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HP & Staples Collude On $8,000/Gallon Ink?
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "HP and Staples are facing an anti-trust lawsuit over replacement printer cartridges. According to the lawsuit, HP paid Staples $100 million to refuse to stock competing ink cartridges. HP could make that back in short order when you consider that printer ink can cost $8,000 per gallon and certain printers deceive users to waste as much as 64% of their ink."
Prices of various liquids per mL:
http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=2648
As Jeremy Clarkson noted in Top Gear: the fact that oil companies extract oil, refine it, distribute it all for a few cents a liter is actually amazing. Gasoline is extremely cheap!
Just ask Canon about the failure of their Wifi printers - you could not buy them at *any* retail store (or even Dell, which carried the rest of Canon's lineup) because the printer did not enable the retailer to sell the $30 USB cables.
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HP, Youa re bad, very very bad! Let Staples sell other company's ink for your printers... but on another note, I knew I missed my calling when I decided to become a programmer... Damn $8000 a gallon for ink... I wish I had about ohhh 10 gallons of ink. Its not so much to ask... blah...
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
I'm pretty sure that paying a retailer not to stock your competitors' products constitutes collusion and is a clear violation of antitrust laws. This is akin to Nike paying Wal*Mart $100 million not to stock Adidas shoes. The only thing that muddies the water a little bit is that 'compatible' inkjet cartridges violate the DMCA and probably several HP patents, and hence are illegal. Anyone know how this might affect the lawsuit?
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Not that I don't think that ink is severely overpriced but where did they come up with this number? Did they include the price of the cartridge that the ink comes in as well?
It is only a matter of time before someone offered inexpensive ink. It was obvious that HP was taking extreme measures to prevent someone from competing in that space.
This shows how important regulation of businesses we need to have. Too many people don't want to get involved in anything (government or otherwise). It is sad that the people who run these businesses feel they don't have to be accountable at all to anyone about how they run their business.
Can be refilled. Runs cartridges until they're dry. Built like a tank.
Wish they still made printers like that. I'd like something as robust but faster and higher resolution.
Why not just make the printer tell the truth about how much is left, put in half as much ink to each cartridge, and sell cartridges for the same amount you are now? They could be making so much more money that way than through shady business deals like this one.
Go to Cartridge World, or even Walgreens now. They will refill your ink very cheaply. You need to print a couple of pages to get the ink to come out, but after that, it is as good as new.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
When the cartridges shipped with your printer only have 10% the capacity of a new one off the shelf, to force you to buy a new one (with it's far higher profit margin), THAT is what people should be jumping up & down about.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
...is printers that refuse to print a document when the level of one color of ink is low even if the document being printed doesn't use that color at all. I have an Epson that I like pretty much. It has individual cartridges for each color of ink but if, say, the cyan cartridge is empty, I can't print even if the page is nothing but black text. There's no real reason for it, it's strictly a software (or firmware) limitation put in by the manufacturer.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Wow, I think I last used a personal printer around the same time I last used a floppy, 1998 maybe? :) I remember buying a cheapo ($10, couldn't pass it up) inkjet a couple of years ago just to have one and never once used the darn thing. Now I have used the one at work a couple of times to print airline boarding passes but that's about it.
I recently bought a digital camera that included a photo printer as part of the package. I was shocked to see that the included ink cartridge was listed as containing 2.5 ml of ink. That's about 1500 ink cartridges per gallon. I wish I had a racket like that.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Since I run a small print shop for churches, we go through a ton of ink and toner, to the tune of about $3000 per week. We buy ALL our ink and toner is very large amounts (toner by the kilogram, ink by the half gallon). Refills are cheap. And yet, I don't think that retailers deciding together to not stock competitive products is "bad" collusion -- it's just how their market needs to work to be profitable.
Anyone can go online and buy cheap refilled cartridges that tend to work. If they're buying locally, it might be that they don't trust the Internet (stupid reason), or that they waited too long to stock up on ink (probably true). I yell at my folks constantly for paying $40 for one cartridge when I can get them a replacement for $3, but usually its due to the dreaded "Out of ink" message. Convenience can often times mean MONEY.
The manufacturers screwed up, big time. They didn't listen to the market, and they decided to give away the printer and hope to make it up on the ink. That's not how most markets work, not even the razor market now. Every item has to have a profit, or someone will find a way to sell your high markup goods cheaper. Many more people now are learning that the $49 inkjet has $49 cartridges OEM, or $12 cartridges aftermarket. The days of the $49 loss-leader are over (although I think you can probably make a profitable inkjet that sells at $35, with reduced features and a generic print driver).
I honestly don't think collusion is a big deal. I know it supposedly hurts consumers, but in the long run, competition DOES begin due to what seems like obvious price fixing. I recall the early days of computer RAM when you honestly had few resources for brands. Now we have dozens. When a few companies collude on RAM pricing, the competition generally fixes it. It may take a few years, but it happens, and the worst thing to happen to those colluding is that they lose market share or go out of business when consumers discover that they've gouged people.
Legal action is unnecessary. Let the market work. More laws and regulations will make it HARDER for new companies to enter the market.
Good reason to use a laser printer. Even before this great revelation I thought laser printers were a better long term investment.
Iraq billions
The 130 page lawsuit was printed in a HP... 8 cartridges were wasted for this.
Whenever my office has been tempted to put non-HP ink in our business class printers they have had printing issues or leaked inside the printer, resulting in having to buy another cartridge and clean the printer. So HP cartridges end up being a lot cheaper than the cost of an off-brand cartridge + printer service call + replacement cartridge for the one that didn't work. Maybe at the consumer level refills and off brand can work, but not for high volume or accurate color printing.
If HP paying Staples $100 million to not carry competitors' products is collusion, shouldn't we consider the HD-DVD camp paying Paramount and Dreamworks $150 million to not release Blu-ray titles collusion?
Hewlett Packard recommends printing this story and comments for maximum readability/portability. Use full color for best results.
Haven't personally used an inkjet for about six years. Laser all the way. You can get colour networked laser for home use for about £300, with reasonable sized toners. I even have a Samsung that have a refillable combined toner/drum that's only on it's second actual toner/drum and has been refilled dozens and dozens of times from a £10 toner bottle. Perfect prints every time, used every single day.
The amount of time you need colour is pitiful, and for home use (business should not be using inkjet, no excuse) it's virtually all for photos - that's the only real time a laser can't cut it, when you want a small glossy. Then, taking your photos on a card down to the local supermarket works out much, much, much cheaper. My brother bought a load of second-hand HP Laserjet 4MV's on eBay - all ex-business, all done about 100,000 pages minimum, all still going strong five years later and toner is dirt cheap and easy to come by. This is a person who prints out 50 copies of 100-page brochures every week.
If HP paid Staples $100 million, they sure didn't get their money's worth. Staples sells a wide range of cartridge refills for non-HP printers. That includes cartridges that work with Dell printers, providing an alternative to ordering online via Dell - which is interesting since Staples is now selling Dell computers in their stores.
At least in Europe, we now have to work half as much as 30 years ago in order to buy one liter of oil.
But those damn tabloids keep on selling millions of copies just by telling gullible readers that "Oil has never been so expensive".
It might be a bit more expensive than a year ago, but it won't prevent me from thinking that we still see far too many lone guys driving SUVs downtown.
From http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/slaves.html
Why people continue to buy ink jets is beyond me. I paid only $350 for an HP Color Laserjet 2605dn a year ago, and my starter cartridges are still going strong. This printer has built-in duplexing, networking, web management, and is postscript so works flawlessly with any computer you'd like to use with it. Bonus: no worrying about ink cartriges drying up, or print heads clogging.
/. I'm not a subscriber, but I've had this account for several years, so according to the FAQ I should be able to tag articles.
Buy a laser printer. For pictures, have them developed at wal-mart for like $0.10 each.
BTW...HTH do I tag an article on
Does HP have a monopoly on ink cartridges? In Australia they certainly don't (when I think ink cartridge they're not a company I typically think of) and TFA merely says they're dominant.
So how long will it be before somebody manufactures an industrial-grade inkjet printer with durable metal parts, which takes bulk ink (by flexible hoses, from litre bottles which can be hot-swapped) and incorporates PostScript Level 3 in hardware so absolutely no driver issues?
There's definitely a market for such a machine. I've been using a HP Business Inkjet, which is certainly semi-industrial and although not PS, uses a common driver; but it still takes ink cartridges (double-sized black cartridge, though) and a new set adds up to a hefty amount. A bulk-fed, metal-built printer would easily outlast the number of cartridges you could have bought for the same price.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
About 6 or 7 years ago I worked for a small local PC repair outfit. I remember the owner used to take his truck to trade shows and distributors and buy dozens of inkjet printers at a time for $40. Then we'd take out the two $40 cartridges that came with them and put them on the shelf. The printers went into the dumpster.
People will find ways to save their money. They always do.
This is probably one of those areas where it's never been worth anyone's time to go back and change how the drivers work.
If you think of your print job going to an inkjet as a stream instead of as a collection of page objects it may make more sense - that's what they originally were and probably still are, which is why you can print high-resolution graphics without having any significant amount of RAM in the printer. Sure you can add the equivalent of full-page buffering in the driver, and some of them probably build the image of what's being printed in just that way (Windows GDI printing, anyone?) but what's the incentive for the manufacturer to do so?
Blocking if any ink tank is empty is much simpler than generating the print data, determining which colors are needed (hopefully while the print job is being generated) then going back and prompting only if necessary.
fencepost
just a little off
But then something happened at HP. A number of years later, I remember one of the top dogs in management declaring that they were taking the company in a new direction; that their old methods were being updated to reflect better business models. --This spin-doctored response came as when they were asked why their printers had begun to suck shit.
I today own an HP Laserjet 5L. It is a piece of crud. --It's output looks sharp, but it's a flimsy piece of junk which stopped working properly about a year after I'd bought it. It jams constantly and the toner cartridge seems to run out far more frequently. I'd tell HP to go to hell, but I think they may already be there.
-FL
I bought a Konica-Minolta 2400W color laser printer from my boss about a year ago. It sits on my desk and always prints when I tell it to. Yeah, some of the prints don't look that great because I need to replace the imaging drum (it was in an office and got put through hell), but even thought that "Error" light keeps flashing, all day and all night, it's more reliable than almost all of the other IT equipment in my home. Also, my boss wanted to get rid of it so badly that he included two full sets of color toner cartridges and about 4 or 5 B/W cartridges... The estimated life on them all together will outlast the replacement imaging drum, if I ever break down and buy it.
I got the thing for $80. I've spend more than 5 times that over the last 5 years on printers, ink, and god knows what else in the inkjet world.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
And will we care? No.
We'll buy the printer for £300 rather than £120 and buy ink cartridges for £3 rather than £40. At £3 for a refill, people will use the printers more and so you'll get better turnover and less waste. At £40 people start thinking about whether they need to print that picture, and so you'll get less ink sold.
The second article seems pretty stupid. It's about a study that makes two points:
Okay, the first point is reasonable, if obvious. But the second? Here's how the story is introduced (emphasis mine):
But, two paragraphs later, a clarification (again, emphasis mine):
Yes, I want my printer to warn me that it's low on ink before it runs dry. That way, I can check if I have a refill and if not, I have some time to go to the store and buy one. Are they really claiming that people throw away ink as soon as the printer reports it's running low?
From the summary, you might think that they actually ran printers until they stopped printing and then measured how much ink was left in the cartridge. But it seems they did no such thing. They simply measured how much warning the printers give you before running out of ink and then tried to confuse people by using "low on ink" and "out of ink" interchangeably.
Use a local lab. One that you trust to do good work. Sure, it costs 0.30/print, but it's much higher quality.
Best Slashdot Co
Tagging articles is something that I can only do from home, and when specifically allowing JavaScript for slashdot.org.
:-)
I am at work right now, and can't make any tags it due to our global JS settings. At home I usually block all JS, so I have to specifically remember to enable it. Honestly, though, all the funny tags are usually applied before I get around to the story.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
and stop printing all together. I have found years ago, that two 19 inch screens had the side effect of making me stop printing guides, books and tech notes.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I find it highly ironic that when I go to the article and try and print it I get a HP popup box of articles to print which does not list that article . . ..
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
Surely if you are going through $150000 of ink per year, you should not be using small volumes like this? Assuming the usual for a commercial shop - ink is about 6 to 10% of job cost - your turnover should be around the $2 million mark, which puts you firmly in the commercial world. Which means you should be buying standard CMYK ink at under $10/litre. I'm guessing you do a lot of short runs. Are you using a B3 press alongside a continuous laser for forms and an A0 proofer? And if not, why not?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Gas guage tells me I am low on gas before I actually run out of gas.
Damn that evil car - next thing you know we will find out that VW is in cahoots with the oil companies.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Here is a trick I discovered yesterday regarding my Epson Stylus C65. OK quality printer, but repeatedly refused to print, claiming that one of the cartridges were empty. Even more annoying, the darn thing refused to print B&W even when you ran low on e.g. RED. Stupid.
.. I am in Costa Rica, so do not tell me it is cheaper in Walgreens or whereever).
For a completely different reason I got an NSLU2 (cheap NAS storage box from Linksys), then put Linux on it, because I needed a low powered always on Asterisk. But hey, you can attach a USB hub to it (if you run Linux), and so I did, and started trying connecting devices.
I was also annoyed, that even though my windows machine was always on, from time to time my wife's printings failed from her MAC. Not really windows' problem, but naturally she always wants to print when I overload the machine, reboot it, or play a game that eats all the resources up.
So I started using the NSLU2 as a print server, after discovering, that there was a print server package for it (actually there is Samba, Cups and p910d ).
Yesterday my printer refused to print, and the ink button/light went on, (of course it occurs when I want to print something before leaving quickly). So I just went to Office depot and bought 1 of each cartridge ($60 for the 4, DAMN
Now when I came back I started checking which cartridge could be empty. Since I use a remote port, the ink monitoring software does not work. But also because of this, you can just ignore the lights, restart the printer, and keep printing.
Before, the epson software prohibited printing, now it cannot monitor the ink, so there is no restriction. Downside: no ink monitor, but remembering, that it is the tool that makes you throw out cartridges half full, I do not want it.
Also I only print B&W, so I really do not care if the Yellow is out.
Just my 2c.
Note: of course only tested this on the NSLU, but should be the same on any Linux, or maybe macs. Just try it with a print server first, maybe it is the same.
Now that was easy!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
However, if quality is not that important - and from your description, I fear it isn't - have you looked at Kyocera? The per page costs are very good and the drums last about 400000 impressions. Technically they lag about a generation behind everybody else, but they do work. We have Kyocera mono and color lasers for evaluation and they seem reliable enough. If this sounds like faint praise, I'm one of those people who values print quality and I rate HP/Canon, Xerox and Oki lasers high on those scores. But I have to show people the Kyocera output alongside the others before most people realise they are not quite as good. And the mono is fine for all normal purposes.
As you might guess, I work for a printing consultancy and I have to be careful what I say, but in general our advice is always consolidate, consolidate.
Oh, and best wishes with your project.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
When this thing comes out it will be a whole other ball game.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I worked on an HP account for almost 6 months (too long heh). HP, as a company, were great, they'll go to amazing lengths for the customer. However, because of that experience, I have not (since then) and will not support or recommend any liquid ink printer, no matter who the manufacturer is. Mark-up like you would NOT believe on those cartridges. It was explained to me something like this: If you have a barrel of oh, let's say INK, and you ship it across the border, that barrel of ink has a tariff applied to it. If you ship it back again, there's another tariff. Ship it across again, yet another tariff (aka markup on top of markup). Now, if that barrel of ink cost only pennies to begin with...and winds up costing hundreds...uh...hello...we're getting FLEECED here... The only time I'd ever recommend an inkjet is when the person or company is in a remote area, and absolutely requires the convenience. colour lasers are becoming affordable if colour is required. Heck even solid-ink printers are coming down now, and produce fantastic photos, AND the ink doesn't dry up or expire (HP had cartridges that could read the time and date from the connected computer, and would expire after 6 months I believe, regardless how much ink was remaining...not sure if they're still on the market). For Grandma, get her to take those digital pics to London Drugs or Costco, pretty well any place that develops film will take your CD of JPG's and print them on photo quality paper, with much higher quality materials than most consumer stuff, and for WAY cheaper than you can do it at home. It's just better economics. It's often cheaper to buy a new printer, with warranty and ink, than it is to replace every cartridge in that same printer. After going through 5 printers this way - I've given up. I will simply NOT support that economy anymore. Pissing money away just isn't my thing. But hey, I'm an oddball. With eyes wide open.
laser printers are far more cost effective than any inkjet. Even color lasers are coming down in price. Unless you do a lot of printing the cartridges will last a while.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Here's the one I own (in my print business):
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=180&modelid=15835
There also are smaller commercial-grade inkjets than this one, usually for up to "A3" (DIN) sizes (roughly 2xletter) with color management tools, mostly for media design businesses that want to print a color proof using color profiles of their offset print publishers to get a simulation of the final output before giving it to them for printing. Or, for anyone who wants to print very good photos up to A3 size and is unwilling to wait for a service provider or to rely on their color management - because often photo printers who serve the mass market have no or no good color management, knowing their customers don't have it or even know what this is anyway.
Printer ink is an engineered fluid, and such requires a lot of time to perfect its qualities so your Mom and Dad can have great pictures.
Every generation of printer, another new formulation of ink is required. The ink drop sizes keep getting smaller to perfect the image quality.
So new techniques of manufacture reflect the prices of inks. If printer design would stall so would the prices of its supplies.
Hi. I need a job and I can bullshit with the best of them. Can you get you boss to hire me to work with you in HP's pr department?
Bad news for HP and Staples. I mean seriously, the law has been around for 117 years!
15 U.S.C.A.
Title 15. Commerce and Trade
Section 1
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Section 2
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
WARNING: That Tinyurl link goes to a url that was being warned about yesterday. Luckily, I had the Tinyurl Preview feature turned on. You should too.
I've tried it. Never again.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I'm not surprised that you, and apparently hundreds of other people all over the Web, have had bad experiences with HP the past few years. I sympathize. I should know, I worked with HP in tech support at one of their "international contact centers" for 2 months and couldn't wait to get the hell out. I've worked in my fair share of places over the years in various different countries and can honestly say that HP was the singular worst experience of my life, and the only reason why I stayed for 2 months was because of the 30 day notice period on my contract and that if I've worked at a place for less than 3 months, I have no legal obligation to cite it on my professional resume.
Ever wondered why the support engineer at the other end of the line sounded disinterested, totally unfamiliar with his job and working off a script? That's probably because he is. He's been exploited and he knows it and really would be somewhere else. Of the team I was working with in HP, 40% were actively looking for jobs elsewhere. Those who weren't were probably foreign workers on contract from some other country so they had no such opportunity - upon contract termination, they had to go back home (almost invariably to a country with lower wages and employment prospects). Of course they were paid lower wages than locals (this country does not have the stringent labour and anti-discrimination laws as many developed nations) even though they were officially told they were being paid "fair rates in accordance to local cost of living". Yeah, like we wouldn't talk amongst ourselves in the canteen.
Oh, and do you feel screwed as a home user? Business users were probably being shafted harder. Remuneration for support contracts is, of course, governed by SLA and is nominally performance based. Fail to respond to x percent of tickets in time y and HP would get penalized for non-compliance. As support engineers, we were surprised to find that even though some of our team was not very good at solving these issues, HP was nevertheless meeting and exceeding their targets. It didn't take long to find out why. There are automated alarms that raise tickets when certain things happen, such as CPU/memory/disk utilization exceeding a certain percentage. The thresholds were set very low, resulting in alarms being generated when something unusual happened. How unusual? Something like a daily report process being run. Something like more than 3 business users logging into a production server. Of course, we pointed this out to middle management but were told, in no uncertain ways, that this was "the way things worked and to leave the alarms alone".
Yeah, there were many other incidents in HP that left me traumatized for weeks afterwards. Many are too personal and probably not of interest to a general audience but, suffice to say, it's really really disappointing to see a once great company fall to such lows. This latest case falls neatly into a pattern of behaviour that HP is becoming known for of late.
I bought an HP LaserJet 4M Plus at Discount Electronics in Austin a few years ago, when my wife's college printer finally broke a critical plastic piece.
It was more than 10 years old when I bought it, and came with an installed JetDirect card and whatever toner was in the cartridge. It turns out the cartridge was full, because it's still going strong today. All that for $99.
HP's problem is that they can't compete with their own products. The things they made 15 years ago still work and are still of better quality than the crap they produce today.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Having worked on computers longer then many of the people here (1982 - yes there are some who been doing it longer, but not the vast majority), I understand why printer cables do not come with the printer. Mainly, it is the customer's fault. Back in the 1980's, a lot of printers came with their ribbon cable. However, many customers would complain because they already had one, it was too short, it was to long, it didn't work with THEIR computer.... blah blah blah. I remember my father ripping a sales associate for this.
In addition, the markup on those things are insane.
In God we trust, all others require data.
...You _could_ be damaging your printer by doing this.
:P
:/
Full disclosure : I work for Staples (albeit an overseas division, not the USA/Corperate). Hence the reason I'm not logged in - I don't want this causing me problems at work. That said, I'm probably not high enough level for that anyway.
Inkjet printers (mostly) stop working when a cartridge is empty or near empty to stop air getting into the lines and heads. If air gets into them, remnants can dry up inside, effectively blocking the machine on that colour stream. The problem is more likely to occur on newer machines - the reason bieng that the higher resolutions available today require narrower heads that are easier to block.
The problem from the manufacturers point of view is that a customer won't care _why_ their printer has 'broken', they'll just care that it has. Result? Manufacturers rely on technological measures to try and prevent the end-user from damaging the machine in the first place.
This is also the reason that a machine will run a cleaning cycle every two or three days of it's own accord. People complain that it wastes ink - but it's the machine trying to protect itself.
Best advice I can give you if you're looking at printers is to consider your needs. Unless you're printing photos, or onto specialist papers regularly enough to an warrant an inkjet, a laser is almost always a better alternative in the long term. A laser based machine cannot print to textured paper (it will scar the imaging drums and leave marks/lines in subsequent prints), and you need to be careful when buying photo paper - inkjet papers normally aren't heat treated, and will collapse when they go through a laser printers fuser.
That said, laser printers are cheaper to run, lower maintenance (paper dust doesn't screw them up as badly), quieter, faster, and dont give bleedthrough on the cheap papers (ie, better prints).
If you have to stick with an inkjet, don't buy cheap because the cheap ones are always subsidised on the inks. Certain manufacturers don't chip the cartridges (allowing you to use refills without having to modify the firmware or software environment), and Brother go so far as to tell you how to refill their cartridges in the manual.
Integrated heads (Epson, Brother, Canon, and some newer HP printers) won't require recalibration when you change cartridges, and are less likely to give banding artifacts, but normally require a techician to replace if they go bad or reach the end of their service life.
Replaceable heads (Most Hp printers, Lexmark, and Canon (they have integrated heads that can be user-replaced when they wear out)) require calibration on change, and are generally less suited to high-quality photo prints and the likes, but if you're printing to very rough papers, or in high dust environments, or very infrequently, will be a lot less hassle than the integrated solutions.
Basically, use your head and you'll be fine.
Wow that was long.
> The only thing that muddies the water a little bit is that 'compatible' inkjet cartridges violate the DMCA and probably several HP patents, and hence are illegal.
I don't know about patents, but Lexmark already tried the DMCA claim and lost. While it's possible that they could try that angle, I don't think that it'll work. IANAL, just an annoyed consumer who was glad to see a judge slap them down for abusing the DMCA.
this instance of Collusion is slowly ending...
...but in the meantime, they've made their money. In essence, the Lone Ranger rides in after the girl has already been run over by the train, and then chases down Snidely Whiplash (I'm blending kids' TV, so sue me) and tells him not to do that again or it might cost him. Markets work best where there is transparency, and this type of collusion is a blatant deception to the customer. As the parties involved have no incentive for competition, these types of deals will continue. Why argue over bread crumbs when we all can have a loaf?
Collusion is a VERY big deal, though maybe you don't think it affects you (though it does). Collusion is what allowed Enron to happen. If you allow it to go unpunished, it spreads. Why are CDs still so expensive after 20+ years? The media costs next to nothing, there's minimal problems with breakage, and shrinkage protection is substantially better due to inexpensive technology. Either we have collusion, or an example of the market taking an exceptionally long time to fix the problem. (Has it?)
Maybe it's not your life that's affected; you may have a decent paying job, but it does affect those at the bottom. In this case, it's printer ink, which is a small enough expense for most people. Imagine, however, if it was like this for everything. Imagine all the grocery stores in town decided to set minimum prices, and then used their influence on the zoning board to prevent other grocers from opening. Eventually the monopoly would probably be broken, but in the meantime, you've paid the price, and you will never get that money back from the market.
If you lose 15% of your retirement because one of the companies in your portfolio colluded with an auditor to pump up their stock by hiding losses and then got caught, the market will not give you a do-over. Many free market believers will mock your judgement, saying that you should have known; the purpose of collusion, however, is to keep you from knowing, and there is a reason that these types of business relationships are not publicized by the corporations involved. The market rewards profit, and bad behavior, if concealed well enough, is profitable.
Before this gets tagged "pinko commie bastard" I am simply saying that it is important to have regulated markets that operate in a transparent function because the market rewards what is profitable, not what is right. Sometimes, they work together, but sometimes they don't. Regulations lets investors have some security in knowing that they are not being fleeced; confidence is a pretty important thing to markets. We have rules for how large corporations can operate, and with very good reason, because there are certain things that the market does not sort out quickly enough for justice, and history is full of examples of these "minor road bumps in the market". If you're lucky they don't affect you, but there's plenty of people who they do affect.
Come on...you aren't really paying 8k for a gallon of ink, you are paying for the cartridges with the electronics and nozzles every couple of ounces. Then, either you throw away the cartridge (like most Americans) or put in in a recycle bin so a company can pocket the savings of not having to manufacture another one. Price-fixing aside, can we not include bogus dollar amount hyperbole? "Such-and-such costs America over $5 million a year!" just means that someone else earned over $5 million a year. A better headline would be "Staples getting sued for price-fixing".
THL phish sticks
It was only a problem for crappy manufacturers like HP who include the ink with the cartridge. Guys like Canon, who not only had separate inks, but separately removable heads and periodically cleaned the heads automatically if you didn't print anything, as long as you left them plugged in and had a superior paper path that avoided bending never got any press. Apparently, they didn't sell enough of their far superior printers, so they switched to PIXMA to get in on the same scam as HP.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Slaves are free? That's a common misconception.
First of all, there's the purchase price. Depending on local availability, that could be anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars. For the sake of argument let's say the United States. So, let's just guess $500 for the purchase. This of course may or may not include training, the costs of which I will ignore.
Of course, they need to be fed. They will be working hard, so they'll need about 3000 Calories a day. On a diet of beans, lard, and potatoes -- or better yet, vitamin-enriched Slave Chow -- that could be accomplished for about $5/day, or $1825 a year.
Next, there's slave insurance. You may not think you need it, but if they run away, die unexpectedly, damage someone else's property, etc., do you really want to be stuck with the costs? Insurance rates can vary wildly, but with a reasonably high deductible and a good history, you might get away with $1500/year. Medical and dental care may not seem like a high priority if your slaves are young and healthy, but in the long term it is a good investment to spend at least $500 a year on it.
Next, clothing. You could just let them run around naked, but what would the neighbours think? Better to clothe your slaves in smart uniforms. Two uniforms a year, plus sundries, will cost at least $500.
Next, if you really want to use human power for transportation, a rickshaw is preferable to an SUV. A comfortable bicycle rickshaw costs about $4000, plus occasional maintenance, and will last about 5 years.
In the long term, once your slaves outlive their usefulness, you have the option of freeing them or maintaining them. However, freeing a slave to die on the streets is generally frowned upon, especially if they die begging at your door. It is best to set aside some money for their retirement. Saving about $400/year for 40 years at a modest 5% interest rate will allow you to feed and clothe your ex slaves for over 20 years. They will probably die before that, so you can spend the remainder as you like. (Probably best to maintain them in your own house. Even an older slave can do some light chores.)
Essentially, that's a minimum lifetime cost of $221,500 for a single slave over 40 years, not including inflation, incidental costs, or anything like that. Compare that to buying four $30000 cars that last 10 years each, plus operating costs of $1500/year for gas and $1500/year for insurance plus $1000/year for maintenance... for a total of $280,000. A single slave may be a modest savings and can do many useful things besides transport you, but two slaves would be significantly more expensive.
This is how retail works in the U.S. When the market for a new gadget gets big enough and HP has a couple products in the market to test and get feedback on, they then buy all of the retailer's space devoted to the weakest competitors. From there it is only a matter of time before other weak competitors cannot afford to stay in the retailer.
Case in point: HP digital cameras and LCD panels. Both categories have POS HP products compared to many competitors and yet they dominate the category. The magic bullet is buying out the retailer.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
HP cartridge headaches have been haunting me, my coworkers, and family for years. I hope HP is sued up the wazoo. I am sick and tired of their cartridge gimmicks and tricks. I've come really close to "Office-Spacing" their printers and cartridges.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Table-ized A.I.
Since I run a small print shop for churches, we go through a ton of ink and toner, to the tune of about $3000 per week. We buy ALL our ink and toner is very large amounts (toner by the kilogram, ink by the half gallon). Refills are cheap. And yet, I don't think that retailers deciding together to not stock competitive products is "bad" collusion -- it's just how their market needs to work to be profitable.
First, your experience tells us nothing why you believe this. Great, you buy $3000 of ink a week, but from this it doesn't seem like you've though that maybe the ink could be cheaper, or if there's a better way. By the way, innovation is the best way for companies to compete, not collusion. Secondly, collusion is bad for the consumer, and it's illegal. Gas is about $3 a gallon where I am. What if ExxonMobil and Ford conspired so that you could only use Ford gas in your Ford car? Now what if every other car maker did the same thing because it increased their profits? Who loses out? The little guy. People pay $3000 a week for ink, the retailers each get $100 million, and then HP rakes in billions on ink alone. Shouldn't I be able to chose my gas or my ink?
Anyone can go online and buy cheap refilled cartridges that tend to work. If they're buying locally, it might be that they don't trust the Internet (stupid reason), or that they waited too long to stock up on ink (probably true). I yell at my folks constantly for paying $40 for one cartridge when I can get them a replacement for $3, but usually its due to the dreaded "Out of ink" message. Convenience can often times mean MONEY.
There's convenience and then there is gouging. I may need ink NOW, but asking someone to pay $30 face to face when I can buy one for $3 online is gouging. Also, there's marketing, and refilled cartridges are designed to be hard to refill and not give as good quality. HP makes sure of that. Their marketing works to make it sound like refilled cartridges are a bad investment and encourage only using theirs, and if your printer breaks while using a refilled cartridge, they'll blame the cartridge without even bothering to troubleshoot.
The manufacturers screwed up, big time. They didn't listen to the market, and they decided to give away the printer and hope to make it up on the ink. That's not how most markets work, not even the razor market now. Every item has to have a profit, or someone will find a way to sell your high markup goods cheaper. Many more people now are learning that the $49 inkjet has $49 cartridges OEM, or $12 cartridges aftermarket. The days of the $49 loss-leader are over (although I think you can probably make a profitable inkjet that sells at $35, with reduced features and a generic print driver).
Are you nuts??? That's exactly how the razor market works. Sell the razor cheap, sell the blades expensive. Sell the printer cheap, sell the ink expensive. Duh! HP knows exactly what they are doing, they only screwed up by getting caught being greedy and trying to prevent competitors, which is illegal. Yes many people are learning that aftermarket cartridges are cheaper, which is why HP is trying illegal tactics in order to kill the competition. How the hell did you get modded up?
I honestly don't think collusion is a big deal. I know it supposedly hurts consumers, but in the long run, competition DOES begin due to what seems like obvious price fixing. I recall the early days of computer RAM when you honestly had few resources for brands. Now we have dozens. When a few companies collude on RAM pricing, the competition generally fixes it. It may take a few years, but it happens, and the worst thing to happen to those colluding is that they lose market share or go out of business when consumers discover that they've gouged people.
You are either very inexperience in anti-trust history or a corporate schill. Antitrust boils down to two things, how to lower or eliminate barriers to entering a market that are placed there by co
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100 million year production process, we can corner this market once again.
There's a reason that they give them away for free all the time. The money is in the ink. I'm sure oil companies would give cars away too if gas cost $8,000 a gallon. The cars would probably get 10 MPG and report the tank was running out when it was 1/2 full, causing you to replace the whole tank. "I don't wanna run out of gas on the way to work, I'd better change my tank now." They would create components so you could only use gas tanks created by them and not refill them yourselves.
If you need color prints (photos) take your camera's memory card to K-Mart and print what you need there. For black and white (or grayscale) Get a second hand laser printer. I recently purchased a lexmark T550 for $85 (AU). The toner cartridge has a capacity of 20,000 pages and was about 80% full (according to the diagnostic page). When it eventually runs out of toner, I can either refill it, or purchase a replacement.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
I don't think that business arrangements where you pay or give discounts to people who won't do business with your competitors should ever be legal. I understand very well why businesses want to do that, I just don't think it should be allowed.
Just wondering? I think it wouldn't be very hard to shake up things for companies that aren't playing too nice with their customers right now. An open source solution might be the wake up call.
Perhaps take something such as the Fab @ Home project and rework the machine to simply put ink on paper. It seems half the problems related to printing would be worked out already looking at the existing project.
There are few cheaper alternatives to inkjet for printing high end photos and artwork.
Consumer grade laser printers do not cut it.
When my Epson PhotoStylus 1200 tells me I'm out of ink, I fake it out be reloading the same cartridge.
I usually get a few more prints out before it totally runs out.
I have had no, zero, nada success with using aftermarket cartridges or ink refills in the Epson.
I've tried Amazon and Tonerland.
In all cases, the printheads clog.
The Epson has been fiendishly engineered to reject all outsiders.
The fact is that it's not what you are marketing, but *how* you market it. This is a spin on an old tried and true method. I don't envision it going away soon either. It used to be that laser printers were cheaper to operate than ink jets. Now these playing fields appear to be leveling off. Damned cartridges for my older HP are costing more than those for newer printers.
I'd like to hope this would change but unless the retail/distribution channels are changed somehow, it's only going to get stranger.
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There may be a legitimate (well, sort of) reason for that. If Epson's technology is anything like HP's, you need Cyan to print Black. After a long conversation with HP tech support about why my printer was printing crappy black text even after I replaced the black cartridge, they told me to replace the color cartridge as well. That worked, and I asked for an explanation. They told me that they actually print a layer of cyan underneath the black to act as a sort of "primer" that helps the black ink stick to the paper. That's when I decided that when this HP printer dies, I will never buy another printer that bundles the colors in a single cartridge. You can nuke your color cartridge just by printing black text.
They're all crooks. Ink does not cost that much, and the devices do tend to allow brand new ink cartridges to run out even if left in printer unused.
This is what I did: 1. Researched which was the best printer to buy for reliability and versatility - Canon won every time (I have NO connection with the company) 2. Research which had best value longest lasting cartridges - Canon (according to comments on Amazon.co.uk/com buyer reviews) 3. Purchase my USB cable online for £5 as opposed to £15 in retail store 4. Later, when we have to share the printer, I plan to purchase a WiFi card for the printer. (I opted for a Canon MP600, which has proven excellent.) The printer industry, Canon excepted, is doing more to harm the environment than any other. (My opinion.) It is a waste of resources to need to treck down to your local PC store because the Magenta cartridge is empty so you can print that vital document/page/photo. And pay for the nose for it. Buy a middle to top of the range Canon, or a mid range Laser Printer. Or even better, try what we did for a year, discard your printer and post everything to a Blog or Wiki. (We purchased a printer again for some short run letter writing and legal documents.) When a manufacturer does something right, it is terrible that retailers drop their product. Canon are excellent and if the retailers want to profit from their products, they should price them competitively and sell more of them - just as Jessops (UK) are doing, with the MP600 £10 less expensive than online! (HP are terribly unethical with regard to their printers.) Not done much research into Epson or Lexmark.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Another sh*tty thing about HP inkjet printers is this: If you run out of black, the printer will use the color ink cartridge to make black. We all know how expensive HP's color ink is compared to their black ink, so this is another way HP "steal" from the consumer.
Ooh, ooh, pick me!
Takes practice I'll admit, but if you do a lot of cabling (I have/do) it's completely worth it to get the spool and roll your own, so to speak. With a little practice (ok, a lot) it takes about a minute or maybe two to crimp one end of a Cat5e cable with quality as good as most commercially sold cable. Cost is about $0.08/foot + maybe $0.25 per connector, without even shopping around much. Plus it saves me a 30-45 minute trip to the local mega-mart to get the cable where I'll have the "privilege" of spending 20X as much for the same product. Plus my cables are cut exactly to the size I need, reducing waste and rat's nests. (I hate messy cabling - personal pet peeve) Same with phone cables. Basically break-even on rolling your own is about 15 cables. Once you own/need more than that, it's worth it to just make 'em yourself.
So I got a Samsung Laser at www.jr.com for less $100. It's still on the first toner cart and can sit for months and still print perfectly when I need to.
For color, I got to Samsclub.com
Anyway, thanks for your reply. You've given me some really useful information, which to a consultant is like gold dust. And, on a completely irrelevant note, nice to hear from another member of the up to date Christianity club. It's rare for a Slashdot post to make me happy, but yours has.
You might just be interested to learn, if you didn't already know, that the author of the Alice books (Rev. Charles Dodgson alias Lewis Carroll) wrote somewhere that he believed, in effect, that God's justice meant that there was a Hell, but God's mercy meant that it was, in fact, empty.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I tend to stick my printers on a USB print server, all systems using it as TCP and one using it as remote USB to manage it occasionally (presently using a Hp Officejet Pro K550).
I liked the Canon 4500 (I think it's called Pixma or something) because it can also print CDs, but when I checked Linux compatibility it was poor. So I decided not to buy it.
HP support for Linux is very good, and until Canon gets a clue in the direction I'm afraid HP wins the deal - I use mostly Linux, a bit of Windows and I plan to buy a Macbook next year as well. There is no way I'll buy a printer that isn't properly supported under Linux..
Insert
That's fine for many home users, but not all. I know that Wal*Mart and many other companies will in some cases refuse to develop a picture if it "looks too professional." It's to prevent the unauthorized duplication of a professional photo, but it's a real hassle to get around if it's just a really good picture, or you happen to own the copyright.
Further to that, there are some pictures you don't want to develop in a commercial environment. Private pictures of you and your buds doing something fun and dumb, nude pictures of yourself or girlfriend, and many others, photos around the holidays (development takes a lot longer), special projects (calendars etc), or perhaps you just live somewhere that Wal*Mart or another photo-developer isn't conveniently accessible..
No, these aren't all that common, but they're not terribly uncommon either, and the fact is that you shouldn't have to be screwed by the printer companies for ink because you've decided you print things yourself as opposed to having it done at at a store.
In synthesis the big box retailers are stupid (no wonder they are under so much pressure).
The internet has arrived (honest) and soon there will be nobody left that does not check for alternatives in the net first.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.