Slashdot Mirror
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."
The best course of action for this sort of thing is prevention. Keep consumables prices in mind when buying hardware in the first place, get a decent laser printer if you can, and give 3rd party consumables a try.
If you do end up stuck with a printer, or printers, you might want to see if you are, or if you know, any electronics/robotics hobbyists. Even cheap and ghastly printers contain a reasonable supply of motors(some conventional DC, some steppers) and gears and optointerrupters and other fun little gizmos. The larger and more sophisticated printers can contain pretty impressive quantities of such.
Failing that, you probably just want to find a recycler.
The new printer you bought came with "demo" ink cartridges that are nearly empty, compared with full ones. You didn't get a bargain.
Personally, while I understand the business doctrine of "whatever the market will bear," I think it's time that Congress look into market collusion and racketeering. There's no way that a pigment can cost thousands of dollars per liter.
[
That's because you're buying cheap loss-leader printers. My $1,000 colour laser printer came with full-capacity toner cartridges. The best thing that could happen would be for people to break the cycle and refuse to buy these crappy printers and their expensive ink. But that'll never happen - people find low initial outlay very attractive.
Don't be dumb! Looks like you can get a pair of complete refill sets for $33 to me...
Yep. Laser printer for 99.9% of my printing needs, color is either online photo printing (whats the going rate these days, $0.09/3x5"?), or if you need it TODAY I go through wally world for about $0.24/3x5". I don't know anyone who prints enough color photos at home to justify the cost of owning a photo quality printer at home. Unless your home color printer is a dye impregnation printer, that hp-uberjet ink is going to fade in 5-10 years anyhow.
moox. for a new generation.
WTF. People still buying inkjets and bitching about it? Is lexmark STILL in business?
It's simple. Don't buy inkjets. Buy a laser that has decent sized laser cartridges. B/W if you print lots of text. Color tends to have small cartridges out of space considerations.
Besides the cost, with inkjets, you have clean the head constantly and if you don't use in a while (say you have a several week vacation or other trip), worry about the printer head drying out. Headaches and a fucking waste of time, imo.
And for photos, dye-subs. Even if they don't beat inkjets on dpi, my 300dpi dyesub beats any 1200x1200 in actual results. You JUST DON'T see the millions of dots with dyesub, it's all blended together, and because there is a clear coat, no smearing of the images, even if you lick your fingers and go across the picture right after it was printed. It looks as good or better than from professional print shop.
I don't even know why this argument is still going on after all these years. Inkjet was and always will be a half-assed home solution when the good solutions have matured and become considerably cheap. In the space of 5 years, I threw out just as many inkjets in the early 2000s with lots of printing problems aggravation. In the same space of time, I have had just 2 lasers and 1 dyesub, all still working (1 for b/w, other a color copier) and I probably printed out 10x the material with them because it was just easier.