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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.
Laser is significantly better at the moment. Cost per page is about 10% that of inkjet, and it's a lot faster. Photo's aren't so hot, but are about the same as an inkjet in photo draft mode - big reason is that the DPI is lower (1200 on my color laser) and it only has 4 colors instead of 6 or 8. This is why I use my little Kodak 4x6" photo printer for photos (which is thermal transfer) and an internet print shop for larger quantities / enlargements of photos.
I'll never ever buy an inkjet ever again. With my laser, I never have banding, never have "cleaning cycles," etc. It just works.
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
That is why they are moving the monitoring from computer into the cartridge itself. Once the "intelligent" cartridge determines that it is time to make you pay another tribute/ransom to the mother ship, it will simply lock you out. No more tricks like using Ubuntu to evade what, the printer makers believe, is their rightful claim to your wallet.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And over five years you will MAKE a lot of ink refills on an inkjet. If you print a lot you will use the carts up (or as much of them as they allow you to use up, anyway.) If you don't print a lot, then you either blow out your ink cleaning the heads, or your heads crust up and you have to replace the print head, which may be integrated into the cartridge, or which may only come with ink carts (true or at least formerly true of some HP inkjets.)
IMO it just doesn't make sense to do inkjet prints in any situation. If you're not doing enough to justify buying a color laser, send them out for printing. If you have broadband you can upload them to a website, make a CC payment, and they will mail you prints. If you don't, you can take them to a multitude of places including Kmart, Walmart, Kinkos, etc. (as you say) and not have to worry about maintaining a printer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"