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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.
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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!
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.
Get a Color Laser then.
Inkjets are so 1993
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.
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...
I've been a long time fan of Canon photo printers, in fact I just bought a Pixma Pro9000. Their ink tanks are clear so if you doubt what the printer is saying you can eyeball it for yourself. So far it's been very accurate about remaining ink level.
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!
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
- 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...I've been a long time fan of Canon photo printers, in fact I just bought a Pixma Pro9000. Their ink tanks are clear so if you doubt what the printer is saying you can eyeball it for yourself. So far it's been very accurate about remaining ink level.
It's hard to say the true accuracy of the Canon tanks, though they do seem to be reasonably accurate. They have a chip based ink couter, but he main meter seems to be the prism, when the reservoir is empty you get a low ink warning. Less experenced people might replace the cartridge, but this indicates there is 20% left in the sponge. From there you can continue printing until the printer says "ink is out", and if you are willing to disable the meter and click the "I accept the risk".
Canons are somewhat wasteful on their cleaning cycles. Users I know tend to say a given cartridge lasts 9 to 12 months before becoming empty. Epson in my experence is worse in terms of raw volume.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
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