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InkJet Printers Lying, Or Just Wrong?
akkarin writes in about a study reported at Ars Technica on how accurate ink-jet printers are when they report that cartridges are empty. Not very, it turns out. Epson came out on top of the study (and Ars rightly questions how objective it was, given that Epson paid for it), but even they waste 20% of the ink if users take the printers' word for when to get a new cartridge. On average, the printers in the study wasted more than half the ink that users bought.
Hearing this pisses me off. I realize it's a competitive market, but every company out there charges insane amounts for ink. Hell, even the 3rd party refills are expensive. I'd rather pay the real price for a printer and have reasonable ink prices, but I guess that would kill the 1000% markup they have on ink. Laser isn't much better, but at least it doesn't feel like virtual buggering.
There's actually a free software that's available that can be used to reset the chips in several brands of ink cartridges. I'm not sure if you need any type of hardware, but I've heard good things about it.
It allows you to reset the numbers and use the remainder of the ink, before it makes you replace it.
If you ask me, the feature that stops you from using a cartridge after the ink is too low, is pretty ignorant. I think it's obvious when the ink is completely out, so why not let the user decide?
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Yes.
I've found 'extra' ink in both my Epson and HP inkjet printers. I'd use refill kits, but the cartridges tend to leak over time, and refilling takes a lot of time and effort. In the meantime, for Epson printers, just go with the el cheapo compatible cartridges from places like Inkco. Epson C88 cartridges are $5 a pieces, as opposed to to ~$25 for branded cartridges.
My blog
Here at work we have this HP laser printer that's always complaining about low ink. It just so happens we found an "emergency" option buried in the menus that allows us to keep printing until the toner actually dies.
Although I heard about it from ecogeek. It has links to the Ars Technica article also, but I really just wanted to point out the nice Office Space picture.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
I really can't remember the last time I heard of a company using questionable tactics to sell more of their product... It seems natural that they (the printer companies) would allow this to happen; most of the cost involved with owning a printer is buying cartridges, hence their expanded profit margins.
It's a win-win for the companies, and a lose-lose for the consumer. What's new?
Well, at least the printer industry is losing one customer. I've been kinda wanting one of those photo-printers for some time, but I know that they are only going to rip me off. Are there any honest printer manufacturers out there, that sells the printers for a reasonable price, and then sells the cartridges for what they actually cost to produce (plus of course, a reasonable profit margin)?
c++;
These companies have a business model of selling printers close to cost, then making ridiculously high profit margins on ink refills. What motivation do they have to tell you that an ink cartridge is empty before it really is?
Oh, yeah...
Get a laser printer already. Even the color models have dropped in price.
Considering inkjet printers are sold at or sometimes below cost. The only profit made is on the cartridges themselves. I don't like their solution of making people think they're on empty far before that actually happens, but in no way does this shock me.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Given all of the insanity surrounding refilling ink cartridges, DMCA lawsuits, "authenticity checks" on cartridges, and the give them the printer sell them the cartridges style business is anyone, anyone at all, even remotely surprised, maybe even just raised an eyebrow, that the vendors would stoop so low as to have the printer lie to you to get you to go buy another "DMCA protected authentic cartridge we are gunna sue you if you try to refill it" item that costs nearly as much as the stupid printer did in the first place as often as possible?
I am just gunna call "well duh" on this whole thing. I have worked with HP laserjets that told me I had 200 pages left that I could print. After printing 192 pages it told me I could still print 320 pages. All said and done that day, I had printed some 500 pages and its final number was that I could still print another 250ish pages. Whether they lie, or their math is freaking horrible for figuring it out is up for debate I suppose, but given the problems we have had with that same model and HP accusing us of theft because a brand new HP cartridge out of the box was determined to be not authentic by the stupid machine...well I assume they are just out for blood. 4 hours of fighting with their technician to have them exchange the stupid cartridge.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I don't own a printer at home, and don't want one. They're too expensive to operate and maintain. I find that I can do nearly everything I want to do electronically. When I do need to print something out, I'll go to a place like Kinko's and do it there. This has the added benefit of forcing me to really think about whether I truly need a paper copy, and most often I find I can do without. The overhead of having a non-shitty printer at home that I have to take care of just isn't worth it for me.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The letter quality was amazing compared to my dot matrix, and when they started printing in color, and I could print photos, it was great.
Somewhere along the line, the price gouging for ink came about. I had an epson 740 for a long time, and bought ink from some third party source at very reasonable prices (~$10/ cartridge). The ink was just as good as anything else I'd used, as far as I could tell.
I had the sad wake up call about a year ago, when the epson 740 finally died. I looked and looked for a printer that would accept third party ink cartridges, and couldn't find anything reasonable. My wife's in grad school, and does a lot of printing, so I eventually went with a Brother laser printer that ran me about $150, plus $75 or so for a toner cartridge. (Although after many months, we're still using the "starter" cartridge.)
Because my old printer hung on for so long, I was rather abruptly thrust into this brave new world of ink pricing and vendor lock in. It's sad to realize that the five year old printer I had, because of the availability of third party ink cartridges, was a far better product than anything I could buy today. I'm afraid the same thing will happen to laser printers at some point, and who knows what I'll do. Perhaps that will finally push us into the paperless lifestyle we were all promised a decade ago.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Inkjet ink works out to be more expensive, by volume, than the most expensive Bollinger champagne which is why the money-grabbing manufacturers can virtually give the printers away but rip you off for cartridges. In some cases, it is actually cheaper to throw the printer away and buy a new one than it is to buy replacement cartridges - how *GREAT* is that for our environment.
Grow up, people! Take your nicely-edited photos down to a printing booth or shop and get your photos printed in *MUCH BETTER QUALITY* and at a cheaper cost than what you can do on a home inkjet. Then invest in a cheap laser printer to just print letters and documents when you need to.
And the sooner VoIP phones and wireless access kicks out the price-fixing cellular phone providers, the better...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...I chisel all of my important documents in stone.
And this is supposed to surprise us?
./
Let's not waste any more ink discussing wasted ink...
Oh wait, this is
I used to work at a help desk at my college and one of the biggest annoyances was users telling us the one thing we already knew, the printer says low toner. That, we knew, was a lie a majority of the time. People could still print pages out that had no lack of toner. If it got light in some areas but was strong in others we would tilt the cartridge back and forth a couple of times and get a bunch more good prints out of it. All too often the HP laser jet that we had would report it was low on toner well before it was actually low on toner and out of toner.
2) It's pretty easy for Epson to have rigged the test so that multi-ink cartridges did particularly badly (although in my experience they really are that wasteful).
3) Assuming accurate wording of the message, I'd much prefer to get a warning when the ink is low but there's time to get a replacement than to get it only at the last possible moment -- I can figure out for myself when the ink is really gone. The article claims users rush to change cartridges as soon as a message pops up, but those workers are a lot more proactive than those in any office I've ever worked in.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What usually goes on in this type of situation is that they see themselves as honest and they don't go out of their way to outright lie... but on the other hand, why make a big effort to fix inaccuracies?
You get what? 200 sheets from a cartridge costing £20? CPP of £0.10
Then of course, the ink dries up within a week, clogging the cartridges so you're likely to get even less than 200 sheets.
Does anyone with a brain still use Inkjets? Particularly when colour lasers only cost about £120.
Deleted
I bought an HP Photosmart D7360 a few months ago.. Since then, I've printed at least a thousand 4x6 photos. I've changed the ink a bunch of times.. but I always wait until I finally see a photo print with low ink.
However, if I use the lame HP software that starts up with my computer (and slows it down quite a bit), it flat out refuses to let me print unless I change 'empty' cartriges first. It also annoys the living hell out of me with 'low ink' popups while I'm playing video games or doing other things - like the printer is the whole fucking reason I exist.
In Ubuntu, I just use whatever driver it found for my printer... and I can print beautiful prints with 'empty' cartriges. It pisses me off..
But, I will admit, I really do get about 200 4x6 photos with a single set of cartriges like HP advertises.. this is the first printer I've had (besides laser of course) that actually lives up to how many prints it advertises.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
The second issue is a familiar one: multi-ink cartridges can be rendered "empty" when only one color runs low. Multi-ink cartridges store three to five colors in a single cartridge. Printing too many photos from the air show will kill your cartridge faster than you can say "blue skies," as dominant colors (say, "blue") are used faster than the others.
That's interesting. I had never thought of how much ink was potentially being wasted by using a printer with a multi-color ink cartridge. I always just thought it was easier so I leaned towards printers that used a single 'color' ink cartridge. Now I know better.
My car says my gas tank is empty when it has about 2 gallons left. I don't think this is that big of an issue, just buy a new cartridge and install it once YOU notice ink is running out.
It doesn't matter whether the ink is actually empty when the cartridge says it is, it has already dried up and clogged long before that. Every single time I want to use my inkjet printer, I have to add a new cartridge because the old one has dried out.
So when will Printer & Ink cartridge manufacturers be investigated for price fixing & collusion? I know that various RAM manufacturers were being investigated last year and this year for price fixing. If it can be proven that they're knowingly telling consumers to replace their cartridges when they're not empty, then they'd be in a world of shit. (Or at least have to pay a hefty fine)... I smell class-action.
Why do some people need to insert caps where none truly exist[1]? It's not just "inkjet" as in this article's title. I've also seen it with Firefox and the old 3dfx Voodoo video cards, and many other words which I've thankfully forgotten.
[1] Ignoring marketroid-speak like CompuServe, which was at least the official name.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I've got a Canon S750, and it is great on reporting ink levels. It also has three separate color cartridges, which is nice. There have a been a few times when it was over zealous in reporting low ink, but all I had to do was take the cartridge out and put it back in and it ran fine until it was actually out of ink.
Transistors and Beer!!
so wait - the inkjets report that cartridge needs replacement and people just do it? whatever happened to visual inspection?! We have a Dell color printer (laser, not inkjet but same argument) which starts giving out the "replace cartridge soon" message about ~1000 pages in advance. So we buy the cartridge, keep it on hand, and only replace it when we actually see that the print quality is considerably degraded. I can understand the problem if the inkjet stops printing anything at all based on its preemptive warning messages (like a software lockdown), but if it continues to work irrespective of the amount of ink then just look at the output and make your decision.
In fact, I would rather have the machine give the warning earlier than later so I can have one ordered and ready to replace when the need comes, instead of waiting for all the ink to dry out and the printer goes out of service until the cartridges arrive.
My sig has been answered.
I have an old HP inkjet printer that's probably close to 6 years old (and it was't the latest and greatest when I bought it). Its held up well over the years. It doesn't have any fancy "ink is low" light on it, so I have to make due using other methods.
Color cartridge - When the colors on the pictures I print come out distorted or just plain wrong, I know that it's time to replace the color cartridge.
Black cartridge - When the text I print is unreadable, that usually means its time to replace the old black cartridge.
Just a few handy hints.
"Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
Google for 'SSC Service Utility' for Epson printers. This allows you reset ink levels on cartridges using the printer, and can also reset the 'protection counter' on Epsons, which once at a certain level prevents you from using the printer until it has been serviced.
Suppose you run out of one color of ink, and your prints all have a yellow cast. I think in that situation it would report you were out of ink and you'd throw away the cartridge.
On the other hand, there's no reason that should happen with black. Unless it's a photo printer doing black and whites that has part of it's gray system used.
Things may have changed since I last bought a printer, but epson was the least evil back then. You could buy generic cartridges for the printer, you could even refill your real cartridges without them reporting empty or faulty like the HP ones do. I think what bothers me most is how HP is trying to lower prices on laserjets and hike the prices on the toner. The toner was expensive enough before that happened. Running my 2550n (I think that's it's model) cost $110 x 4 for toner.
They grab that tube, start at one end of the brush, and just hammer that brush, covering it to the last bristle with toothpaste.
Is the cleanliness of the teeth proportional to the amount of paste used? No.
Are sales driven by encouraging people to use more product? Yes.
Why does the 'corporate we' seem so surprised when we occasionally wake up and realize that vendors are trying to cajole more sales?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
A used HP LaserJet 4/4+ can often be had for $50. Plus, these things are built like tanks. They last forever and are more than adequate for home office printing needs. I have had one of these for the past four years, and never regretted it. If one of the parts wear down, such as the paper roller assembly, replacing them tends to be cheap and easy, as well.
what I do with for example HP or epson when I get the empty cartridge message, is that I just remove it and put it back and it works again for alsmost the same time. Only at the second message I do change the cartridge for a new one. Works pretty well and many friends are doing the same.
We use Epson inkjet receipt printers at my hardware store and we put a small piece of masking tape over the cartridge ink window. We find that we get an extra week or two of use out of a cartridge by covering the ink window. When the ink runs out (i.e. the receipt is blank) we swap the cartridge.
John
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Thats why I just said, bugger it, screw you , I rather change my whole behaviour than see someone get rich for no effort or work.
So thats why nothing is worth printing, unless its LARGE and on the wall. Everything can be digital (oh yeah, at least 5 copies on different media)
Thoughts of an Epson Business Analysts "Now lets see... 50cents per photo, 3 per page, 100 pages = your ink will last 30 pages at most, we make $200m profit from $6m of chemicals from india"
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Does anyone not know this? How many printers have you kept using when it says "ink low", "ink extremely low", "go buy a new ink cartridge" and it still has ink in it? Maybe it's out on the color side, but in black and white, you can still print for a long time. If you're willing to accept 'economy mode' or slightly faded copy, you can print for a LONG time even on an "empty" black cartridge before it truly runs out and just prints a white sheet.
stuff |
I have had the opposite problem with my current printer. It continued to say I was full of ink despite the fact pages would not print properly and the black ink couldn't musted anything above a grey. I even performed the "clean" operation several times before finally giving in and buying new carts. The funny thing is the entire time the printer was saying the cartridges were full.
While it might be fun for conspiracy theorists to say the printers are rigged to make you buy more ink, I think it is just an issue with really bad systems. I can think of two possible ways to measure ink usage. One would be an estimated usage, which would have a high risk of inaccuracy, since it would have to determine an average ink usage for a page of paper. The other method would be to use sensors to take an actual measure of the ink contents of the cartridge. If it is the latter, then this sort of inaccuracy is really unacceptable because they should easily be able to device a system that can properly measure the ink levels.
I do not think there is some greater evil with the printer manufacturers to get you to buy more ink. The simple fact is that ink is already a scam unto itself and in some cases you might even be able to buy a new printer for less than your cartridges (if you do not mind setting up a new one every few months). I would be far more interested to see if Laser printers are more accurate in reporting of toner levels (if any do, I seem to remember most just going flaky before quitting), because while toner is expensive, I do not think there is near the cost issues when you consider the extra cost of most laser printers.
Thats why I have an extra cartridge and won't change it will I start seeing light streaks in my printouts. I can always reprint the page(s) that didn't come out.
I use an Epson R220 for sole purpose of printing black ink on cds. Its the only affordable printer that i can find that does so. It uses 5 separate ink cartridges each with their own IC that counts the number of times you print and tells you that the ink is empty based upon the count on the chip. Even though i ONLY print black the software slowly shows my color ink cartridges depleting.
Heres the kicker, when i run out of one color the printer WILL NOT PRINT black until i replace the color cartridge. Eventually i bought a chip reseter and it does the job perfectly. I even found that when i reset the black ink cartridge i can continue printing until it says empty 3 more times.
Epson is run by crooks and sincerely hope there is a special place in hell for those assholes.
...about telling you that the toner is low. We have an HP4050 (a relatively old beast) in our lab that prints 50-100 sheets a day, and it said "toner low" for at least three months before the last replacement. I used the shaking trick the whole time before we actually saw repeatable reduction in print quality (on normal) due to low ink. If we had changed the toner when it was first "low", that would have been a real waste of money too.
Wow, this has been one of those things that really piss me off for quite some time. While it is true that the laser jet printers do better than inkjets they ALSO LIE and ARE DESIGNED TO FAIL.
For example; I bought a laser two years ago (from a company that rhymes with hell). I bought it because I needed to print letters to clients and do things like print checks. Nothing heavily graphics intensive nor really heavy duty text work either.
So here is what I discovered with my 'efficient' laser printer; My '5000 page' toner cartridge prints about 1000 pages. Pissed, I decided to open one up as they are about $100 for a new one.
Lo and behold it was still full of toner. Somehow, as the printer printed the quality of the prints degraded as the toner 'ran out' a little more with each print. At the time I figured this was because there was no toner but the proof was now in my hands (and all over my desk for that matter) so I decided to investigate further. It seems that these toner cartridges use chips to tell your pc that its running out each time you print.
Now, I'm not electronics guru, so I don't have a machine I can actually read the chip with, but I am under the impression that this chip also purposefully degrades the quality of your prints as it counts down your toner level. To test that theory I ordered some refill kits off of the web.
First thing I noticed after doing the chip replacement was that the quality of the prints immediately improved. I printed for several weeks, noticed the quality go down again, replaced the chip (no toner added in there yet...) and viola worked beautiful. When that chip said it was empty I opened the whole thing up again and took a look. This time it was indeed very low, but not empty. I poured in the new bottle of toner and put in a new chip and went back to work.
I usually order 3 chips for each bottle of toner I purchase . Currently I get about 4000 pages per bottle of toner. My refill purchases cost me $29 for two bottles of toner and six chips (on chip comes with each bottle and I add the other four to the order) Let's see$200 vs $29 for two 'cartridges' worth of prints... hmmm.... yeah I'll refill. Add to that the fact that the purchased carts don't get the same mileage as the refilled ones with extra chips to replace the old ones.
I guarantee I will never buy another 'rhymes with hell' printer again.
Caveat emptor indeed.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
eBay et al. have capitalization in weird places in the names. I think that Department of Homeland Security should not be acronymed as 'DHS', but rather "DoHS" to represent the 'of' in their name, and also so that at least the acronym is more accurate having "DoH" (Homer Simpson) in it.
Having personally lost an Epson printer by letting a cartridge run until it was dry... and wasting time and money replacing the cartridge, running cleaning cycles, replacing the cartridge again (yes, I'm an idiot... but I've gotten bad cartridges from time to time), running more cleaning cycles, going online and trying various suggestions for homebrew ways to clean Epson nozzles... ...I have to admit I'm pretty leery about actually running the cartridge dry.
I have another Epson now (I told you I was an idiot, didn't I?) which takes individual cartridges for each color. I'm not so sure I like that, either. In theory it ought to save money, but in practice, after a year or so, the cartridge cycles become unsynchronized, so I am always getting interrupted because some cartridge has gotten low... and then when I tool out to the office supply store, they try to stock cartridges for umpteen different models in six different ink colors but I always seem to hit them on the day when they're out of light cyan...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
as promised.
/.'ers calling their political representatives in Washington demanding that the IP restrictions be eliminated to legitimize 3rd-party inks. Nearly all of you get exactly what you put into it. Pricing abuse by the electronics conglomerates.
Step 1: turn printer on
Step 2: print
What most whiners about ink costs totally fail to comprehend is how much ink it takes to perform steps 1 and 2 repeatedly, with perfect results on the first sheet of paper.
Yes, ink jets are *really* expensive, but they aren't meant to do volume work. And along the way, to inspire more consumption they figured out how to do a decent job printing photos.
Desktop printing is a good example of a maturing market with minimal regulation. This is the logical outcome and a perfect example of the politically expedient phrase "free markets." But I don't see many
The geeks way around the problem is keeping an old hp laserjet going. **Dirt** cheap per page, built to last, and spare parts availability. They aren't rocket science to fix either.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Epson's warning (on my last two printers) is that the ink level is low. The text of the warning says that there is less than 20% ink left and that it is time to buy a new cartridge (not replace it). Reminding you to have a new cartridge on hand is a nice thing to do.
You get a more urgent message when the printer thinks the cartridge is bone-dry. It's usually right within about ten pages.
Also to Epson's credit is the status line that will say something like "There is enough ink to print 100 pages like the last page printed." What more could they do?
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I also find that I can print quantities of pictures faster by driving to Target, giving them my SD card, and coming back in an hour. At over two minutes each to print at home, it only takes about 30 or so prints to make the whole process faster. Plus I'm not cautiously stacking damp ink prints all over the desk, hand-feeding tiny glossy sheets into the printer, and watching the ink tanks run dry. It's a lot more convenient.
The biggest advantage, though, is the images are exposed on photographic paper and chemically processed just like a film image. The reason this is an advantage is the longevity of photographic paper is well understood. When properly cared for, color photographs are expected to last 75 years or more. Inkjet is a relatively new technology (only about 20 years old), and picture durability is still fairly unknown; although recent tests are estimating properly cared-for inkjet prints will last only 25 years, maybe less. It's definitely variable by manufacturer, paper and ink.
John
I think this is just multiple instances of Ockham's Razor.
1) Inkjet MFGs are just lazy. They don't want to do the R&D to improve these things.
2) The ink level reporting hardware/software does what it should (sort of). The fact that it is scewed in favor of the inkjet MFGs is all the more reason for them to shut down R&D.
See, not a conspiracy, just laziness and incompetence like always.
BFD
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
- They sell more expensive ink that way.
- You'll notice your typical printing regimen uses much less yellow than the other shades, so if it's a trui-color cartridge, unless you're printing a lot of "skin tones", the yellow section will tend to still be mostly full when the other ones have run out, or at least "low".
- Many printers try to estimate the amount of ink used, but if you remove a print cartridge or reset the printer EROM, or the cartridge contacts get intermittent, many printers when they see a "unknown but used cartridge, assume it has unknown quantity and assume the worst.
- The printers with separate print heads and ink cartridges have a serious problem-- if the printhead runs out of ink the little teeasy tiny microscopic print head resistors blow out, requiring an expensive $40 printhead. On a HP D1xx printer, there are four of these. So the printer signals "ink low" when it's really probably still 1/3 full, just to protect the printheads.
- The printers with separate print heads and ink cartridges can get air-bubbles in the plumbing between ink cartridge and printhead if the ink runs low, leading to poor printing and printhead blowouts, so again they thy to err on the safe side.
Not very good reasons, but there they are...Intelligent cartridges? How about you just keep printing until I tell you to stop. That is how old fashion printers worked. They were out of ink (or ribbon) they would keep going, but nothing would come out or maybe some streaks. Now days the printer "thinks" its out of ink and it shuts down.
Because my old printer hung on for so long, I was rather abruptly thrust into this brave new world of ink pricing and vendor lock in. It's sad to realize that the five year old printer I had, because of the availability of third party ink cartridges, was a far better product than anything I could buy today
You're a geezer, aren't you?
-mcgrew
(There's a copy of the article on my own site. Weirdly, Google lists my copy but you have to really dig to find the original K5 copy. Weird because nobody ever goes to my site.)
I had an Epson C86 which I loaded with a full set of colour and black cartridges then proceeded to print over 200 pages of mono text making sure that "black only" was set.
Before the end of the run the ink ran out and I switched out my empty black ink and clicked OK.
The printer however would not print.
It's excuse was that my colour ink was also empty.
Not only is this a blatent lie - it hadn't printed a single drop and the cartridges were still full - but it would absolutely not print a single "black only" page without three new colour cartridges.
That's when I got rid of it and marked Epson down as a company I'll never deal with again.
[)amien
Never noticed, but then again I use the cartridge until things start to not print right - e.g. lines, missing chunks/colors/etc, runs out of in the the middle of a print, too light of a shade to be legible, etc. However, I probably use the notice as a sign that I need to get a cartridge set for standby so that I can print when I want/need to instead of having to run out at the last minute to get something.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
My car says my gas tank is empty when it has about 2 gallons left. I don't think this is that big of an issue, just buy a new cartridge and install it once YOU notice ink is running out.
So, when a car's gas gauge indicates empty, do most people replace the gas tank with a new full tank? No, they put gas into the existing tank.
You don't lose anything by refilling the fuel tank before it's empty, and in fact you do lose something by running a car out of gas - you overheat the fuel pump. Running a fuel-injected car with an in-tank pump (pretty much any gas powered car built since 1987, and many modern diesels too) out of gas even once will damage the pump, making total failure of the pump much more likely. Fuel pump failure is not fun because it usually happens without warning while you're driving.
Back in 2002 I got a Lexmark laser printer in a going out of business sale. Since I got it, it had the low ink warning flashing. Only about 2 months ago did the actual ink start to fade, which prompted me to take out the drum, shake it, and everything was normal again.
When I was in college I was a computer lab assistant, which pretty much meant that I'm the go between for students and the printers. There were times that my supervisors were replacing the ink weekly when it wasn't necessary to do so. After a little research I found that there were page counters in the ink drums that triggered the low ink warnings, that typically triggered at 5000 pages. This might be accurate if you were printing 5000 pages of solid black ink, but when you are printing text documents you use much less ink. So just for fun I replaced a toner cartridge and ran 5000 blank pages through the printer, and sure enough the low ink warning came on.
Granted both cases are for 10 year old printers, now the newer ones have the digital display showing how full the ink is, and some even have the "window" to see if there is any color left. Back when I still used an ink jet I remember saving cartridges that only had one color that ran out and swap it when I was printing images that didn't use much of the missing color, just so I could use it up.
The rule of thumb should always be keep using the same ink until it actually runs out, or if it is a laser printer ignore the "life cycle" warning until it actually stops. I've been doing it this way for nearly 10 years and haven't had any problems.
I print about 20 pages a minute for the full 8 hours I'm at work and the 12 hours between the hours of 6pm and 6am.
i nk/0706output/
For how much you print, you might want to consider looking into a continuous ink feed system.
http://www.shutterbug.net/equipmentreviews/paper_
Though this wouldn't make sense for the average home user because they could ruin their printer from the inks drying out when they are letting their printer sit unused for weeks.
This reminds me of a similar study that was performed in the 90's on some older-model cars. It was shown that the gas meters on most cars were inaccurate, leading some gullible drivers to fill up on gas more frequently than normal. However I would expect that if ink companies are doing the same to businesses that use printers, it would be easier to rip them off into buying more ink, as it is the entire cartridge that must be replaced along with the ink.
Now you've got me wondering if it's not so much a problem with the generic cartridges as some problem with the printer that makes it recognize the generics and not use them properly. *eyes printer suspiciously*
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Wow... what a wholly irrelevant comparison... Let's break it down. When you start to get low on gas, a little light comes on that alerts you that before long you are going to need to replenish the supply or the car will cease to run. When many inkjet carts get low, the printer will not allow you to print until it has been replaced. If your car were an inkjet printer, then when it got down to about 5 gallons (low, but enough to get you where you are going), the car would suddenly shut off and refuse to operate until you replaced, not just the gas itself, but the actual gas tank with one manufactured by the company that made your car. Refilling a partially used gas tank will void your warranty, and if the car detects that you've refilled the tank instead of buying a new one, it will refuse to start. Make sure your analogies pan out before starting your rants.
Ive been donated a hp photosmart 7550 for free, the old user got fed up with it and bought something else Cannon i think. - apart from a crap colour cartridge - ive no issues with the free photosmart. Go figure.
OK yes i had to buy ink (no not from hp - thats $180 usd here) but while i might be a moron i don't print that many photos and also have laser printers on hand.
Many people i am aquainted with don't seem happy with there inkjet printers - bad colours etc. Mind you i ignore complaints about quality until i cannot even see the printout. Then its time to put new ink in.
My Epson color laser also acts like Chicken Little. It starts warning you about low toner for hundreds of pages before it really needs to be replaced.
If you're not willing to spend lots of money up front on a printer, then they gouge you on the cost of ink. Throw out the damn inkjet and spend $400 on a color laser printer. The printer will pay for itself within half a year on cost per page alone.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
Recently, Epson lost a lawsuit because their inkjets were causing users to waist an extreme amount of ink. If you own an Epson printer, you may be eligible to receive $50 in free ink -- more information at http://epsonsettlement.com/
I was having problems with an epson stylus photo a few years ago - the heads seemed to be clogged, and I finally gave up on the head claning routine. I was about to hit the head with qtips and alcohol, and had to get inside the box to get to the print head.. I found this large black/brown object in the bottom of the printer. When I pushed it I realised it was a huge sponge/absorbant pad full of - now it was all mixed - brown ink. Hoe much wasted ink was in that sponge? At least 60+ cartridges full by volume. At this point I got rid of the printer - use a mono laser now and a minilab for my photos. I tell my freinds I use a £30K printer for my photos... A minilab... Mafiu
I have a Canon i550 printer. One day the printer prompted me to change catridges as the ink has ran out. I ignored the warning and continued to print. I did it several times over different occassions because I believed the catridge was not completely empty. Then one day when I printed some stuff, the ink head moved but nothing was printed. I thought it had really ran out of ink so I bought another original ink catridge.
To my horror, nothing was printed, even though the printer driver reported a full ink catridge. I did several rounds of ink head cleaning but it still couldn't print.
I sent it to Canon for repair. The checked and told me my ink head was DAMAGED. I asked how the hell could the ink head got damaged when I used original Canon catridges? They eventually found out that I had forced forcefully used a depleted catridge on my printer, and they attributed that to be the cause of the damage.
In the end, I paid for a new inkhead, which cost more than 3 packs of new catridges. If only I had changed the catridges earlier!
w00t
Refilling old Canon printers.
$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent.
It is amazing to me how much people are willing to accept abuse. It seems that every organization, from the U.S. government down, is trying to compete by being abusive rather than by earning money honestly. For a short summary of U.S. government abuses see: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
I've bought an Epson Stylus 680 long ago, it was one of the first inkjets to have a dreaded chip system mounted on each cartridge, which was supposed to keep track of the ink levels. The printer refuses to work when it thinks the ink is used up. Because genuine Epson cartridges were quite pricey, I bought cheap replacement cartridges. They came with a "chip programmer" device, which allowed to reset the ink meter on the chip. Because the replacement cartridges were delivered without chip, you had to pluck the chip from the original cartridges, and reset it. Of course, I wanted to know how much ink was left in the original cartridges, so put the re-programmed chip back. I printed about 50% of extra pages compared to what I had already printed. This means the chip meter was very pessimistic, wasting 33% of the cartridge's potential. Judging from the article, this seems to have improved. I don't know how they measure the amount of ink used, but I think in the case of my old printer, it just subtracted a very conservative value with each printed page.
Anyhow, I never used that printer much, because every time I turned it on, it probably spat out enough ink to fill 3 pages with solid colors, due to the head cleaning. In the end I tried to stack up print jobs so I could do them all at once. It has now been sitting in a box for so long that every single hole in the print head has probably been clogged.
I wouldn't have any objections against these level meters, if the damn system wouldn't prevent me from printing anything when it thinks it's "empty". This just reeks of ripping off the customers so they have to buy the expensive cartridges more often. Of course, the manufacturers will say that completely emptying the cartridge is bad for the printer heads, so they can sell more cartridges. If it would really be bad, it would be more profitable to make the meter too optimistic, so the heads really get damaged and the user needs to buy a new printer often...
$10 refill for b&w, $15 for color, works great. I guess they have gotten around any IP issues, about time.
... as opposed to any of the other myriad products manufactured and marketed for decades by myriad corporations with a specific intent to encourage waste for the sake of profit... like, say, toothpaste or mayonnaise.
Does it really take an idiot to not see the obvious parallels and realize this isn't Slashdot-worthy news, and only news at all because these tactics have been ignored and even encouraged on a global scale for at least half a century? It was the Industrial Age and mass production which enabled it.
I don't buy n picoliters of ink when I buy a cartridge. I buy n pages at m density. I really don't give a rat's ass how much ink is left in the cartridge at the end of the run. Could be a gallon for all I care; where's the harm?
I started down the route of looking for cheap colour inkjet printing a lot earlier than most of you other fellows, by the look of it.
The stages I went through were:
Epson's own cartridges - about £12 each
Other brand cartridges - about £5 each
Refilling Epson carts - about £1.50 each (bottled ink from Proprint) and messy.
(you need a cartridge resetter from Proprint - £5)
Buying Skyhorse 2-part tank cartridges and refilling these - £1.50 and clean.
( http://www.tianma.net.cn/asp_en/index.asp ) and see two-part cartridge
Buying a Continuous Ink Supply (CIS) from ebay - £40 with about £40 worth of ink included - equivalent cartridge cost hard to tell, either the ink or the kit came free!
Refilling the CIS with OCP ink bought straight from the importer - equivalent cartridge cost £0.32p per cartridge.
Finally, I have a top end printer and ink costs so low that I can ignore them. If anyone asks for it, I will tell you the address for the ink importers who sell top quality ink for about £2 per 100ml. (UK only) And if I do, I expect to get modded informative!
I use the lame HP software
There is your first mistake. Nuke this software, no as a matter of fact, nuke the entire partition and reinstall windows. Whenever you are installing ANYTHING from HP, go for the barebones install; just install the device drivers. If the installshield won't let you do it, hunt the drivers down. DO NOT under any circumstance load the bloatware from HP.
I bought an HP Photosmart... I've printed at least a thousand 4x6 photos.
A Photosmart as your bulk printer? Do you enjoy getting ripped off? Are you eager to loose your print outs to color fading in 5 years? Go to your local photo shop and let them do it professionally and much cheaper.
My other OS is the MCP!
Long-Live-Toner! This (and that ink cartridges seem to have "fixed" maximum lifespans [measured in time]) demonstrates to me the superiority of the laser printer for most tasks.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Kodak has a line of full-size inkjet printers. They charge a bit more for the printer ($150 for a pretty standard multifunction with 6 colors), but the cartridge costs are MUCH cheaper. $10 for black that is supposed to last ~300 pages of full text, and $15 for a 5-color cartridge. Or you can buy them together for $22.
As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
You buy a car, you get a good deal... but you can only fill up the gas tank at one of the brand's dealers. The car's low fuel indicator goes off when there is about 20% of the tank left and the car shuts off completely when 10% is left in the tank.
You get the car towed to the dealer for a fill up, the dealer drains the existing fuel in the tank, then charges you for a complete fill up at a price nearly 1/3rd the original cost of the car, resets the warning light and sends you on your way.
Rick Wagoneer and Bill Ford would be publicly hanged and beaten like piñatas
http://www.CelloFourteGroupie.net
I am a member of a class action suit against Epson of America in regards to this cartridge BS. I have 4 eligible Epson printers, and the settlement was enough to pay for nearly half of my new Continuous Flow System. (And a substantial amount of Epson store credit for paper) From now on, I'll be paying what I did before for a load of 8 cartridges, for 4 ounces of all 8 inks in my R1800.
The amount of ink still in the cartridges when it stops letting you print is patently ridiculous. I have a little box that zaps the chips so it'll think it's full again... You can usually get almost another whole cartridge worth out of it.
How is it they justify this? I mean, what the hell?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I don't change the ink until I don't see ink coming out on the page. How hard can that be?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The price of ink is so clearly out of control that there HAS to be price fixing/agreement between the manufacturers. There's like, five major manufacturers but there's [b]no way[/b] this is a competitive market - they're all as bad as each other.
The last page I printed cost me about $20. One of the colors needed replacing but by the time I'd changed/cleaned the head [b]all[/b] of the colors had dropped by about 20%.
Why can't I just clean a single color? Why must I throw away black ink when the cyan is the only color which is blocked? The whole thing is a joke...
I'm going back to three colors as soon as these cartridges are empty and if Kodak is keeping their promise of slashing printing costs then it'll be a Kodak printer.
No sig today...
I guess my thought is what is the alternative? Sure Epson estimate (badly) when the ink cartridge runs out, however, how could they cheaply measure the ink level in the cartridge without jacking up the prices yet again for more sophisticated cartridges just so you can get an extra 100 prints? Maybe someone needs to setup a cost per page system, something like the Energy Star ratings we have and stick that on all of the boxes. Then as the consumer we could make real, informed purchases on our printers. Lasers are by far the best value for volume printing for a small office, however, my experience with color lasers has always been so-so, no one tells you when you shed $1000's on purchasing your HP 8550 that each color page reduces your drum life three times as quick on color prints! I remember when Olivetti released a line of inkjet printers, priced in the UK at 19.95GBP each everyone was flocking to pick up these "bargains". What they did not realize is that the included cartridges were only half full and colour/black replacements would cost four times as much as the printer :)
I run VIPMinistry.com, a church printing co-op. We own a LOT of printers (way more than the site says). We own inkjets (for CD/DVD prints), lasers (for short run bulletins and flyers), wide format printers (banners and posters) and an offset printer (soon two).
My favorite printers right now are from Xerox (Phaser 7400). I own 3. No retail store carries these or sells toner or consumables. The Xerox is by far the best printer I've used. Service menu lets me reset drum and toner counts, toner cartridges are simple to refill, and Xerox's toner estimation tool is very accurate (it even tells me how much toner+drum was used per job and is very accurate). But Staples/Office Max/Office Depot won't stock their items nor their printers. Probably not enough profit in a machine that only costs a few cents per color page.
The Epson inkjets I use are all CIS-installed. I bought them for $99 with the CIS and the printer refurbished. They kick out hundreds of CDs or DVDs per hour, and I've had no major issues. Retail stores won't sell CIS systems or ink, of course. A new $149 Epson with a CIS pre-installed is worth it for any household with kids or at-home office needs. I had one printer finally croak, and I tossed it. For $99, it wasn't worth even trying to fix it.
The wide format printers I use also don't have local retail disposables (HP DesignJet 5500), even though there are thousands of these in operation in the Midwest. The cartridges are huge (670ml), and I use a third party now and the inks are better than HPs. I think I pay $120 for 670ml of ink. I also use the ancient DesignJet 3800CP which has a ~1000ml ink tank (x4) which go for $120-$150 each.
It isn't just the manufacturers -- the retailers also love the products we hate. I don't buy those products. I don't let me family buy those products.
You meen to tell me I'm supposed to listen when this thing says it's empty? I wasn't even aware it would complain... I just don't pay any attention. Maybe I'm a cheap bastard (yes, I am), but I keep going until the ink doesn't come out right on the print job. Laser, ink jet, blood from my finger... it's the most reliable way to tell when you're actually running out.
Where do you buy your ink for refilling? :) or a :( :) so I need to learn to refill.
I have 2 Canon printers and while the ink lasts longer than on the HP I had previously, I am looking to try my hand at refills. My 4 year old has gotten quite comfortable at the computer and she is asking to print pictures now. So I expect my printer usage will increase dramatically.
Nor sure if that should be a
But I want it to be more of a
The TCO of an ink jet is higher than any other kind of printer. HP made more than half of its profit last year ($9B out of $17B) on ink sales. I recently decided to replace my 15 year old laser printer and eliminate the need for my old Epson ink jet at the same time. I ended up buying a Xerox Phaser 8560. The speed is amazing and the quality is excellent. This line of printers uses "solid ink" technology which is similar to crayola crayons. You get about 10 times the print volume for the same ink cost vs. any ink jet.
Gets very little mention on slashdot. You'd think that HP and Lexmark made all the ink-jets there ever were. But let's review its features.
1) the ink-low meter is an optical sensor coupled with a small prism on the bottom of the ink tank. It shouldn't be able to tell the level of the tank until the tank is quite low. This seems like a disadvantage, but:
2) The ink tanks are clear plastic. All you have to do is lift the cover, and you can visually inspect them.
3) The inks are sold separately. All the colors. Not just some silly Black / Color
4) the inks are relatively inexpensive. They're not cheap, but they are much less than HP for the same amount of ink.
5) They've usually had both replaceable inks AND replaceable print heads. No need to choose between economy of cartridges vs. quality of printing.
But, possibly because of all the weird HP fanboi/bashing and not nearly enough Canon fanbois (or even bashing...),They have decided to go down that that road and has eliminated many of these advantages with the introduction of PIXMA. So thanks for not noticing them while they really were the kings of inkjet. Now my color printer is CVS.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
My next printer will probably be a Kodak.
Or maybe even a Laser. I could really do without the twenty minutes of "print test page", "clean", "print another test page", etc. I have to go through before I can start printing with my Inkjet.
I can get a basic color laser for under $250. That's about the same as an inkjet and a couple of sets of cartridges but it'll print thousands of pages with no hassle or waste.
Sure, lasers aren't as good at printing photos but there's a print shop about 100 yards from here and those little "photo printers" (which beat inkjets for quality) are getting very affordable now.
The "desktop inket" is becoming obsolete and I for one don't feel even the slightest bit sad over it.
No sig today...
So this study was originally intended to "focus on the ecological impact of inkjet printing." Instead of focusing on that there's a diversion into the fact we're not getting all the ink we should out of our cartridges. Even the environmentalists are focusing on that it seems (ex. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/06/printers_g uzzle.php) Now, I'm no treehugger myself but find it odd that at the end of the day no one is speaking on exactly what is the ecological impact, what should one do with spare cartridges, etc.
Now, I understand why Epson spin doctors would want to flaunt the finding that less ink is wasted (regardless of the fact it does not imply they're more efficient, cost-effective or anything else) but why is no one talking about the greener side of the matter?
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
I'm not sure why it happens. With HP printers, sometimes, the low ink light will stop blinking after you've printed a few pages. Then it comes back a few days later. Print more pages and it stops again.
Between my wife and myself we print a LOT. We're using the Pixma 5000, the model before they "chipped" the separate ink cartridges. Our first Pixma 5000 died of exhaustion so I shopped for NIB ones on Ebay and bought 2 of them. One is still sealed in the box in our storage room off the office.
After reading a lot of reviews, it seemed to me that the people who used third party ink had a lot of complaints so I've resisted using anything other than Canon ink. For those who are not familiar with these fine printers, they use separate ink cartridges for each color and have a separate larger black cartridge for printing monochrome documents. The other black cartridge matches the photo quality ink for the color cartridges. The print head is not part of the ink tank assemblies so it's separately replaceable, although I've not had to replace one. Consumer Reports did an analysis of inkjet printers a while back while this one was still in production and found it to be a lot more efficient on a cents per page basis.
Some other advantages of the Pixma printers, including the newer models, too, so far as I know, are that they are FAST, produce great quality photo prints and even do automatic duplexing and have multiple paper paths. Yup, I'm a fan. OH! And they are supported it recent Linux distros's, too. I use Ubuntu and it works just fine.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
$1000 is only a dozen or changes of cartridges.
And that's assuming you print on normal paper. If you print on special inkjet paper then it's a lot less ink.
The last full page photo I printed cost me about $20 on an Inkjet.
One of the colors was empty so I changed it. By the time I'd unclogged the head on the new color, some other cartridges had been sucked dry, including the black (why can't I clean a single color???)
By the time everything was working I'd changed three of the six cartridges and the brand new cartridges I'd put in were nowhere near full (the $25 black cartridge was about 1/4 empty...)
All this before I'd printed a single page...on a printer which was given an "economical" rating in group tests!
Inkjet printers are currently the biggest ripoff in the consumer IT industry.
No sig today...
> "Match Brand A's price and join in on the looting!"
The price should drift slowly downwards over time as both A and B try to slightly undercut each other.
I see this happening with the printer hardware but not the ink.
No sig today...
That's the first problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they aren't, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth of ink left. My Canon PIXMA ip5000 reports when ink is low, and when it is empty. (I'm not sure if all modern printers do) I buy a refill when it's low and swap the cartridge when it's empty. The ink cartridges I use are clear, and they're usually empty when I swap them.
For the curious, it appears that this post's parent is referring to the Kodak EASYSHARE 5100 All-in-One Printer.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
All this talk about loss leaders makes me wonder how much an ink-jet printer really costs to build. It's really just a couple of stepping motors, a simple controller and a little bit of memory. Maybe I'm a crazy old geek but those components are just bigger, slower and cheaper versions of the parts that go into a hard drive (minus the platters). If I can buy an 80gb hard drive for ~$30, with its tight tolerances and fast transfer rate, then why should I be paying three times more for a big hunk of plastic that moves a little box of ink back and forth ? I could probably build one around a microcontroller and some SRAM, so what's with the ridiculous price tag ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
My printers wont print if they think they are out of ink (Epson, Brother)
I have no choice
I usually run my cartridges until they start fading out. Then it's safe for a switch. Then again, I usually only print concert/plane tickets and papers for school.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_busi ness_model
Shorten the life of the product, increase the cost per use - but do it descretely so the customer doesn't realize they've got an increased cost per use.
Underhanded, but there's no cost to doing it, and there's plenty of motivation, so people will continue to do it.
LYING!!!!
Are you kidding me? The printer companies charge something like $80 for a printer, but $22 AN OUNCE for ink. And they have done all kinds of wrangling to try to prevent you from using market-rate ink. And you wonder if maybe they tampered with the ink sensor?
My ex-gf bought me a canon printer, and it would stop working, claiming "no ink" when the tank was still 1/3 full. Then thing would refuse to print anything until you did a little ink dance to appease it. And when it did finally print, it looked perfectly fine, and continued to have enough ink for dozens more pages until it finally ran out.
It's 2007, most people shouldn't even need printers. I only need a printer when some backwards-ass company is still living in 1985, and makes me print and mail them a form. I might as well carve it on a stone tablet.
I am personally shocked, SHOCKED I say, at this entirely unanticipated revelation...
(Hits snooze button again).
I found this phrase ironic: "if users take the printers' word for when to get a new cartridge." Epson's printers (most of them, anyway) don't offer the user a choice. Many will simply shut down and refuse to print at all. Some won't even print in black if that cartridge is full and a color cartridge is empty.
Doesn't suprise me at all. Just a couple months ago I switched to a laser printer, here's why:
I have a pretty nice Epson photo printer, it even prints directly onto CDs/DVDs. It gets very little use as far as the color ink goes, black is used more frequently. My black ink cartridge ran out, so I popped it out and gave it a good shake to confirm its emptiness. I replaced the cartridge, and got ready to print. It then refused to print black & white text, as it was reporting that all the color cartriges were empty. I fiddled with settings, set B&W-only mode and rebooted the printer to no avail. Next, I removed the color cartriges and gave them a good shake for 30 seconds each, and they clearly had ink inside. I put the cartriges back in, cleaned the print heads, and rebooted once more. Still no dice. I removed them and tried to print with only the black cartrige in place to no avail. This was increadably frustrating, this particular model requires 6 different color cartriges at 15-20 bucks a pop, and was refusing to print a black & white document because it was reporting full color cartriges as empty.
My girlfriend had just done a report on laser vs. inkjet printers for home use for her entry CIS class, and came to the conclusion that a laser printer is only marginally more expensive (and this was ignoring color ink cartriges) something like 1/10th of a cent per page difference in ink/toner expense. Armed with this, I went to the local Frys, and was able to pick up a $200 HP laser printer on sale for roughly $100 bucks, and it came with a half-full toner cartrige. The full set of inkjet cartriges would have been roughly the same amount.
The Inkjet now sits on my shelf awaiting whatever fate I decide to give it. If I were more easily influenced I might be tempted to give it an Office Space-style beat-down, however I'm sure there's someone out there who would be happy to pay the ink tax.
Inside in the bottom is a huge mound of cotton wool type material to soak up "waste ink." Eventually the printer will shutdown and complain that the waste ink collector is full, and you must send it in for service (which probably costs more than a new printer.)
Well, I decided to clean it myself, and then use the service tool to reset it. So I pulled it apart, and the inside of the printer must have had at least a couple of cartridges worth of ink sitting in the bottom.
According to TFA Epson commissioned the study, and surprise, Epson printers came out on top.
Also in TFA are links to another Epson press release slamming Kodak, which makes me think the whole FA is just an Epson Press Release.
I hope Kodak has a winner, as this is one printer user who is tired of replacing hideously expensive ink cartridges when they die prematurely, or fake their deaths for marketing purposes. By my reckoning, when a set of replacement inks cost almost as much as I paid for the damn printer, and lasts about 20 pages, there is a hosing going on.
I figure it might be time to try a machine where where it is cheaper to replace the ink cartridge when it dies, lies about remaining ink, or dries up.
http://visualizecommonsense.com/
... never complain about being out of ink. Paid 45$ for it. Gone through the equivalent of 30 ink 'changes', according to the number of times the chips have reset....
My personal networked Samsung laser printer has been telling me I need to change the toner cartridge for about the last 200 pages i have printed.. it started printing light on one side so I shook the cartridge and it's back to printing again.
I know it is (NOW) close to being out, but that flashing red light has been going for a few months now.
i simply print out anything i need here at work. we have really cool multi-function office printers. i once printed a 200 pg book two-sided in no time at all.
I work too hard for my illusions just to throw them all away.
Even as far back as 2000, Albertsons grocery stores had cheap inkjet printers (at several locations in San Antonio, TX), for as low as $65 setup in those display piles you pass as you enter and leave the store.
Seems like a steal, right?
Even Wal-Mart was hocking them in bulk outside their electronics department. Seemed like we couldn't get enough inkjet printers.
Now that you actually use an inkjet after a year, you realize how painful the cartridge price stings and how often you have to replace it. Many new printers (like the later EPSONSs and HPs) refuse to print ANYTHING until the printer stops reporting that the cartridge is low. Sometimes this is enforced in the print driver on Windows (so if you print on Linux you are able to get around it), but in many cases, that is on the printer's firmware so you can't easily get around it.
I learned my lesson. I bought an HP 3050 LaserJet (top-fed ADF scanner, fax built-in). There are two stores already here in Philadelphia (Center City/Downtown) which do NOTHING but toner cartridge recharge and recycling.
And I also love STAPLES pickup/dropoff toner service, as well as their green box toner cartridges.
For the love of having cheap color, which first attracted me to inkjet, I have since discovered that I print color so infrequently, it is easier to just take a USB stick to a Kinkos and get the color output done professionally when I need it done for non-business printouts.
I bought an HP Professional Series 2000 inkjet printer back in 98-99. It was one of the first out with separate ink supplies for each color. It also had separate print heads. It worked fine for a few years until I had problems with it. That is, print head failures. Admittedly I wasn't using it regularly - it might sit for months between print jobs. But the problems arose when an ink supply would run out presumably letting ink dry in the print heads. It finally got to where I'd order a print head with the ink cartridge. After a couple of those I junked it and picked up a new printer since the new print head + ink refill was costing just under $50. So if you're an infrequent printer or just have to use the last drop the models with separate printheads are not good choices.
That said, my newer HP Officejet 7310 all-in-one is very accurate with ink levels. When it finally warns you you're out of ink, you've got about 10 pages left plus or minus before the color it complained about starts going away. I still have to shell out the bucks for a tri-color cart when one color runs out, but most of my printing is pretty balanced and the other two colors are just about gone anyway when the third runs out. It still has a separate black cart, so at least that one gets separate service. Works for me.
I work IT for a national park. Thus, I am surrounded by a lot of crunchy granola types who are always going on and on about conservation and the environment and not wasting anything. Except when it comes to printing. Right now, there are 5 or 6 different departments, which share 20 laser printers of varying model from HP, and ALL of them are out of toner or running dangerously low. Due to the remoteness of our location, getting new supplies in is a painfully slow process. The reason they are all out of toner? They feel the need to print every goddamn screen or Excel file so they can read it or show it to someone else. Keep in mind, these people also have laptops and PDAs apart from the desktops and we have a locally shared folders and our own Exchange. Whether printers report their toner/ink levels accurately is a moot point, AFIAC. The real waste is among people who refuse to use email, screen reading aids, and portable devices to read and share their work. The one part of the 21st century I believe most people around me have caught onto is digital photography. We all use digital cameras and online photo storage sites. I rarely see a printed photograph anymore and am usually surprised when I do. Thus, in a picturesque part of the world, surrounded by gorgeous scenery and lush woodlands, about 1200 environmental hippies are tearing through tons of paper all so that Person A can show a paragraph to Person B, sitting 5 feet away at another desk.
It has been my exerience that most printers which do not have Vista support from MS can be faked around. Pick a similar printer that is supported and you may be good to go. What is the model # of your old printer?
Of course, YMMV
Has anyone seen the report? I would be more inclined to take it seriously if Epson or TUV made the report available.
With those LCD digital photoframes coming down in price, just about everyone online and more people owning devices that can display images and documents at a higher resolution, why do we need printers any more? At our company we have survived without printers for over a year now and just as we long ago dumped our fax which has been replaced by email, we do all our invoicing online using a PDF generator. What the recipients of our invoices do is up to them, but we have saved a fortune in money and trees! There is one exception, we use a sweet Canon CP-330 photo printer for marketing. But that printer is honest - you buy enough paper and ink rolls for 128 photos and you get 128 photos! Each print uses the exact same quantity of ink 'ribbon' to lay down the 4 colours on the paper. So folks, reduce your dead tree foot print and chuck your printer where it belongs, in the recycling bin!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Just zap the connectors on them with a special tool from ebay. Saved me a ton of money.
Are they lying? Of course they are, until they get caught, then it's a mistake.
Coward
With today's mass production of printers and their ubiquity (almost everyone has a printer at home) the "real price" of a printer might just be much, much less than you think. Why lower prices when everyone pays a premium regardless?
The only way my printer "reports" it is running low on ink is when the printouts get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer......when it gets barely legible, I go buy new ink.
This is exactly why I quit using inkject a few years ago.
I was so pissed off with the cost of ink and the failure rate of the printers.
One time I went to get new cartriges for the HP at Target.
They had HP printers on clearence for $15. Half the cost of the #$@#$ ink!!
Thats was it.. No more ink for me!
I got a kller deal on an Oki C5200n Color laser and put the inkjets on the curb with a litte sign that siad "Free???"
Whomever took it spent more than it was worth replacing the ink.
I've had the Oki for 2 years now.. I'm on the original "demo" toner and it's still doing fine.
Maybe I don't print enough.. I've gone through about 1500 pages of paper but then kids keep pillaging the peper tray. I don't have a good count of what I've used.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Go to Inkworks for your printer ink needs. No I don't work for them or own shares. Honestly. Listen. I went to them a few weeks back with a (refilled) cartridge, that I had bought from them (at considerably less than the retail price of a new one), and that was claiming to be empty. The guy put it on the scales and said it was half-full. Then he cleaned the contacts and put a new seal over the contacts so I could take it home safely. All for free.
I was so pathetically grateful to him, but I couldn't buy anything from him because he had fixed it such that he had nothing that I needed. So instead I'm telling everyone to shop there.
I have a Dell 1600n multifunction that annoyed me for 3 MONTHS of printing telling me that it was totally empty. It was ESPECIALLY annoying because it would beep when it had low toner.
After 3 months of hearing it warning beep as it warmed up, again as it started spitting out pages, and then another series of beeps as it finished. VERY annoying. After 3 months of "toner completely empty" warnings with absolutely ZERO print degredation, I finally changed the cartridge out of frustration.
At least my HPs only visually alerted you that it was almost out.
I have a Brother laser printer that lies about being out of toner. It starts out with displaying an annoying message on the printer that requires manual intervention, but, after a while the printer does not even give you this option and simply refuses to print. Not even shaking the toner cartridge gets the printer working.
I then worked out that the cartridge has a small window on each end that, when covered up with Blu Tack, gets the printer working without any of these annoyances. After I did this I managed to go through a rim-and-a-half of paper before the print started to fade (and no amount of shaking would improve the print) - at which time I (and not the printer) decided the cartridge needed to be replaced!
Note that Brother has a recycling service (here in New Zealand, anyway) that accepts "empty" Brother toner cartridges for free. I wonder what they would be doing with all that free toner that people keep bringing in...
-Andreas
and get a Postscript laser printer.
I _highly_ recommend the HP LaserJet models, those things are tanks! I used the black and white models (4si/mx) for years in high school and college, and finally picked up a Color LaserJet 4550N for home use. It's awesome. You can buy them used for about $600 and the toner cartridges (CMYK) are less than $100 each. They last a _long_ time and the ink doesn't fade like it does with crappy inkjet printers.
Just say NO to inkjet printers!
I knew the crowd would reply with a "Oh No! Evil printer companies!" I asked why this was to a guy who dealt with printing all day. His answer was that towards the end of a cartridge, the consistency can degrade to where it may not produce "perfect" results. Since companies by a lot of ink and demand top quality, the cartridges reports when the best time to replace them to retain perfect results.
I would wager that the manufacturers want some margin for error, as various factors aside from amount of printing could have effects on cartridge life. First, they may lose ink to evaporation through the nozzles, more to the "cleaning" that follows, and finally they aren't all quite the same to start with (something laser printers share). The level sensing technology has to be cheap since it gets tossed with the cartridge, so that limits its accuracy. Also they want to know you have enough ink to complete one worst-case page, so that you will not run out mid-page without warning.
That said, there is little doubt there are deliberate inefficiencies designed in, such as overly aggressive "cleaning" on every startup. There is also little doubt that as much is done to squelch competition as can be managed without running (too far) afoul of the law. Want to triple the lifetime of a cartridge? Get a rubber glove, a syringe, and a bottle of ink. It should work at least two refills on average (some won't but others will go three). With Mylar bag cartridges, it's getting them sealed up again without an air bubble that can be difficult. With tank-only cartridges, they usually can be tapped and filled easily but the seal at the printhead is a one-shot deal. A little plastic wrap and rubber cement takes care of this, or you can hack the printer so that you need not remove a cartridge to inject it with ink.
I've run a small office's all-in-one printer on three cartridges in rotation (later two in alternation when one got leaky) for 18 months, and used only half the refill kit ($20) in the process. The needle on the syringe lasted about three uses before it was as dull as your thumb, I had to use push-pins to open holes first, but I only used about 6 ounces of ink. As soon as one would run dry, or the printer would get seriously annoying about low ink, I would swap and later refill the one just removed. Done this way, it is no more disruptive than using throwaway cartridges. I never had to hold a print job to fill a cartridge, and could do the refill at my convenience (within reason). The caveat is that self-refills will dry out on the shelf faster than new ones, so this may only be worthwhile in a high-volume environment.
Also if you refill in an office, especially in an office building with shared bathrooms, you will get odd looks from people when they walk in on you holding a syringe while wearing oddly stained rubber gloves. That's always fun. It also pays to wear black on refill day.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I've never believed my printer when it reports that it's time to change ink cartridges. Invariably there's anywhere from 100-200 pages worth of text to be had out of a supposedly empty cartridge. I just keep printing until the cartridge has really emptied itself, figuring that wasting one or two sheets of paper is cheaper than the ink I'd otherwise waste if I believed the alerts. I've known this for years. and it has been the case with Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Canon printers.
The interest the printer companies have is just to bilk consumers for as much as possible by overcharging for cartridges, preventing users from refilling them with lower cost ink, and and misrepresenting how much ink is left so people will spend even more for more overpriced cartridges. It's a real racket. As a moment's thought should tell most people, the real money in the printer business isn't the printers but the ink. If you do a lot of printing--and teachers like myself do--you notice that within a year you will spend at least twice the cost and as much as three or four times the cost of the printer on ink, depending on whether you have a basic printer or a multifunction one.
When car's indicate "empty" on fuel gauges, they usually don't mean 0.0 gallons -- some have 2-3 Gl. reserves. The problem is people replace the cartridges when they say empty -- instead, you buy the replacement when it says empty, then replace it when the prints stop printing certain colors. But people don't want the hassle of waiting for a print to look "off" to replace them.
I have a Lexmark Optra M410 b/w postscript printer. Have had it for 7 years now, and it works fine. I've gone through 30000 pages or so, and apart from one repair (a transfer roller replacement I believe) it has worked without any trouble.
There is no software to install, there is nothing that tells me it's out of toner (except the fading pictures), and it still works beautifully.
Maybe old printers are better ?
When my printer pops up an empty window, that's when I buy but do not
install a new cartridge. That way I can use the "empty" one 'til its
dry then install the one I bought. Allows me to get "the last drop".
It always runs dry in the middle of a page but for the savings I gain
in ink costs I can afford to reprint the page.
What about my epson that has three half-full CMY cartidges, that it claims are empty...and because of that, it refuses to print with the currently full (brand new) black cartridge? I have to buy new colour ink just so I can print with the black. I think this is a bit of a scam.
Anyway, I suggest you go buy a cheap brother laser printer. I am still on the "sample" toner that it starts with. No ink cleaning cycles, no messed up pages. Perfect every time. It is only B/W, but pictures look great anyway. If I want color, i will pay the 20 cents to some online printer.
I did that with an HL2040. I will never buy another one. After about the first month, it got extremely noisy printing making clunking sounds. I was told this was normal. At it's default 600dpi setting may 'colors' are too light to read. I have to switch it to 1600dpi mode to be able to read such a page. It also horribly curls the pages as they are taken up from the input tray and fed through the imaging subsystem.
On the positive side, I did get about 15 months usage on the starter toner cartride. I replaced it with a generic one that seems to print as well as the one that came with the printer.
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.