_A]

Not to mention that with their dwindling market share and their new life in a niche (for carbon copy as you mentioned), the price of those things has absolutely sky-rocketed. A vaguely decent dot-matrix can be as expensive as a laser printer nowadays... A lot of people prefer to make two runs through a laser because of this.

Re:Expensive!

[TheThiefMaster]

I think you'd be surprised, try hooking it up and you might find windows still supports it. I have a parallel port Epson LX80 (I think) at home that even Windows XP x64 edition supports.

Re:Expensive!

[tepples]

Most photo sites offer free shipping, to boot. Free shipping of your children to child protective services?

Re:Expensive!

[Hadlock]

Yeah. Way to link to a Dallas Observer article, with such classics as "I partied with the richest high schoolers in the nation, sorta under cover.... and discovered nothing!" and a front page article on that fake disease that people say they have sores with yarn looking things growing out of them? They're half a step up from the enquirer and batboy.... but just barely. They're wrtie whatever will get people to pick up their publication so they can sell more ads of hookers... i mean escort services. I'm soooo sure snapfish and walmart.com etc look at your pictures. More like "aw shit, more photos to send out" and BAM they go in the pre=addressed envelope and in the mail.
 
But yes, if you're printing off hard copies of your child porn, then a personal printer might be better... for the rest of the population, I think we're just fine letting other people see our photos before we get our hands on them. Just like we've always done.

Re:Expensive!

[Dan Ost]

The 2600n doesn't support PostScript. Get the 2605 if that matters to you (Linux and Mac users!!!).

In my opinion, network printers that don't support PostScript are evil.

Re:Expensive!

[fotbr]

Might give it a shot -- Win2k didn't support it, so I figured it was considered too old by now.

Now you've got me curious enough to try it after work today.

Re:Expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure two of my clients each have an LX80 on XP for multi-part stationery.

Some people just like the old-fashioned "pink copy for customer, yellow copy for us" approach.

Re:Expensive!

[poot_rootbeer]

If you're planning to print a lot, get a home laser rather than an inkjet.

And if you're planning to print very infrequently, also get a home laser rather than an inkjet. If an inkjet doesn't get used at least once per week or so, the ink will dry up and clog the print heads.

In fact, I can't see any reason to buy an inkjet printer at all, except for within a fairly narrow band of usage. Or if you want a multipurpose scanner/fax/copier/printer; few of those seem to be laser based.

Re:Expensive!

[SupaYoda]

I have the 2600n as well, and I'm in love. If I want better photo prints, I go to WalMart, but it works great for the everyday stuff.

My only gripe is the control panel, which I think is too small. But I don't really need to use it that much.

Re:Expensive!

[zakezuke]

On another note, what happened to dot matrix printers. I remember we had a dot matrix printer and the cartdges (ribbons?) were $5 each and laster for well over 1000 pages.

Dotmatrix was cost effective, but I'm not sure you remember it as well as I do. A ribbon out of the box would last a long time, but contrast would fade. It was ledgeable, but rather quickly wasn't what i'd call presentation quality. A small ribbon would probally do about 300 pages before contrast suffered greatly. Current generation OKI printers claim 4 million characters, which works out to be about 760 pages assuming 80 characters/line and 66 lines, so 1000 to 1300 pages isn't unreasonable.

But if you remember dot matrix, you must remember tractor feed jams.

But what happened to them? They are still around. For carbon copy forms they are still quite where it's at. For situations where the amount of data per page is small like with a video rental forum they are still useful as they require squat in terms of prep time, and shoot out a page faster than my inkjet thinks about starting to print. They are not the type of printer you would enjoy using with anything but the built in fonts.

Re:Expensive!

[zakezuke]

The quality is ridiculous by today's standards (60dpi). It's readable, in the same way that simulated alphabetical text on a 7 segment LCD (pager) screen is readable, but dot matrix makes a typewriter (or Daisy wheel printer) look like fine art by comparison.
You can get cheap ink, but they don't take plain paper... You need old ratchet-drive paper, and perhaps with time you've forgotten the nightmare of accidentally ripping finished printouts while removing those perforated strips.

Dot matrix printers were killed by laser printers long ago, and for very good reason. I'm not sure the current dpi on modern dotmatrix printers. The claim and reality tend to be different. Still, a 24pin in draft mode was perfectly readable which should be 180x180 dpi.

But I remember my last dotmatrix printer very well. I have to say I could do envelopes and plain paper, but why would I want to when onion skin tractor feed was so much cheaper than 20lb standard inkjet paper. Physicaly the feed requirements of an inkjet isn't all that different than a dot matrix. You have a head moving right to left, and paper rolling. Heck early inkjet printers were nice enough to support tractor feed.

The big thing missing on dot matrix was a lack of carbon ribbons like on daisy wheel / typewriters.

Here is a blast from the past... options for 24 pin printers with sheet feeders circa 1985. Only $1495.

About time!

[Jerry Rivers]

Hurray for Kodak! It appears to be attempting to turn things around and be competitive again after years of lacklustre performance and seemingly rudderless operation. The acquisition of Creo put them in a good position in the prepress workflow biz, and now with this announcement maybe we'll have a reason to buy Kodak again at the consumer level. I look forward to trying one of their printers.

Re:About time!

[je ne sais quoi]

Hear hear!

In their defence, you'd be rudderless too if you were a buggy-whip manufacturer after the Model T was introduced. The multi-mexapixel camera made them pretty obselete, but it is good to see them move this direction, especially since HP have turned into such a bunch of wankers. It's a pity about HP too, they used to make such great calculators, I still have my two 32SIIs that I wouldn't trade for any other calculator that I know of. (Yes, I've seen the 33S, it looks like some dorks from the marketing department got a hold of it and mangled it.)

Back on topic though, this seems like a pretty natural choice for Kodak, I wonder how long they've been planning this, because it's the first I've heard of them in the news since they got out of the analog camera business. It seems like the couple of years that's passed since then would be enough time to come up with a working printer and ink business model and implement it.

Re:About time!

[ScrappyLaptop]

Hey, now!

HP used to make great LaserJets, too, all the way up to and including the 4-series and maybe some of the 5 series, you insensitive clod!

Re:About time!

[mabhatter654]

perhaps Kodak is trying to pickup as the new "Polaroid". They got nailed on instant photography 30 years ago and because of patents never got into the instant developing thing. In the other hand, they spent their time focusing on backroom photo developing.. most of the photo developing machines are Kodak or Fuji. The Kodak ones have been using digital correction for some time... so with the shift to personal photo printing, they need to make the money on PAPER and supplies. I think they see the push of inkjets against stores that develop film... and are adjusting accordingly. They have to win on paper, ink, and cameras to stay successful.

Re:About time!

[CastrTroy]

Kodak has their hands in a lot more pies than you seem to think. They're still the ones making all the photo paper for all those digital prints you get printed out from your digital camera. And they also make pretty good digital cameras. I have a C875 and it's a really great camera. Kodak saw the light years ago, and started to change their business model when they saw that film cameras was going to be a dead market.

Re:About time!

[Jerry Rivers]

"Kodak has their hands in a lot more pies than you seem to think."

I made no comment on what all Kodak is into (so your attempt to read into what I think is wrong), only what it is GETTING into. Obviously it is into many things given its annual sales, but it is equally obvious given its seriously lacklustre performance over the last seven years that it has a serious case of the doldrums and is in serious need of another market it in which it can succeed.

Cups?

[datadriven]

Does it work with cups, some of don't have _ANY_ windows machines.

Re:Cups?

[0123456789]

I bought a 5300 a week ago; it works very well on a Mac. I haven't attempted using it yet with Linux (I have Ubuntu installed on another machine), but the Mac printer system is cups? I wonder if it will be as simple as copying the .ppd file over to the linux machine?

Going to buy 2 right away

[Jason Straight]

Just my way of telling the other printer makers that ink isn't worth $30,000/gal

Re:Going to buy 2 right away

[Breakfast Pants]

Great--you'll be glad to know that there is nothing stopping them from jacking it up after you, and many others, buy it.

Re:Going to buy 2 right away

[Nimey]

Are you a woman? That's the logic that says "I don't *need* this, but it's on sale so I'll get it."

Yes, I /am/ married.

Re:Going to buy 2 right away

[slazzy]

Since it still only is going to cost around a hundred bucks, there's not much stopping him (and everyone else) from throwing it in the trash if Kodak breaks it's promise of reasonable priced ink. I'll continue using my Samsung Laser printer in any case.

Re:Going to buy 2 right away

[epp_b]

Are you a woman?

Are you new here?

Re:Going to buy 2 right away

[Nerd4News]

True story: Some consultant around here set up a chain of day care centers with new computers and printers. He bought Dell computers which considering support and service isn't bad but he also had them buy Dell photo printers. Now, they might have a need to print out a pic of a kid or something once in a while but these were primarily used as office printers. One lady told me they were spending over $200/month on ink. For the price of ink for one month they could have had an inexpensive laser printer and a spare cartridge that would last them 6 months to a year.

Lexmark

[dg41]

I'm looking at you, Lexmark...

Hope for their success, but...

[catbutt]

I have real doubts they will be able to compete with that model. People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term.

I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers....I know it's cheaper in the long term, but I don't like putting out a bunch of cash now.

I also knowingly do other equally irrational things along the same lines....for instance, if I am standing at one corner of a football field, and have to get to the opposite corner without walking on the field, I will always walk along the long side first. It gets me closer to my destination quicker, even though the overall distance is the same. Irrational, but I can't help it.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[Adeptus_Luminati]

Ummm... apparently the millions that shop at Costco (www.costco.com), would disagree with your philosophy. Even though the masses aren't exactly brilliant, most do not limit the definition of "cheap" to short term, but do consider the long term viability... or at least they do when the salesmen does the thinking for them and explains why Kodak is actually cheaper even if the initial price tag sounds higher.

I have real doubts they will be able to compete with that model. People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term.

I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers....I know it's cheaper in the long term, but I don't like putting out a bunch of cash now.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[Radres]

Strange football field analogies aside, all it would take is for Kodak to advertise the cost of their ink cartridges somewhere on the little flyer that electronics stores put next to the printer. Anyone who has owned an ink jet printer is well aware of the price gouging involved. Starting at $150 for a Kodak ink jet doesn't seem unreasonable; you would make back the money you spent over a $100 printer on one cartridge refill.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers...."

Depends if you use all of it or not or what your financial situation is. Makes no sense to outlay $20 for 3 gallons of laundry detergeant if you're single (you read /., great chances) and do laundry like once a blue moon (you read /., low chances). For poorer individuals, probably could make up the difference with the $10 container and put the other $10 to better use buying stuff like food.

Then again, yeah, I know. Cross multiplication, or pulling out your cell phone to make sure that $9.99 for 85 bags or $7.99 for 65 bags is a better bargain.

Look, if you can't even bother now, you're not the target market Kodak is aiming at with their little business strategy.

"[...]I will always walk along the long side first. It gets me closer to my destination quicker, even though the overall distance is the same. Irrational, but I can't help it."

Bah. Now I know you're lying. You're a geek, read /., and can't fight. You know that if you'd cross to the opponents side of the field first, you'd get your butt kicked by the visiting team. I mean, hell, you even say "walk." Even on your home field sideline, you'd run just to be sure.

Then again, your instincts to self-preservation ain't all that grand.

Anyways, personally, I'd rather see a price comparison with laser. In terms of cost (toner is expensive but inexpensive compared to inkjet ink), convenience (lower maintenance, less time pulling and cleaning cartridges), and speed (laser is usually faster), laser rocks. Initial outlay is far lower too; you can pick up networked single purpose laser printers b&w for under $90 these days (Brother 2040N if I recall what I saw in the store 2 Christmas's ago). Even color laser printers are becoming bargains. I think I saw a few hit below the $300 mark with rebates.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[catbutt]

Well, if you don't believe that people generally consider the long term peiorities equally to short term ones, please explain procrastination.

Same thing.

And by the way, either you were joking, or misunderstood the football field analogy. Maybe I should have said "had to walk ten blocks south and 2 blocks east". The tendency is to walk the direction that is most direct initially (the ten blocks), even though it doesn't get you there any quicker.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term

I agree as well but people have been buying these cheap printers and expensive ink for years. I believe the average person knows that the ink is expensive and that is why there is a booming refill market. The majority of people looking for a relatively cheap home ink jet have learned their lesson on their own, a company selling a modle that is the opposite approach will make it more well known.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[mr_matticus]

Interestingly, I always do the opposite, given the choice. I'd much rather get the complicated portions out of the way so that I'm left with a straight shot to my destination. It allows me to evaluate how much farther I have to walk by the time I start to be concerned with it (the second half of the trip). I also tend to park in spots I know I can remember or know the walking distance to my destination, even if they're a little further away. It's not worth saving a minute or two of walking time to spend five minutes looking for a parking spot. Then again, that might just be a result of San Francisco--you take the parking spot you've found, because it won't be there when you come back after failing to find a closer one and you end up being fifteen minutes late instead of just cutting it close. I'm one of the worst procrastinators on the planet, though, so that doesn't map to my life generally. Just physical navigation. I also have no problem taking the slim chance in life decisions, but parking is not one of them. I nearly always lose the parking game. But obviously, as you say, these aren't entirely rational decisions, merely rationalized ones.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[tepples]

I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers....I know it's cheaper in the long term Unless you can't pick up and pour the larger container, like an octogenarian great-grandmother. Or unless you can't use all the product in the container before it expires, like many people who buy a laser printer for cheap black and white and only occasionally print color.

Re:Hope for their success, but...

[fataugie]

People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term.


Generally I agree unless you've taken it up the ass (i.e. not got what you bargained for....clogged jets after two weeks of inactivity, three color cartridges that you use one color primarily and end up with two colors you hardly ever use being almost full but have to buy a new cart because trying to refill and it never works out....miserable pricks who decided all three in one was a great idea).

Sorry about the run-on sentence, but you get the idea.

Then, you become a wiser shopper and at least slow down and think it through before knee jerking and getting the cheapest model.

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Cannon has been doing this for years now. From what I understand they've mostly been a camera company and printing was just icing on their cake. It seems HP really is a printer company, not the innovation powerhouse of yesteryear.

Re:Too bad

[tkrotchko]

At BJ's club, canon's 3e cartridges (fairly common) cost about $11 for B&W, and about $25 for all 3 color cartridges.

Note the color cartridges are discrete, which is slightly cheaper in the long run.

It is not extortion

[gweihir]

The prices are not hidden. Any reasonable printer test includes cost per page figures.
People seem to fall for this nonetheless. I have no idea why. Are basic algebra skills that scarce today? Or do people not care how much they pay?

Re:It is not extortion

[catbutt]

How can they produce a realistic "cost per page" if it is unknown how many pages it will print in its lifetime? All they can show is the marginal cost, not the average total cost.

Re:It is not extortion

[iCEBaLM]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about the ink cartridges, not the printer.

HP releases ink cartridge page yield using ISO standard pages at http://www.hp.com/pageyield

Re:It is not extortion

[catbutt]

Yes, I was talking about both, which seems the relevant figure. If you print lots of pages, Kodak's model is cheaper, if very few, HP's would be.

Re:It is not extortion

[YrWrstNtmr]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about the ink cartridges, not the printer.

It's both. Printers wear out, too. Why do you think the $30 Walmart printers are $30? Not for longevity.

Re:It is not extortion

[Urza9814]

Yea. If you print less than 400 pages before the printer breaks, then you're better off with HP. But personally, I print about 400 pages in two weeks. If it's breakin' that fast, I AM getting a refund.

Re:It is not extortion

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the pubic school system that avoids fostering "thought" and independent thinking. It's creating an entire generation of disfunctional illiterates.

I think I can successfully exploit that by selling "polish lottery tickets" for 25-cents each, or three for a buck.

Re:It is not extortion

[gweihir]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about the ink cartridges, not the printer.

Printer lifetimes can be determined. Or you can just assume 2 years (which is the legally mandated
warranty period for electonics in europe, so any printer sold here will not break too much earlier). As for what is printed, there are ISO standardized pages. How do you th9onk, e.g. a laser tomert cartridge ends up rated at, e.g., "3000 pages text"?

Vote with your wallet people.....

[budword]

Kodak here I come. I'm tired of large corparations taking advantage of the flock because we ACT like sheep. Put HP printers out of business until they get the message. I believe I read (maybe here) that HP printer cartriges had a chip on them that would report to the computer that they were out of ink, when in fact they were not, to get you to buy another over priced cartrige. Hurt them where it counts, or they will never change. I've been buying canon printers, and canon ink (rather than slightly cheaper 3rd party ink) to try to reward them for not gouging me on the ink. I'll look into kodak next time I need a printer. Now if they have native linux drivers, Kodak would be a done deal. They won't change until we hurt them where it counts. Next time you buy a none HP printer, email them to tell them why you won't buy their stuff anymore. http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/feedbac k.do;jsessionid=GxCTB6m1p2fJcoG63U7U0P1YV8VQVD3QNP 177At6udUrxCMjeG6K!711870732

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[PinkPanther]

Kodak here I come. I'm tired of large corparations taking advantage of the flock because we ACT like sheep

...I'm tired of acting like sheep. C'MON EVERYONE, let's go buy XXX instead!!!

;-)

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[Anonymous Coward]

>C'MON EVERYONE, let's go buy XXX instead!!!

Screw that. I'll download my pr0n for free instead.

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[cgenman]

Dear Kodak:

I wrote you off when you were so late to realize the power of digital cameras. When I couldn't get a decent digital from you, I turned to Canon, Olympus, and others who could tell which way things were going, and I didn't expect you'd ever recover. You seemed lost to me.

Now, not only will you be first on my list for consideration when buying my next printer, you will also be back on my list to look at your digital cameras. Simply by doing this, even without me buying your printer now (I just replaced mine two months ago), you've made my life better.

Thank you, Kodak. You've earned back a flood of goodwill, and a spot at the top of a short list of companies I'll consider when buying my next digital device.

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[King_TJ]

Heh... I've been voting against HP with my wallet for a LONG time now. I had too many bad experiences way back in the early Deskjet 550C/6xx era with their printers completely dying (power supply problems, apparently?). After that, the era began where Epson and Canon had FAR better photo printing capabilities than HP (who kept reusing the same, years old print-head technologies instead of updating it).

And more recently, I've had endless hassles with the cheap all-in-one HP printers. The early ones had horrible drivers and lacked support for newer OS's. The more recent models like the OfficeJet 6210 just self-destruct after about 2 years of light use. Gears start grinding and rollers won't feed individual sheets of paper properly anymore.

I broke down and bought one of HP's Color LaserJet printers a little over a year ago, only because it kept getting good reviews and seemed reasonably priced. (LJ 2550N). Unfortunately, it has a real annoying issue where every so many hours, it cycles the toners around in its internal carousel, making loud "chunka, chuncka, chunka, ka-chuck!" noises that wake a person up in the middle of the night. This behavior is never mentioned in the manual or anyplace else ... but owners of 2550N's often complain about it on Internet forums. Sure, you could just turn the thing off when it's not in use - but it's a *networked* printer that you'd normally want to leave on!

It seems like with everything HP I see or use, there's a "catch" ... something about the product that's inferior, poorly designed/engineered, or overly costly. They just can't seem to get back to the "glory days" of peripherals like the original ScanJet models or LaserJet II, III and IV.

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[fataugie]

I believe I read (maybe here) that HP printer cartriges had a chip on them that would report to the computer that they were out of ink, when in fact they were not, to get you to buy another over priced cartrige

I thought that was Lexmark cartridges and I thought one other "feature" was that there was an expiration date on the ink....WTF? After a period of time (30 months or so I thought), the cart would complain that it was beyond it's prime date for use and suggest (or require, I can't remember) that you get a new cartridge.

There are all sorts of things wrong with this besides the obvious of a cartridge telling you it's too old...one being how the freak does a cart KNOW what the date is? I guess there could be some sort of interaction between the cart and the print software checking a hard coded date on the cartridge itself...who knows. This would also assume that the PFY at Staples or Office Max would rotate stock correctly and not stick some poor schmoe with an "outdated" cart.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I read the same thing the OP did and I thougt it was on slashdot 3 or 4 years ago.

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[budword]

Hi, thought I read that here on /. Here it is. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/22/22 24223 Have fun.... David

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[Quietly_Confident]

"If you have any ideas or suggestions on how Hewlett-Packard can serve you better" HP UK CEO Mark Hurd encourages you to contact him.

Apple printers!

[rmdyer]

Now if Apple's Steve Jobs would release a line of somewhat pricey, but sleek looking ink jets with reusable ink cartridges at 99 cent per refill (at an Apple store), then we would be in business!

I can dream... :)

Re:Apple printers!

[TodMinuit]

If that's a viable business model, create a startup.

Re:Apple printers!

[maxume]

Do you have a Steve Jobs I can borrow?

Re:Apple printers!

[ScrewMaster]

Do you have a Steve Jobs I can borrow?

No, but I can throw a couple of Joe Jobs your way. Just gimme your Social and I'll take care of it.

Re:Apple printers!

[kiddailey]

You must be new ... :)

In terms of printers, Apple has already been there, done that. And from what I remember, they were very nice printers. You can still find ink and toner for them on the net and even the printers themselves on eBay.

Re:Apple printers!

[Jim_Callahan]

Indeed. Except then he'd backdate your reciept to indicate that you bought the cartridge when it was actually priced at 40000$, and charge that to your credit line instead.

Yeah, it's a low shot, but at this point the guy deserves it.

They better have a good marketing team

[hcmtnbiker]

Breaking from a paradigms is always hard, but breaking from a paradigm like this one will be near impossible. People don't naturally calculate out what is the best for the amount of time they believe they will own the printer, they don't ever realize that they're tied into buying HPs ink for the rest of thier lives. Kodak will have to have one hell of a marketing team to pull this off.

We can do better

[cyberbob2351]

When someone gives me a printer and paper solution that is ink and tonerless, I will be happy.

Maybe it needs some significant advances in nanotechnology, but imagine a lattice structure precisely "grown" in a chemical bath so an exact mesh thickness. Also, imagine a printer that will somehow rearrange the lattice elements to form some kind of waveguide resonance that will create different color mixtures. Also, imagine a way to easily erase these markings.

However, it is vital to have some cheap printing solution intended entirely for archival purposes only, and certainly this should be write-once, permanent as possible (to survive any civilization-earasing holocausts that require evidence for extraterrestrial archaeologists), and incredibly cheap.

Maybe the best solution is to mix and match the usage and need of printers, in particular make an LCD screen dominated workplace and operating systems so documents needed only on a temporary basis can be phased out. We print out too many damned flyers and memos.

Oh yeah, and save the trees, and all that jazz.....

Re:We can do better

[jjthegreat]

When someone gives me a printer and paper solution that is ink and tonerless, I will be happy.

To answer this question, look no further than thermalpaper. They used those on old school fax machines and Circuit City receipts. The problem is that if you leave em out in the sun, they all turn black and they tend to fade rather quickly. Makes things a PITA if you want to return stuff. Wonder if there are laws againt "disapppearing ink". Also, the consumable itself is rather expensive.

Funny - Canon already does this.

[Plekto]

I can get ink for a typical Canon printer for a couple of dollars because the head and tank are separate.

The price for ink bought online via InkDaddy or other sites for the Canon printers runs about 1-1.5 cents a page, or almost exactly what the cheapest laser printers cost(black), and under 3-5 cents a page for color.

HP supplies are not too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why HP carts are pricy because they also hold the inkjet heads. If a HP head clogs, all you have to do is replace the inkjet cartridge. If nozzles clog on other printers, you have to buy a new printer, if the usual self cleaning routines so not work.

Anyway, cheap laser printers which print out 2000 or more pages before the toner cart ($70) needs replaced cost under $100.

Re:HP supplies are not too bad...

[Plekto]

If a HP head clogs, all you have to do is replace the inkjet cartridge. If nozzles clog on other printers, you have to buy a new printer, if the usual self cleaning routines so not work.
****

Really? My Canon's head is removeable. Dunk it in some cleaning solution and let it dry overnight - good as new. I have "fixed" my $39 printer twice in the last three years and it still prints. Total cost for three years printing? Not even $100 including paper. Only now, after thousands of pages, is the print head wearing out. But I can buy a new one for $40 if I had to.

HP is *such* a dumb move. A shame, too, since their older laser printers(4, 5, 6 series) are fantastic workhorses that print for lower cost than anyone else.

Re:HP supplies are not too bad...

[petermgreen]

what cleaning soloution do you dunk it in?

What a concept...

[epp_b]

Well, it turns out that building your products in a way that adds value for your customers is better than intentionally creating a way to continually rip them off (ie: building as much of the printer's "brains" as possible into each ink cartridge)! What a surprise!

Re:What a concept...

[cheebert]

The rub is that the profit margins on consumables is mega high, in some cases in the 1000% range. There is a saying that I used to hear in distribution that if a vendor could legally lock consumers into buying consumables only from them, they would give away the printer. The good news is that this isn't legal and 3rd party consumable vendors abound. I'm actually VERY happy with my new Xerox Phaser 8500DN with those little wierdly shaped resin/wax sticks instead of toner or ink. Though Xerox wants approx $30/each for color and $15/each for black. With an expectation of 1000 pages per cartrige this is still pretty expensive. Thank god there are third party supplied in the $8/each range for color and less for black. Might I suggest you checkout Media Street's Niagra system...with 6oz bottles (per color) I can do a massive amount of photo grade printing for VERY little money. The downside is you MUST use it fairly frequently or the nozzles will eventually clog. That and the extra room for the external ink tanks. My Epson Photo 900 costs me $125 for a set of six 6oz bottles...but even after 1000 8.5x11 thumbnail pages (family album restoration project) my tanks are still only 1/2 down. /brian chee

Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[gelfling]

My Epson C86 is a wonderful desktop inkjet. Discount ink is $10 for extra capacity black and $8 for each of the other 3 colors. A new C88 is about $80 retail at Staples.

Does it scan? No
Does it scan pictures? No
Does it print w/o a computer? No

And when it breaks I toss it out and get another one.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[Sublmnl]

And for some reason this doesn't get a high mod score. I also use Epson...RX620. Expensive but it copies, scans and can be used without a computer. Ink costs are in line with that of the new Kodak. 14 dollars for large black cartridge and 8 bucks for color. And lest I say that the image quality is outstanding! Buy the warranty for three years and complain after that time that images aren't printing as they should and you'll get a brand new printer. And I guarantee you that after three years they won't print as they should---just a fact. You'll be given a credit with Staples for a new model at the price you paid. And for that amount you will get a newer model with better specs considering the time of purchase and the time of complaint. Who says a warranty isn't worth it?

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[NETHED]

Thanks for driving the costs up for everyone. A warranty is just that, its not a end-of-life replacement program. I would chide you further, but I know I'll get modded to oblivion anyway.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[zakezuke]

Thanks for driving the costs up for everyone. A warranty is just that, its not a end-of-life replacement program. I would chide you further, but I know I'll get modded to oblivion anyway.

So long as stores are going to offer secondary warranty, why not take advantage of it. It's a pretty safe bet with epson, esp models which use pigment based ink, or even dye models who's diapers get full and the printer stops working. We vote with our dollars, and it's not wrong to use these store warranties to their fullest advantage. If it's a loss for them, perhaps they will throw their weight around and actually get the damned manufacturers to make products which are more end user serviceable. This would include easier diaper swap, head cleaning, you name it.

Personaly, I like keeping a given printer going for at least 3 years. The learning curve for a new printer is high, and so is the cost of ink.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[evilviper]

My Epson C86 is a wonderful desktop inkjet.

No it isn't. Need to "clean" the heads about every 3 pages, and the permanent heads mean its got a very short lifetime. Mine didn't out-last the included ink cartridges... It sat for 1 month before I could get new ink cartridges, and by that time, the ink had completely solidified... Just my luck, right outside the warranty period.

That's not to mention that it prints brutally slow, and selecting anything remotely "high quality" means a ton of ink is wasted, the images is incredibly dark and saturated, and simply doesn't look any better than "fast draft" settings.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[gelfling]

Too bad you got a crappy one. I had a C82 which died after a few years of heavy use. replaced it with a C86 and when it goes probably replace it with another like model. Beats the tar out of my Lexmark Z705/715.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[Peeteriz]

Parent said "And I guarantee you that after three years they won't print as they should---just a fact."

      If this is so, then the only problem is that not everyone is bringing these printers back as defective. There is no techical reason not to make devices that survive the warranty period in 95% cases, not 5%.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[zakezuke]

If this is so, then the only problem is that not everyone is bringing these printers back as defective. There is no techical reason not to make devices that survive the warranty period in 95% cases, not 5%.

This is not always a bad thing. In the case of epson a replacement comes with free ink. If you get a pair of printers, and have to send one back, you get free ink.

Canon doesn't give you free ink unless it's clear your printhead is not accessable. This is fair, but not such a good deal.

Typo?

[tooyoung]

Shouldn't that be:

Kodak has decided to attempt to buck the trend set by HP by offering low cost printers and outrageously over-priced ink cartridges

Digital Cameras

[Rix]

They've built up a very nice range of consumer level digital cameras, and they did it before they disappeared with chemical photography.

How is this new?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a canon printer sitting here, with the ink coming in small, dumb, cheap cartridges, and a separately replacable printer head. It's about a year old.
As a bonus, it's also rather good.

Re:How is this new?

[zakezuke]

I've got a canon printer sitting here, with the ink coming in small, dumb, cheap cartridges, and a separately replacable printer head. It's about a year old.
As a bonus, it's also rather good.

I own a few canons, so this is comming from a canon user. Canon presently does not have a consumer pigment printer. The pixma pro 9500 (a3+) was slated to be released sometime last year, but the release has been updated to may 2007. This Kodak is at least uses pigments.

Canon is rather poor on the archival front.

But aside from that, this kodak seems no cheaper than an present generation canon base model or epson c series printer.

No CD/DVD printing!

[Anonymous Coward]

I REALLY wanted to buy one of Kodak's new printers. Unfortunately they made the mistake of not providing the ability to print to discs. What shame! The cost to add disc printing capability would have been minimal. I just bought a crappy little HP printer that came with a disc load of useless, bloated, poorly designed software. It even included backup software that caused my CD/DVD drives to disappear from the system! For the record, the cost per gallon of ink for this printer comes to about $8,000. What a scam, but still better than Lexmark!

Re:No CD/DVD printing!

[jonwil]

I cant find a reference but I remember reading something somewhere about how someone (Panasonic? Canon?) holds a US patent connected with CD/DVD printing or something and that someone posted a "hack" to get a certain US model from a company who wasnt willing to license the patent to print CDs/DVDs (the overseas version of the same printer aparently printed CDs/DVDs because it was sold in countries where there was no patent)

Re:No CD/DVD printing!

[zakezuke]

I cant find a reference but I remember reading something somewhere about how someone (Panasonic? Canon?) holds a US patent connected with CD/DVD printing or something and that someone posted a "hack" to get a certain US model from a company who wasnt willing to license the patent to print CDs/DVDs (the overseas version of the same printer aparently printed CDs/DVDs because it was sold in countries where there was no patent)

It was probally me. over on Steves forums there was a hotbed of activity regarding enabling the print to disc feature on Canons. I helped to organize the data, where a gent named knightcrawler took my data gathered mostly from steve's forums and created a useable website.

My issue was the only option at the time was Epson. Epson is great in the color department, but the r200 series is in all fairness based on a micropiezo head, and with a head docking station which seems prone to fail, the nozzles are prone to clog requring at the very least intense cleaning cycles. The Canon models I was interested in (ip3000/ip4000/ip4200/ip5200/ip4300, mp750/mp760/mp780) where IMHO better general purpose printers than the r2xx/r3xx offered by epson. Self filling was easy, and if worse came to worse you can always shell out $50-$80 for another head.

Near as i'm aware, it's an issue with licensing with phillips. For whatever reason, Canon did not want to license models in the US, where it's not an issue elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, for a photo printer, epson is really good. Micropiezo really is where it's at as far as tolerance to different medium, and you can in theory for under $100 get the printer, swap out the tanks for refillable ones and use pigment rather than dye. But from my experence, my ip3000 printed over 800 discs before I had a problem, a problem likely due to lack of use, and was resolved by a free head from canon. My epson r200 got a full diaper and dumped ink on my desk.

Is there an old joke here someplace?

[CrazyJim1]

I used my Lexmark to print out five dollar bills, but I still couldn't afford ink refills.

Re:Is there an old joke here someplace?

[red crab]

That is an old joke. Mty printer salesman friend has not been able to sell two Lexmark Cartridges priced at Rs. 1500 each. Epson and HP cartridges with prices ranging from Rs. 450 - 500 remain never remain in shelf for more than a week :-).

Re:Is there an old joke here someplace?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the joke is that you use a Lexmark. :D

Most reliable printer I ever owned

[LiquidCoooled]

The most reliable printer I ever owned was a citizen 120d
Never ever had a problem with clogged pores or not working - even leaving it months without use and coming back would miraculously find it still works - just like a typewriter.

Ribbons were as cheap as biro pens.
For 99% of the printouts I need, I could still happily use one.

Ink prices

[purduephotog]

Dye Ink costs about 1 to 15$ per gallon to manufacture. Milled ink (methanol milled nano-particulate pigment ink) is about 3x the cost.

I used to work for Kodak.

They can dump better ink at lower prices all over the market. HP does NOT want to get into an ink pricing war- everyone would lose.

Re:Ink prices

[Lumpy]

Wah!

It needs to be bad for everyone. Although I dont understand why anyone even wants Inkjet anymore for anything but a CD label printer.

Xerox full color lasers are almost $200.00 with a full set of toner carts. I have ran at home for a year now printing at least 5-10 pages a day between and still have not ran the toner below 1/2 yet.

The bets part, I can shut off the printer and let it sit there for years and turn it on and print right away. Every inkjet would be completely dead as the heads would be clogged and dryed out.

Yes nest year I will have to pay $300.00 for the high capacity toner cartridges, but then I'll have 4 years of "ink" at that point and will probably throw away the printer before it needs a refill.

Not bad for a network laser that has a photo quality mode that looks fantastic works with linux as it's a real postscript printer.

Does anyone even make a postscript ethernet inkjet?

Re:Ink prices

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I really haven't had such significant problems with ink drying like that, and I have left my inkjet printer unused for months at a time. The only special treatment I do is to wrap the printer in a large bag for storage in a closet. Years is silly because if you print that rarely, then you don't need a printer.

For general use, laser is fine, and that's what I use most of the time. Still, for quality photos, I'm not going to pretend that an inexpensive laser is going to do that as well as my inkjet can for picture quality.

BTW, just to add something off the wall, at the one desk I use for printing various things, I have four types of printers associated to just one computer. I can actually justify a fifth printer.

Re:Ink prices

[sacrilicious]

Xerox full color lasers are almost $200.00 with a full set of toner carts.

Cheapest Xerox color printer I saw on their site costs $350 (I don't regard "rebate" prices as real; and if I did, I'd compare their "$250" price to something below the expected street value of the kodaks). Doesn't look like free toner cartridges are mentioned either....

Re:Ink prices

[brian.hall]

What's the model number on that Xerox, and where did you get it for $200? Was it the Phaser 6120?

Re:Ink prices

[MemoryDragon]

Easy, because I am one of the lucky ones who still has an undongled ip4000, that is a dream come true. The printer while looking flakey on the outside is solid as hell, it was cheap (150 dollars) it is the last model which has undongled ink carts, and while being fed with almost 15.000 pages most of them printed with cheap refill ink it still works.
Once the printhead is clogged by cheap ink, put in the orginal canon leave it there for a while and it is again unclogged.
And besides that, it has cd label printing, colors, duplex (which I do not want to live without), two paper trays etc.. etc.. and you get color for a price you cannot match with a laser, if you use refills.

I also swore by myself never to buy an inkjet again and then canon released the ip4000. At the current market I do not see any printer model worthwile buying, all dongled, to keep printing costs up, but the ip4000 was one of those awesome machines which got almost everything right, until management saw that they had too much success, and ruined everything.
Canon nowadays is not worth buying anymore compared to brother!

Or in other words, they have to tear this printer out of my cold hands...

Re:Ink prices

[Lumpy]

http://www.amatteroffax.com/item.asp?INVID=1213953 &SRC=srcDealTime&CKP=AEUCNQCM%5EBBW%5EBW%40GT%40

funny, They have it in the price range I mentioned and if you actually look it states it comes with a full set of toner cartridges. I.E. "free ink"

only silly people look up the MSRP from a manufacturers website and think that is the real price.

Re:Ink prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Its still not $200 and the GGP claimed.

Re:Ink prices

[Anonymous Coward]

only silly people look up the MSRP from a manufacturers website and think that is the real price

Then kodak's listed prices will likewise be higher than what someone pays for a kodak.

Re:Ink prices

[Sketch]

The problem with low end color lasers is they appear to be following the inkjet ink model for toner cartridges.

Printer - $250

Full replacement toner set - $321 (from the same site, I didn't shop around)

When I looked a few months ago, the cheapest color lasers I could find where you didn't pay $50+/cart were in the $400-500 range.

Kodak? Printers?

[rueger]

Get real, this is yet another last gasp attempt by Kodak to find something, anything that can replace the photographic film business that was their bread and butter for so many decades.

Re:Kodak? Printers?

[Jerry Rivers]

Kodak has been in the printer business for a long, long time. Though mostly at the enterprise level as far as I know. I remember seeing Kodak-branded laser printers in the 90s.

Why shouldn't they get into new business? Are they supposed to just close up shop because film is dead? And they are nowhere near a "last gasp." Kodak's a big company with many assets. Though they have slumped badly in the last seven years they still rake in $13.5B in sales.

Re:Kodak? Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm .... Kodak has been rocking the photography printing industry for quite some time. Check out ML-500,9810,6850. All have much respect in the pro/onsite industry.

Re:Kodak? Printers?

[afidel]

They also had some awesome Dye Sub printers in the mid 90's (the still do, but I know that had them at least that far back).

Re:Kodak? Printers?

[RedShoeRider]

Not quite right.

Kodak has been making dye-sub printers for the professional world for over a decade now. We had an XLS8200 way back in the day (1994?), and are still running a 8650PS sometimes. For lab work, they're great, as it's full-bleed, full color on nice, thick photo paper.

Kodak had the price-gouging thing down to an art, though. 1 roll of donor (the stuff with the color patches) makes about 100 prints. Going rate for that roll = 120 USD. Paper was special, too. That went for about 50 USD for 100 sheets. So you're talking 150-175 bucks for 100 prints. Not too cost effective at all, considering the printer was almost 6 grand when it was new. But it made damned nice prints :)

If only the RIAA were listening now...

[zappepcs]

If only the RIAA would take a note from this exercise. Both industries have similar problems. I hope that the consumer is the real winner....

Re:If only the RIAA were listening now...

[cmarkn]

If only the RIAA would take a note from this exercise. Both industries have similar problems.

That’s what I thought when I saw this headline and the one about Jobs’s statement that people would buy than rent their music.

This is exactly the same situation, where you buy the (full-priced) printer and own it so you can do what you want with it, even convert to off-brand ink, or you rent the (low-priced) printer by making regular payments for the higher-priced ink. If Jobs is right, and I think he is, then Kodak is doing the right thing. If only the RIAA could learn.

Laser, laser, laser

[YrWrstNtmr]

The only reason I still have an inkjet is to print CD/DVD's, via the Epson R300. Everything else goes through the $300 Dell color laser. 1 year, ~500 pages (1/3 of those full page color), and I'm at 90% capacity left.

Huh?

[christurkel]

In a counter-move, H-P announced Tuesday that it will also be introducing new lower-price cartridges. But these new low-end cartridges will work only on future printers (and a few very recent models). And they will hold less ink than today's standard. Plus, they will still cost more than Kodak's cartridges: $14.99 for black and $17.99 for the combined color versions.

Huh?

Re:Huh?

[Radon360]

HP must have felt that they were caught with their pants down (presumably urinating on their ink jet customers at the time) and decided to narrow the disparity as to not look too dumb to the average consumer. Who knows, maybe their marketing folks advocated giving their customers a small perceived price break after feeling compelled to do so by the competition's pricing.

The kicker is the less ink part. Knock the price down 25% and reduce the ink by, say, 33%, they're actually raising the price of their ink.

Re:Huh?

[jools33]

I wonder how much less ink they are talking about - the cartridges for my HP photosmart 9600 (I need 3 of these) only contain 17ml!!! and for 300 swedish kronor (about $45) they are not even close to reasonably priced - and seem to be run out it next to no time. I fully expect HP to loose all market share - needless to say I'm on the lookout for a reasonable cost replacement - perhaps canon or epson - or perhaps somekindof continuous ink flow system. BUT NEVER HP!

And this is news how?

[Anonymous Coward]

People must not look beyond HP printers much, if they think this sort of thing is new. Canon has been selling dirt-cheap ink refills for years.

Case in point: I bought a Canon i475D for about $40 in 2004. The ink cartridges are easy to find, and cost $5.99 for black and $13.99 for color (at Newegg, about $1 more at B&M). It is far from the first Canon printer to feature a system like this.

If anything, Kodak is late to the game, and HP just continues to suck.

Epson has also been selling relatively cheap ink cartridges for a while now.

Re:And this is news how?

[zakezuke]

Case in point: I bought a Canon i475D for about $40 in 2004. The ink cartridges are easy to find, and cost $5.99 for black and $13.99 for color (at Newegg, about $1 more at B&M). It is far from the first Canon printer to feature a system like this.

Good case in point. The bci-24bk is rated at 150pages, or 4.6c/page for the ink at office depot, 4c/page at your price. Technicaly speaking for thimble class of canon printers, they at one time offered a drop in head on the cartridge replacement which occupied both the color and black slots which was highly cost effective per page. The bc-20 had a yield of 900pages and typicaly cost below 30.00. The i475D was likely after they stopped offering a big honking black.

Don't get me wrong, this is good for a $40 printer, but spending just a little more results in a lower cost/page.

Re:And this is news how?

[MemoryDragon]

Canon never has sold refills, but their ink admittedly is affordable, they are the only ones not ripping off the customers (although they have added dongle chips to their latest models as well but they at least do not block out the print process they just warn you) And their single ink carts in combination with affordable prices is a good way to go.

Who Buys Inkjets?

[andersh]

I don't know why people even buy inkjets any longer. Those multifunction printers are awful and expensive to use. I have HP color Laserjets with network cards in all my places of work and at home. They barely cost anything and produce great quality at reasonable prices. The inkjets I have were freebies I received with my Dell orders - I couldn't even make Dell keep them..

Re:Who Buys Inkjets?

[glittalogik]

Inkjets are great because, with minor disregard for their welfare, you can print on fabric. My g/f (yeah yeah, I must be new here) has photo prints on white cotton glued all over her travel luggage.

The printer-ink thing has to crack soon

[Animats]

The early ink-jet printer patents should be expiring soon. The first inkjet printers were developed in 1976, and HP's original DeskJet shipped in 1998. We'll probably see a flood of no-brand-name printers using generic ink over the next few years. That's what happened to laser printers when those patents expired years ago.

Re:The printer-ink thing has to crack soon

[ScrewMaster]

Unless they continue to get away with the encrypted-chip business to keep clone makers out.

Re:The printer-ink thing has to crack soon

[petermgreen]

that will stop cartridge cloners, it won't stop builders of inkjet PRINTERS.

patents can make building PRINTERS much harder (witness the fact that there are only a few makers atm) but as the GP said patents have a finite lifetime.

the cartridge chip thing only affects builders of third party carts for existing printers.

buck the trend set by HP?

[fermion]

I suppose this depends on your perspective. Since the 1960's Kodak has been pioneering the concept of selling the printer cheap, i.e. instamatic camera, and reaping the profit on the ink, i.e. film. Certainly HP did not set this trend. If anything, Xerox set this trend by primarily selling toner and service.

One thing I want to know, knowing how Kodak is some times, is if the plan is sell low quality printers at a relatively high price, knowing full well they will break in a year or two. I would much rather throw away printer cartridges rather than printers. OTOH, I know that will expensive cartridges, and cheap printer, people throw away printers when the cartridge is empty.

In the end people do seem to buying the wrong printer for the job. If you are printing a ream a week, it is insane to buy an inkjet, yet I see people doing so all the time. For a few pages a day, though, an inkjet can be a very good value.

How much ink..

[mariushm]

Yeah.. they forgot to mention that the ink is probably enough for 50-100 pages. Go LASER, you won't be sorry.

In Search of ExceLunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

It does seem odd. But it all becomes clear when you realize that HP sent their whole marketting team for tuition at SCO.

looking for LED printer

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_printer

Re:looking for LED printer

[cyberbob2351]

Those DO look nice, probably more electrically efficient as well, however they still use toner. Oh well, still a step closer to more efficient archival.

ink is only part of why HP printers suck

[Wormholio]

The high price of ink cartridges is only part of why I don't want to buy another HP printer. The last one I bought has some serious software problems.

At some point a month or so after I brought it home it suddenly stopped working with an error message saying "incompatible print cartridge". It was the same cartridge it came with! It turns out this was a known problem and you have to upgrade the firmware AND clean the cartridge contacts (covering all bases like that makes me suspect they never knew the real cause of the problem).

I could accept a one-time problem which could be fixed, but it still doesn't work. Every time I turn the Mac on it's forgoten that the printer was connected. Simply adding it again fails, and I have to reset the entire printing system. Installing the latest drivers does not correct the problem, even after going through the extended 25 step process they recommend to remove all sorts of "old" files from 13 different places.

And while browsing HP's web pages to diagnose the problem it asks if I would participate in a quality control survey. Okay, I agree to do it. Two pages later, it seems to have forgotten it ever asked, because the same annoying pop-up is back. Over and over again.

The ink is only part of the problem, because the software to drive the printer doesn't work.

Re:ink is only part of why HP printers suck

[Radon360]

I have to agree that I'm not all that thrilled with their software and drivers for ink jet printers. The driver/software for my 682c (long ago) was rather buggy. Letting it install for a home networked printer configuration was a joke. It couldn't find files and the install had to manually be led around like a four year old and shown where to extract everything it needed. Doing a generic new printer install, with using the correct .dll files from the HP install stuff proved more successful...and eliminated the annoying messages telling me to replace a half-used ink cartridge.

Expensive!-Relative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that may be and I've seen the printout for a color laser. Although cheap is relative. $300 for the low-end and it takes four toner tubs at inkjet cartridge prices apiece. Now if you want copier capability and a fax machine it's double that price (comparable to a multifunction inkjet). There's also the size overall compared to the inkjets. And last inkjet is still going to do photo-quality better than a laser. It's the nature of the process. Only a dye-sublimation or solid-ink would do better and they're expensive or impractical. Also last I checked they're are no large-format color laser printers (greater than 11" x 17", sometimes even in a roll)

Re:Expensive!-Relative.

[jp10558]

There are - banner page rolls are supported in certain IBM printers, HP etc. You just have to look outside home printers for that.

Capacity of cartridge

[sunderland56]

I don't mind paying $10 for a cartridge. That's fair.

But: why is there so little ink inside? In my case (HP) there's 6 mL in a color, and 10 mL in a black. The cartridge is sealed, has a shelf life of a few years, and has no moving parts to wear out. So all HP has to do is put in, say one ounce of color and two ounces of black (about 4x current levels). The extra ink costs pennies, there's no new engineering required, the customer is happy, and HP can respond to Kodak in the marketplace.

I'd rather throw out a cartridge I bought last year because the ink has dried out, than throw out one I bought last month becase it's empty already.

Inkjets are crap

[The Cisco Kid]

For less than $150 I can buy a decent used laser printer and a new toner cartridge for it, and run it for a year or two until it dies and then get another. They print faster, and how often do you really need color anyway? If I need color I'll go to kinkos.

PhotoSmart series isn't too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Price on the PhotoSmart series ink isn't too bad ($12 for each separate color), but then again it's more midrange (approx. $300) and one of the few printers by HP where the print head isn't part of the cartridge. Also I'm not sold on the laser argument for color/photo printers because lasers just don't produce the color depth/range that an ink-jet can with the right paper. Then of course toner also flakes if you have to do any folds.

Only thing messed up with the PhotoSmart is the crummy non-working paper feed rollers, if HP would fix that - it'd be an excellent printer rather than a somewhat good one.

Still it's nice that Kodak might be taking a stab at competitors that milk the ink-market. Hopefully its basic printers are good enough where the new approach might influence the competition.

Does anyone RTFA? All about pictures, not text.

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point is not just for printing b/w pages at home, it's about printing quality PHOTOS at home. Sure, if ripping off page after page of text, then a laser is cheaper per/page, but at least read the f-ing article instead of just the summary blurb...

If using Kodak paper (that is automagically detected by the printer), you should be able to print 4x6 color pics for about 10 cents apiece. This is also using a new ink that doesn't fade, smear, etc, but lasts like the professionally printed pics at the stores or online shops.

related article in the Economist

[sacrilicious]

Caught this article just a few weeks back, it goes into some detail on Kodak's inkjet technology.

Apple already revolutionized printers

[Foerstner]

The Apple LaserWriter was the first combination of PostScript with a laser printing engine. Revolutionary at the time, because it allowed people to print any combination of fonts and graphics at the full resolution the printer was capable of. (The first HP LaserJet, by comparison, could print in Courier. Just Courier. The only advantage it had over a daisywheel printer was that it was much faster.)

Not surprisingly, it cost several thousand dollars--more than even a new Mac, at the time, but it had a faster CPU, too.

Apple wisely got out of the printer market after it became commoditized, but its laser printers (Canon-based, like HP's) were rock solid and still crank out pages in a number of universities. The drivers were/are even included with Windows up until XP

Re:Apple already revolutionized printers

[luther349]

apple did the printer thing and did it very well apple image wrighter serise anyone. i had one for litterly years and years the ribben based cartrages lasted for a very very long time befor they neded replacing and where dirt cheap to replace even for the color ones. the only disadvantage was if you wanted to print in b/w and not wast your coler cartrage for whatever reasion you had to manuly swap them out. you can still to this day find the carts for them at office supply stores couse many schools and busnesses still use them.

Frugality

[Savage-Rabbit]

Exactly. Particularly when the printer is $150, and not some $20 piece of garbage that's just a holder for the $40 or $50 cartridge. Nobody cares really about messing up their printer, when you can just get a new one practically for free -- but when the printer is a significant investment, and the replacement cartridges are cheap, who's going to do that? It's penny-wise and pound-foolish at that point to cut corners. That is a very good and logically sound argument but don't underestimate the stupidifying effect that frugality has on some people. I'll fix myself or use third party supplies and parts but when the value of an object reaches a certain point I'm not going to risk ruining something that cost me of 1-2 months wages or more, such as a laptop for example, to save a few cents on running costs and upgrades. Not everybody agrees with this of course, it is simply amazing how many people will spend a dollar to save a cent.

Nope...editing.

[Radon360]

/. editors had their way with the submission, sorry.

I don't remember exactly how I wrote it, but I think it was something to the effect of "buck the trend set by HP of low cost printers and exorbitantly priced ink cartridges." Somehow they managed to juxtapose the words so that it referred to Kodak instead of HP. My sentence structure might have been clunkier, but it made the point (to my recollection) that HP == low cost printer + expensive ink cartridge and Kodak == fair market value printer + reasonably priced cartridges

Oh well, the summary is only the tease anyway, RTFA and enjoy.

One major question for me

[BrynM]

One of the things I was left wondering after reading TFA is "But does the Kodak software try to take over my computer and is it a resource hog?" That, not the cartridge gouging, is what made me swear never to buy another HP. I was already saying "cool" about actually buying the printer at a reasonable price and letting the ink be a normal price. If Kodak has decent, non-obtrusive software, I'm thoroughly sold.

Re:One major question for me

[Mr. Roadkill]

One of the things I was left wondering after reading TFA is "But does the Kodak software try to take over my computer and is it a resource hog?" That, not the cartridge gouging, is what made me swear never to buy another HP. I was already saying "cool" about actually buying the printer at a reasonable price and letting the ink be a normal price. If Kodak has decent, non-obtrusive software, I'm thoroughly sold.

I have two HP printers - a PSC15xx inkjet I bought because I needed a scanner and a cheap colour inkjet in a hurry for the occasional bit of colour that can't wait, and a Laserjet 3380 rescued from becoming landfill (yes, really... it was left out with a note saying "Free to good home"). In both cases, the HP software for Windows is quite bloated and obtrusive. However, I recently installed both Ubuntu Feisty and Debian Etch on an aged test box at home (P3-733, 256 meg) and was very pleasantly surprised by the fact that they both seemed to include VERY good support for both printing and scanning with these printers (at $Dayjob I work with debian systems all the time, but not the desktop end of their software offerings)

While Kodak's ink prices are absolutely outstanding, I suspect their Windows software will be just as obtrusive and hungry as HP's. Most home-users are likely to want bells-and-whistles - they'll want to install whatever's on the CD, they'll want the "Scan" button on the scanner to dump their scanned pictures into a save folder on their PC or open up an image-editing or OCR program, they'll want something comparable to the task-oriented "HP Solution Center" etc. Hopefully, Kodak will offer a decent choice about the amount of cruft that gets installed alongside the necessary input and output drivers, and hopefully those drivers will be fairly lightweight... but based on the direction manufacturers seem to be going in, as shown by my HP and a few different brands and models I've installed recently for other people, I suspect this is unlikely.

Big deal - Brother

[Paul Carver]

That hardly seems impressive. A while back I bought a Brother printer/scanner/copier/fax for $140 with a $50 rebate and they threw in an extended warranty at no extra charge. The cartriges are $9.19 for color and $18.27 for black at Newegg. I don't print much, but it's nice to have a scanner with a 35 page sheet feeder and the abilty to make color copies is cool.

Before that I had a Canon S750. It worked great, the ink cartriges weren't very expensive and lasted for ages (I don't print a lot, but need to be able to print occasionally.) It lasted me three or for years with no decrease in print quality, but the electronics went wacky. It would only print the first page of any job and then go into an error mode. Pressing the power button reset it so it could print another page.

Every printer story on Slashdot is filled with whiners complaining about how expensive ink jets are an how they clog, and how the quality decreases. Either these people abuse their printers or they don't do their research before buying.

Re: TFA

[jack455]

FTFA
'H-P disputes Kodak's testing methodology and claims that Kodak's printout costs are "about the same or only slightly lower than H-P's." '

It's interesting because Epson's claims are not generally disputed by hp, and both companies have clearly shown remarkable effort on their websites in explaining their print testing methods. hp has also proposed and worked with others on starting a standard for testing. People get skeptical when they read the tests for different reasons. With hp and Epson I believe, the page coverage for black text printing is 5% and that sounds crazy. But look at a page and imagine how useless it would be to test how many pages you get when you use a solid sheet of black with full coverage borderless-printing.

When I bought my first hp printer the model (Deskjet 920c) that particular piece was not their best at cost per page, but I eliminated the ink drying up from non-use issue. I no longer wasted cartridges.

My current model (Deskjet 6520) uses an optional higher capacity cartridge that costs $30, but seems to last forever. (I think they claim 800 pages and it certainly doesn't seem exaggerated.) And there's a $35 color cartridge.

Before you think I'm crazy, I did research and bought this model precisely to be compatible with these cartridges. hp model #'s are 96 and 97.

Now, I'll probably have to do a lot of printing to see much benefit over the Lexmarks and Kodaks, etc. but I also feel that it prints very fast and warms up almost immediately. And if I had to buy a printer and wasn't buying an hp I'd get an Epson. Remember, Kodak is the company that almost tanked because they apparently thought digital cameras were a fad. One good thing is that hp and epson will probably lower their prices whether it's a fair comparison or not, because of perception! I just hope their quality doesn't suffer.

BTW, I don't mean to imply that they're the only good companies. they're just the only ones I know are good.

The Quality SUCKS

[bademailname]

I have seen the quality of these bargain printers first-hand at a recent (HP) seminar, where they "tested" (in a very armchair fashion) the $199 model Kodak vs. the $199 HP. The Kodaks are a bargain for a reason: they suck ass very hard. The color was washed, almost 5 shades lighter than their HP counterparts. The ink has a waxy residue when it dries that is incredibly easy to scratch with your fingernail. Both Kodak and HP use image-enhancement algorithms before outputting, but in the Kodak it is impossible to switch-off, which destroys most mid- to high-res images. The contrast is horrendous and in some test shots it looked like pictures of two different locations. Oh, and the printer? The on-screen controls are wonky and limited. The ink-system uses print heads, which were difficult to install. The Kodak was nearly 1 1/2 times the size of the HP. And did I mention the image enhancement can't be turned off?

Re:The Quality SUCKS

[OrangeTide]

The question I have is, do Kodak's Windows drivers suck as badly as HP's? Which is likely the worse piece of software put out by a major tech company in the last decade?

Special Interests

[andersh]

Well I suppose that is a valid enough reason to have one. However I believe the main reason people purchase printers is to print documents and such on paper. And for that purpose I see little reason to buy an inkjet printer. In fact I wonder why they're still around except for their low cost of production - and the hugely profitable ink business of course. I believe the consumer however would be much better served with a cheap color/BW laser printer.

Re:Special Interests

[Tim Browse]

Answer:

• Colour inkjet printers are cheap.
• Until pretty recently, colour laser printers were not.
• Many people want to print in colour (note I said want, not need).

HTH

Buy a large screen and don't print

[flyingfsck]

That is my solution - two screens actually. Ever since I treated myself to that, I quit printing stuff altogether.

Re:Buy a large screen and don't print

[Builder]

I tried that, but the airline people wouldn't give me a power plug to show them my boarding pass, and the damn thing took up my entire hand luggage allocation, so I guess I'll need to buy a new printer :)

Downloadable ink

[flyingfsck]

First, we need to figure out how to download ink. Otherwise this ain't gonna work.

doesn't matter, both companies are screwed

[michaelbuddy]

doesn't matter, both companies are screwed

http://www.physorg.com/news93863377.html

remember this article? I hope both companies are forced to drop further.

Sure, they're cheap, but how much do they hold?

[kopo]

Kodak's cartridges are cheaper, but how many milliliters of ink do they hold? The measurements don't seem to be available anywhere. You have to think in terms of dollars per milliliter to get even a remotely reasonable gauge of cost of operation. (Price per page would be better, but there's no easy way to calculate that.)

Re:Sure, they're cheap, but how much do they hold?

[zakezuke]

Kodak's cartridges are cheaper, but how many milliliters of ink do they hold? The measurements don't seem to be available anywhere. You have to think in terms of dollars per milliliter to get even a remotely reasonable gauge of cost of operation. (Price per page would be better, but there's no easy way to calculate that.)

they say 3c/page for the black, so we can assume that it's 333pages for the black. I read elsewhere it's 10ml. I don't know if that's at 5% yield or the 1500 character test patern used in the dot matrix days.

Dollars/ml is not always an accurate meter, like dollars/gallon isn't a good meter of fuel economy. Modern HPs tend to be very effecent in terms of ink use. Epsons do use a dence dye but micropiezo based heads require a pump based cleaning cycle which is somewhat wasteful. Canon hasn't done much to improve their ink efficency, the ink looks watered down in contrast to Epson or hp dye. HP has improved a great deal.

But I have to say in terms of cost/page the Kodak here isn't that exciting. HP/Canon/Epson all offer models with pigment black in the same price range.

Will it work with CUPS?

[ross.w]

I had to BUY a driver from TurboPrint to get my Canon inkjet to work under Linux. Will Kodak be providing drivers for CUPS, will they open their specs so someone else can do it?

Or will they take the path of Lexmark, Canon, et al and provide zero?

Re:Will it work with CUPS?

[MemoryDragon]

Well in Linux you have to check the hardware anyway. My recommendation is the canon ip4000 (the undongled one) the printer is a dream come true featurewise, while still being undongled and gobbling up cheap ink without too much hazzle (once the asia gulp clogs the nozzles drop in original canon carts and give the printer a rest, after a few days the nozzles are clean again) Also the linux support nowadays is very good for this model, gutenprint almost supports all of the features it has. (Turbonprint however still gives better printout results)

Kodak is also extorting

[dshk]

3 years ago Kodak extorted $98 million from Sun, using worthless software patents related to Java. At the same time Sun - with the help of many other people and comapny - gives Java for mostly free. For me this was the most infamous known abuse of the broken US patent system.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1666498,00.as p

Therefore it is somehow unlikely that I ever purchase something which has the smalllest relation for Kodak, but I am glad to hear that they will have smaller income from cartridges.

Absolutely correct, my screen 2 is my laptop..

[cheros]

When I travel I won't need 2 screens anyway (gets a bit difficult in a plane :-), so I use the laptop for showing docs.

Under Windows it runs UltraVNC and the main screen has Win2vnc installed, any combination with Linux uses x2vnc and if it's all Linux you can use x2x.

I can see myself buy a 2nd screen pretty soon though (a wide one), I now have cards with digital out in all my systems (OK, it's pointless in the server but it's a test system so it can be used for anything :-)

Having said all that, I sometimes find it handy to dump the complete manual on tree and sit in the sun reading my way through it..

Ink Delivery Devices

[Anonymous Coward]

HP internally refer to their printer as Ink Delivery Devices and their whole strategy is to reap as much as they can from the ink sales.

I think it is great that Kodak are sticking it to them, ink has been artificially over priced for too long now.

Only one thing you need to know

[c0d3h4x0r]

http://www.cartridgeworld.com/

Re:Only one thing you need to know

[rholland356]

Here's another thing you need to know:

They sometimes refill your cartridge with the wrong color.

Costs per ml of ink and the waste of ink

[Anonymous Coward]

HP didn't invent that marketing scheme and it must be older than Gillette even. I have my doubts that Kodak in practice will do anything about it. There are more ways to increase ink sales income than just by making the price higher. Ink waste is another one. I have worked with several Epson wide format models and my best guess is that only 60% of the ink in the carts actually lands on the paper. Much depends on the quantities you print and how often it has to get in cleaning modes + what remains in the carts when they are declared empty. Not to mention some real wastes where inks have to exchanged to print on gloss or matte papers. With my HP Z3100 I can not detect where it wastes inks even after an idle week and the carts are dry when empty.

Kodak truths have to be taken with big lumps of salt anyway, their ink color fading numbers are based on their own testing standards that are not supported by any of the other big printer manufacturers, the ISO norms and last but not least Wilhelm Research the big name in ink fading tests. There's a long history of quarrels between Kodak and Henry Wilhelm on that issue, it goes back to the 1970's for analogue photo prints and it looks like Kodak didn't learn anything.

www.wilhelm-research.com

I do not have the ml prices of the desktop model carts but some months ago I collected Euro prices for pigment ink carts above the 10 ml carts. Unsurprisingly they all show the same prices between brands when the printers are competitive. The gain for the customer or the company is in the ink wasted then and the printer price. That's a more complex thing and usually only felt in practice. HP scores much better than Epson in my experience. Kodak doesn't deliver a printer that comes near the quality of HP. Canon or Epson in this category not to mention the inherent color fading if it did. I think Kodak is in business only for the money like any other company so one shouldn't expect more from them than you can get elsewhere.

All German prices found with Preisroboter.de, prices have been creeping up over the months since I did this test.

Usually the price in Germany is lower than in the rest of Europe
and a wider supply is available. Pricing without VAT, MWST,
BTW or whatever name is used for that tax in Europe. No P&P
was included either. While pricing in the US is lower most of
the time, the P&P will be higher and it is hard to foresee
what customs in Europe adds. The Epson UC and K3 carts are in
the same price category, the 500 ml 10600 UC carts as well.
The Canon 700 ml carts are not really a bargain if compared to
the Epson and HP carts at approx 1/3 capacity. But actual ink
use is printer related and may disturb the simple economics of
this list completely. The real costs can only be experienced
in daily use.

0,91 Euro per ml Epson 1400 etc (Claria) 7,4 ml = 6,47

0,73 Euro per ml HP 9180 28 ml = 20,55 Euro

0.73 Euro per ml Epson 2400 13 ml = 9,44 Euro

0,50 Euro per ml Epson 1400 etc (Claria) 13 ml = 6,47

0,45 Euro per ml Epson 3800 80 ml = 36,30 Euro

0,45 Euro per ml Canon iPF5000 130 ml = 58,80 Euro

0,41 Euro per ml Canon iPF9000 330 ml = 135,57 Euro

0,37 Euro per ml HP Z3100 130 ml = 47,47 Euro

0,33 Euro per ml Epson 9800 110 ml = 36,38 Euro

0,32 Euro per ml Canon iPF9000 700 ml = 226,29 Euro

0,29 Euro per ml HP Z3100 twin pack 260 ml = 75,50 Euro

0,26 Euro per ml Epson 9800 220 ml = 58,09 Euro

Ernst Dinkla

www.pigment-print.com

Child porn allegations?

[tepples]

Printing photos? That costs me $0.11 per print at Costco. Why would I want to do that at home when I get better quality at a far lower cost from them? Is $0.11 per print for 10x15 cm (4x6 inch) prints or for the typical 23x30 cm (7.5x10 inch) enlargements that I'm often asked to print? And if you are printing photos of a child breastfeeding or bathing, isn't there the chance that you'll get your children taken away from you? Sometimes privacy is worth it.

Re:Child porn allegations?

[Grishnakh]

$0.11 is for 4x6. The largest sizes, 8x10 and 8x12 are each $1.49.

You have a good point about the privacy issue, though; I hadn't even thought of that since the only things I ever make prints of is usually landscapes.

Non-USA people looking to immigrate here, check out the link here before you decide to move to the USA. It's not as wonderful here as some would have you believe. In fact, this place can be downright screwy at times.

What does Zune have to do with it?

[tepples]

Just gimme your Social and I'll take care of it.

Welcome to the social.

(Insemomat? Huh?)

Re:What does Zune have to do with it?

[ScrewMaster]

Scary site.

My sig is from the book The Great Time Machine Hoax by Keith Laumer.

Brother as well.

[KitesWorld]

Brother refills are pretty inexpensive as well. I can't comment for the US prices, but in the UK they cost about the same as the 363 cartridges HPs newer lines use, and carry a good deal more ink.

Oh, and they're not chipped cartridges like Lexmark, HP, Epson, and more recent Canon cartridges (like the 40/41 for the ip1600), so you can refill them at home pretty easily.
Hell, they even tell you how to do it in the manual.

Push or Pull?

[smchris]

Is Kodak really pushing the pricing or the first to respond to other trends?

We've always gone laser for stock home printing but especially now, when you can get a refurb HP "toaster" for $99+cartridge and do your photos at Target or via the web, why mess with the annoyance and expense of inkjets? For extra economic joy I give the cartridges one recharge. Takes about 5 minutes for thousands of copies.

The industry brings "frugality" upon itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in ancient times, we could buy a modem cable for $40 from the local store, OR we could buy the exact same raw 25 conductor ribbon cable and crimp-on connectors (from the same store) for about $15. Total investment of time to save $25: about 5 minutes. The same concept applied to disk drive cables. The quality of the home-made workaround was no worse than the overpriced alternative.

I also remember when you could build your own computer from Taiwanese DIY parts and save about $1000 vs. the same thing (made from the same parts) sold in local stores under various so-called "brand names". You can still build your own computer from individual boards today, but you can't save $1000 doing it.

People do some silly things to save money, because most of the tactics WORK.

I recently bought a laser-based all-in-one unit, even though I would have preferred ink jet. The toner cost is reasonable (because the refill process is simple and effective). I have no intention of buying cheapie refills, because I don't have to. I would have preferred a color ink jet, but I refuse to deal with the outrageous cost of ink.

consumer win?

[KiwiCanuck]

Hopefully this will force people to look more closely at their printer purchases. I know I few people who buy new printers when the old one runs out of ink (they don't print very much). Obviously, it comes down to cost per print for a given quality. Unfortunately, some people have neither the know-how or time (sometimes an excuse to disguise the lack of know-how) to evalutate the cost per print of a printer. People seem to flock to the lowest price. However, there are two parts to getting good VALUE, namely a device of reasonable quality for a reasonably low price. Someone needs to make a printer web page like Steve did for digicams.

They are $80

[tacokill]

I just bought a B/W laser printer for $80. It has ethernet on it so it integrates nicely. It's a Brother 2070N.

I say this because I, too, just made the switch to laser and I am rather ashamed it took me so long. For color, however, I still use an inkjet.

Laser is NOT the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Could evryone please stop mindlessly recommending laser printing as the silver bullet?
Yes your points make sense if you want to print out aunt sally's recepies or some shitty color
pie chart. But some people actually want photgraphic quality output (go figure). And in this
regard inkjets win hands down. And yes it is expensive and that sucks, but it is still cheaper
than having a lab make your prints, especially when you print larger than 5x7. But if you are the
kind of person that thinks the $0.02 kinkos copy is good enough , or 'my color laser prints great
photos on plain paper', and 56K WMA files sound great, then by all means enjoy. But realize it is
not so simple as people being too stupid and sheeplike to use laser.

No need for expensive ink if you're printing text

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with name brand ink jet cartridges is that they're aimed at those people printing photographs who need/want archival quality, non-fading, non-smudging inks. That's not me. I print mostly text. Pages that I end up throwing away a month later. I want the cheapest possible ink, hence my usage of after-market refills. I couldn't care less how long it lasts, as long as it lasts for maybe a few months. As a matter of fact, if it weren't more expensive, an ink that fades after a month wouldn't be half bad. It could be a security feature, sort of like shredding. You might even be able to reuse the paper.

Another alternative

[gerardrj]

People... stop using ink jet printers. I'm not going to talk about brands since I don't want to skew this argument, but for about $500 you can get a really decent color laser printer that will to 20 pages/minute in black and 5/minute in color. Yes, that's five pages per minute not five minutes per page.

Yes, you pay a lot more for the printer, $500 vs about $100 for a decent inkjet, but you don't need to EVER clean print heads and you don't need to purchase special photo or "hi-res" paper. As a bonus, a page printed from a laser printer will last as long as the paper does; toner doesn't fade or decay at any descernable rate unlike ink which will start fading in a few months unless well protected.

So lets look at those costs:

Inkjet: $149 to purchase the printer; $25 to refill the ink. I my experience I get maybe 100 pages from an ink cartridge. For 4000 pages I pay $975 for ink tanks. This number assumes that the tanks in the printer box are full and that I never have to clean the print heads and that all the ink is always used on printed pages. I've now spent $1,125 to print 2000 pages.
Lets take my laser printer: $500 to buy the printer with cartridges that last ~4500 pages.

So even for printing 4000 pages the laser printer is $625 cheaper than the ink jet. And yes, I'm ignoring the electricity costs since most lasers today have "instant on" fusers and have quite good power management. The annual electric cost may difference may be $20, but even if the electricity operating cost is $500 more for the laser I still save $120 over the cost of the inkjet.

The break-even point for the laser is about 1500 pages. And again... all these numbers assume you are using standard paper in the inkjet. hi-res or photo paper can increase printing costs on the inkjet by a factor of two, easily.

Re:Another alternative

[Xoltri]

Find me a laser that can do direct CD/DVD printing. That is what I use my Pixma ip4300 for, it does amazing prints and it is very easy to refill the carts yourself. I use hobbicolors ink on ebay for this printer, which is excellent (and cheap!) and you can get a free 3rd party ink monitoring tool at http://www.freewebs.com/inkmon/.

Re:Another alternative

[gerardrj]

I know for certain that there are mono lasers that do print direct on optical disks. I'm guessing there are color lasers that do the same. I personally have never had any issues with printing labels and sticking them on a disk.

In either case, if you're happy with your inkjet, great. The Canon line is, IMO, the best inkjet printer out there on the whole.

Re:Another alternative

[zakezuke]

People... stop using ink jet printers. I'm not going to talk about brands since I don't want to skew this argument, but for about $500 you can get a really decent color laser printer that will to 20 pages/minute in black and 5/minute in color. Yes, that's five pages per minute not five minutes per page.

Color lasers are cool. They print well on plain paper, they are water proof, and the print is archival.

But

For photos, inkjet is really where it's at. When you take into account special paper, the cost increases. This is very true. But laser doesn't match inkjet for photo quality prints on photo paper.

Re:Another alternative

[gerardrj]

If you want the best quality photos, you shouldn't be using inkjet either. You should either be paying $.017 (17 cents) per print at a warehouse club photo department, or using a dyesub (Dye Sublimation) printer. You can't tell the difference between a dyesub and a photo lab under almost all conditions.

A basic 4x6 dyesub printer will cost under $200 and the print refills will cost about $.22 per print. It'll also take about 2 minutes per image.

Inkjets are like duct tape: Able to do a lot of jobs,but the wrong tool for almost every job.

Re:Another alternative

[zakezuke]

If you want the best quality photos, you shouldn't be using inkjet either. You should either be paying $.017 (17 cents) per print at a warehouse club photo department, or using a dyesub (Dye Sublimation) printer. You can't tell the difference between a dyesub and a photo lab under almost all conditions.

A basic 4x6 dyesub printer will cost under $200 and the print refills will cost about $.22 per print. It'll also take about 2 minutes per image.

Inkjets are like duct tape: Able to do a lot of jobs,but the wrong tool for almost every job.

Assuming you only print 4x6, outsoucing it would be a decent option.

As far home dye sub 4x6 solutions, typicaly as archival as dye inkjets. The Canon Selphy for example makes a claim of 100 years dark storage, same as current generation Canon inkjets. More waterfast, and likely more gas fast. Quality, well, that's VERY debatable.

I don't have an accurate estimate what I spend on bulk ink per print. Paper is about 16c an 8.5*11 inch sheet (costco glossy 120 pack). Assuming 28 pages per tank full (50% yield CMYK) I estimate I spend another 17c/print. OEM would be about 1.70/print + paper.

If your only application is 4x6, then I would somewhat agree, you should outsource it. Dye-sub is a legit option as well. But my personal application is not 4x6. It's CD and covers, mainly 5 1/8 x 4 3/4. I spent about $100 for my ip5200 which serves mostly as a glorified label printer. There is no way I could outsource my jobs for less money.

HP is a disgrace

[polyex]

Had one of those all in one printers from HP, a disaster. There is a video of some soldiers in Iraq shooting one out there, I empathize. The thing was designed to have a steady stream of print heads and ink cartridges purchased for it at ridiculous prices. HP used to be an innovative company (what seems like eons ago), but they are nothing buy the Packard-Bell of the 21st century now run by quick buck scammers.