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What Do You Do When Printers Cost Less Than Ink?
An anonymous reader writes "A family member recently asked me to pick up more ink for her Epson Photo RX 595. Unfortunately, replacing the black and color ink cartridges costs $81.92 + tax at the local store! That's so bad that I got a replacement printer that's just as good, and spare ink, for less. But now I have a useless piece of e-waste that I can't even give away. What can you do with a printer like that? I hate to just throw it away."
Make sure the new printer comes with FULL carts, not the half-or-less carts they often box with the printer.
The ink cartrides that come with the printeres are never 100% full, they are only about 25% full. It's just starter ink, to get you to buy more in.
likewise. I work for a charity which accepts computers, and people keep dumping printers on us. Those of us who work on this stuff are computer people - we do computers, not electro-mechanical devices. We also have a great deal of difficulty testing if any donated printer actually works, since we're loath to put our precious donated cartridges into the printer just to see if it works, IF we can find drivers for them (we have no direct internet access, and most of the machines are win98SE), and can do nothing about it if they don't. Sadly, the people who get asked 'do we want...?' tend to just say 'yes' to offers of printers, and so we waste more and more shelf space with useless printers which we don't want, can't use, and can't send to eastern Europe (which is where we send things) because no-one wants them, and because they certainly can't afford ink for them.
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The printer manufacturer won't end up spending a penny, and you'll have caused the post office a bit of a hassle, which ultimately means mail for everyone gets a bit more expensive.
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How do you keep your ink cartridge from drying out in that amount of time? When we still had a ink jet printer, it seemed like we had to replace the cartridges every couple of months since they would dry out or clog up.
You just clean the cartridge. I normally send people to http://www.printerhacks.com/how-to-really-clean-an-inkjet-printer-in-5-simple-steps/ for the procedure. It works well.