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Epson Is Trying To Kill the Printer Ink Cartridge
An anonymous reader writes: Inkjet printer cartridges have been the bane of many small businesses and home offices for decades. It's interesting, then, that Epson is trying something new: next month, they're launching a new line of printers that come with small tanks of ink, instead of cartridges. The tanks will be refilled using bottles of ink. They're reversing the economics, here: the printer itself will be more expensive, but the refills will be much cheaper. Early reports claim you'll be spending a tenth as much on ink as you were before, but we'll see how that shakes out. The Bloomberg article makes a good point: it's never been easier to not print things. The printer industry needs to innovate if it wants us to keep churning out printed documents, and this may be the first big step.
I ditched inkjet printers because the ink dries out before the next time I want to print something. Toner cartridges don't seem to have that problem.
Can Epson overcome that problem?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The printer itself will be more expensive... and the refills will be expensive too, but since you've already bought the expensive printer, you're locked in.
Canon already offers some lines that have separate tanks for each color.
Early inkjet printers basically did this. The ink bottle was replaceable, but what ended up happening is that the nozzles got easily clogged, so a number of printer makers went with replaceable ink reservoir/nozzle assemblies. Similar with laser printers which had separate toner/drum parts, but eventually, those were merged into one unit, so all consumables were in one unit.
I'd just be happy with larger ink cartridges. It is sad how few milli-liters most cartridges have, and when one weighs the cartridge full, before loading, and empty, it drives the point home.
Classic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/p...
Seriously though, who prints stuff outside of work anyway?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Bought a cheap laser printer around 2008. I've only ever got maybe 3 toner cartridges. They're cheaper than the inkjet cartridges I used before, and don't have an electronic expiration to force you replace them.
...as if I didn't already have reason to avoid Epson printers.
This is just stupid. It's adding an inconvenience and another obvious opportunity for end user error.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They were easy to refill too, if not meant to be.
Too bad the printer was an expensive waste of money. Beautiful pictures, I didn't use it all that often, it just broke unexpectedly sitting idle after having printed less than 100 pages over it's entire lifetime.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Have they solved all the nozzle cleaning problems, etc. as well? Why would I want an inkjet?
I can buy a color laser for less money that will also print thousands of pages between refills. Plus it "just works", no messing around, ever.
No sig today...
a laser printer.
lose != loose
You can buy a laser printer for under $40, or a color laser for $100. Ink jet printers have their place, but for most people, a cheap laser is a far better (and cheaper) option.
It's business $$$. Even a child could have thought of the idea of not using ink cartridges.
> The Bloomberg article makes a good point: it's never been easier to not print things.
Good point, and the usual reaction to a dying (or not-well) industry is to lock things down even more and raise prices. Epson should be commended for going the other direction, and make their printers more attractive. Good differentiation, too.
Just a few weeks ago I replaced mother-in-law's Epson printer with a color laser printer (2400X2400, probably dithered). It's not quite the same tonal quality, even with photo paper, but she was tired of finding that one or more cartridges had dried up or run out every time she wanted to print something. The cartridge model sucks in general, but it *really* sucks for the casual user. Had this come out a month earlier, we might have gone with it instead.
Now all they need is a pro continuous roll version. The epson pro printers have larger cartridges, but they're still cartridges.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
An open-design mono laser printer, with drivers for all platforms, that can do 300dpi, and honestly DOES NOT CARE what toner you use (literally just a reservoir that you fill).
If we can eliminate drums that "die", in some way, any way, any way at all, and leave us with just toner and sheer fatigue of components (but large quantities of cheap, standard replacement parts), I'll happily spend more than I've ever spent on any printer I've ever bought.
I have an old Samsung printer that is refillable like this, and damn close to the rest of the requirements, but is showing it's age and hard to get working (but possible) on modern Windows/Linux. And the rubbers that do wear out are getting harder and harder to find.
Does anyone remember the company that started the whole 'printing is a razorblade business' model? Lexmark.
At the time businesses were laser copy shops or IBM wheelwriter typewriter houses. Epson, HP, and Canon were the dominant forces in ink jet printing in the 90's but IBM's fledgling Lexmark brand has just gone independent in their own buyout, and figured they could turn inkjet printing into a razorblade business where the hardware was commodity but the cartridges were the real money to be had. CPD, the consumer printing division, was tasked with making something IBM historically had never done: consumer inkjets. Cartriges were never cheap, but lexmark took this to a whole other level. by early to mid 2000 you could get a Lexmark laser printer for around 50 dollars that came without cartriges. Those were around 50 a piece as well, and the reigning opinion at the New Circle campus was customers would go for it in hordes...except they didnt, for two reasons.
1. Quality: BPD, the Business Printing Division at lexmark, ran like a well oiled machine because it had to. business customers that relied on IBM printing now had to rely on Lexmark, and processes and methods for manufacturing an entire line of laser and ribbon technologies was sacrosanct. CPD on the other hand was horribly mismanaged, and driven in direct competition with BPD. corners were cut in order to meet an inexorable demand for new releases each year and lower costs. Hardware in the Z series finally became so awful, and so failure prone, the lines name was changed out entirely and CPD was eventually folded into BPD during a large round of firings and layoffs.
2. Internet.: The internet was fast obsoleting printers and while Lexmark had all-in-one laserjets, these were still marketed almost solely to businesses. CPD had plans for a high-speed scanner based on an array of digital cameras, but it came too late. Lexmark building 10, 58, 98, and much of their remaining manufacturing areas were being demolished or leased out.
Good people go to bed earlier.
... Its nice that epson is finally offering CIS in their consumer printers but the reality is that people have been buying third party CIS systems and using them with their epson printers for ages.
My real worry here... I know some great third party ink companies... they make really really good ink. And this will screw them.
I'm going to stick with what i have for now. I bought about half a liter of ink for 50 bucks last time... identical to the epson ink so far as I can tell.
Still, nice to see the old ink model dying I guess. I've always found the business model to be hateful and offensive.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Why does it still happen? The only time I ever need to use a printer is at work. I had a client ask me why we still print copies of our orders. I replied with "I don't really know" because I really just don't get it. Everything else we do is electronic. We are spending money on paper and toner in order to have copies of repair orders that are stored on at least 6 different hard drives across a wide tract of the earth. Having all these copies on paper is only going to make it easier to burn the place down when they take my stapler and move me to the boiler room.
They are talking desktop market here. They are talking to people who print a lot. You know go over to the art dept for you company. A lot of you sound like my departed grand father, "Who uses photographs? " as he flips through popular mechanics magazine. Im not talking abouy the magazine but its contents.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
I recently bought a HP printer and signed up for the ink subscription. It's $5 per month for up to 100 pages. Pages can be B&W or full color, doesn't matter. That works out to $60 a year for 1200 pages. Overages are $1 per 20 pages. Still about 5 cents a page. If you don't use your full 100, they will roll over to the next month (but only for 1 month). The printer itself cost $170 and has copy/fax/scan capability and wireless printing from my phone, laptops, tablets via wifi or NFC.
You aren't locked in to your contract. You can cancel at any time.
The printer senses when it is low on ink and sends a message to HP and they autoship new ink.
They have cheaper plans and more expensive plans, but the $5 plan seemed right for me. If the cartridges dry out I can call HP and tell them to send me a new set. If you print a lot, the $10 plan gets you 300 pages per month, or 3.33 cents a page vs 5 cents.
To me $60 a year is a fair price for being able to print up to 1200 pages. And the $1 per 20 pages for overages is fair too.
The Epson printer might be cheaper per page, but the HP is $200 cheaper. For $380 I get the HP and 3 years of ink included. I won't be surprised if it's time for a new printer by then.
I have an HP printer/scanner at home that I pretty much use only for the scanner. My wife uses the printer on occasion, but I'm convincing her on the virtues of saving things as PDFs and putting them on her iPad. Likewise at work whenever someone wants to give me a printed copy of anything, I tell them to email or share the document. That way I can search for it, and I can search in it, and make changes/notes instead. Some of my coworkers are slowly picking up on this too. I can't wait for the day when we're truly paperless.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Kodak tried this some years ago: sell consumer printers that have higher upfront costs but lower consumable cost.
Like a lot of things they tried before ultimately declaring bankruptcy, Kodak failed at this.
...for Windows 10 - as in, they haven't (they did this with Vista/ 7 too), it's unlikely I'd be buying another one anyway.
Well, this made me laugh. The very first color inkjet I ever saw (circa 1987) used refillable reservoirs, and simple squeeze bottles of ink. The printer (Tektronix) was pricey - perhaps $1600 1987 dollars - but cost almost nothing to operate. I think an 8 oz. bottle was six or seven bucks.
BTW, that printer was a wide-carriage, 300 dpi model with a SCSI interface.
Others here say it's not an issue anymore with Epson but it certainly hasn't been an issue with Canon for many many years. I've been buying Canon printers for really long time and just don't have ink issues. The ink prices are reasonable and the inks don't dry out. Historically this was always in contrast to HP where the inks were crazy expensive and Epson where the inks dried out. Once I switched to Canon I never went back.
I've heard that in just the recent timeframe Canon has started to maybe cheap out a bit so do your own research but I can attest that their older models were really built to last a super long time and be cheap while running. A 5 year old Canon in great shape is still a great printer to buy. They've really only been adding wireless and gimmicky crap for years now. The core printing ability for printing perfect photos was solved over a decade ago.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
This is easily solved. Print simple business graphics and previews of photographs on you color laser. For high quality photo prints, just let a professional print shop print them for about 10 cents a pop. This is a lot cheaper and way better quality than anything you can do yourself at home with even the best of inkjets.
Kyocera (and perhaps others) has made cartridge-free laser printers for a while now.
KYOCERA's ECOSYS printers incorporate "cartridge-free" technology using a durable print drum and high yield toner container that provides thousands of printed pages, a low total cost of ownership and less routine user involvement.
A company for whom I worked back in the 1990s had one and it worked pretty well. It had a print drum rated for 300,000 copies (like a copier) and used toner refills you dumped into a reservoir. The cost per printed sheet was really low compared to toner/drum cartridge-based printers.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Printer driver ABI hasn't changed since Vista.
The only thing I user my printer for is scanning.
Dumped inkjets years ago, went with a laser. Never looked back.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
Cobra Ink Systems has been testing this concept for years. Obviously something works.
I've yet to see a color laser that can print photos as well as even the cheapest color ink jets.
So what? There are print shops for that unless you are printing a LOT of photos. And very few people print a lot of photos these days. Unless you have a very specific need for an inkjet there is really no reason not to buy a color laser these days. I use laser's exclusively. On the rare occasion I want to actually print a photo I can get it done at my local print shop, drug store or even Walmart.
I think laser printing tech doesn't lend well to making photographic prints.
The high end copiers are laser based and they'll do pretty much as nice a job as most inkjets.
In the early 2000's almost all epson inkjet printers just had cartridges that had no head on them. Which meant that changing a cartridge still used the the same head, which if blocked still didn't work.
Kodak tried the same since it reduced the cartridge cost. I used a kodak aio for a while but it stopped printing reliably even after multiple head cleans and a new cartridge and they don't make it easy on buying a new head either. Waste of time and money.
In a cartridge with a head you get a new head every cartridge change and if recycled the head gets industrially cleaned
Toner cartridges also last a lot longer. As long as the pcm holds up (whatever that is). I salvaged a laserjet 5si in 2005 and used the remaining toner in that till 2009, then had that cartridge refurbished and refilled and still using it in 2015. Less than 1p a page and it keeps my shed warm in the winter if I leave it on. (If i turn it off it complains of low temperature a few hours after first turn on in the winter).
The Bloomberg article says, "The cheapest of its five new printers starts at about $379 ...". I wonder if it's an all-in-one.
Personally, I don't like all-in-ones. I don't need scanning, faxing, or wireless or photo-quality printing. I just need a printer that does color text printing, like my two Epson Stylus Color 740 printers, which have lasted 16 years between them. Also I want it to be small enough to fit on a shelf in my computer table.
If anyone from Epson (or any other printer company) is reading this, please take note. If you put out a small, simple, reliable color text printer, which lasts for several years like the Epson Stylus Color 740, I'll buy it.
Didn't Brother do one of these printers a good long while ago? I heard about it years back.
In addition, aren't mods for Epson printers to use these systems pretty common? They're called something like Continuous ink mods or somesuch?
(Ninja edit: Yeah, I found the old Cool Tools article talking about it. Apparently a company called Cobra Ink Systems will take a new Epson printer and retrofit it with a Continuous Ink System for you.)
Seems that Epson is just trying to follow the grey market.
...are the way to go. Laser is fast and doesn't suffer from clogged print heads. Generic toner cartridges have gotten much better in the last few years. I can't remember the last time I had a bad one.
Because I wasn't stupid enough to buy OEM ink in the first place. My bet is that as more and more people realize that buying ink from Epson is a sucker bet, they're moving their business model away from depending on that.
CISS system for Workforce-3640 which is a 100$ printer.
It's always been easier for me to not print. I don't print all of the time. I forward and reply to emails. I don't print them. I use presentation tools and share the content electronically instead of printing them. I copy and paste information to different screens instead of printing it out and typing it in. (We all know people that still do this)
The only time I print anymore is to sign contracts, and even then I use a digital signature when it's possible.
Hell, the first printer that my wife and I bought together was a HP 1200 LaserJet in October of 2002. I just replaced the factory toner cartridge in 2013 or 2014. That's how little we print at home. That printer saved me hundreds of dollars, if not over a thousand if I had purchased an ink jet printer.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Here in Brazil, they have been selling those tank printers since long (2 years ago? 4 years ago?).
This week we talked about how dot matrices are cheaper to operate. My friend got angry because I said "citation needed". Well, I googled it and estimates vary from dot matrix being half to one tenth of the printing cost of a laser. The sources may be somewhat old, it certainly invites more research.
But that explains -- besides the need to get zero-cost copies -- why these noisy printers keep being used. In the end it's just a question of having the specific need which makes a viable option.
Other than that, some 8 years ago there was a memo asking everyone to use the laser printers because they were 4 times as cheap as the inkjet ones.
At home, it annoyed me a lot that we hadn't the time to print a high-quality copy on our inkjet, that I sometimes failed to buy a cartridge (every month I had to buy one) and, as a psychological consequence, people avoided printing things because it was cumbersome.
Then I bought a laser and my problems went away. I buy toner once every 18 months. And people feel better to be able to print when they need.
That's a great idea, but only if the printer lasts more than a year... I think I had 2 HPs crap out before I could perform my 1st ink cartridge replacement. Paying more for a unreliable printer, though lacking cartridges, will not sell for long.
Once my latest cheapo printer has run out of ink it becomes fair game for my latest project.
"Hmmm... I could really do with a decent motor, some belts and a bunch of gears..."
*Epsom flees to the East*
It's about time.
My parent's picked up an all in one WF-2250 last year and after the second ink changing it no longer reads the chip on any cyan carts so it honestly doesn't matter what they do to "improve" ink refills because their printers are crap.
Funnily enough I was dreading setting it up on Linux, even though I'd specifically purchased a printer with PostScript capabilities. As it turns out, its Linux driver seems to work better than the windows one -- it's picked up different addresses from DHCP a couple of times now, and the Windows driver had some trouble finding it again. It just kept working on the Linux side. I mostly use it with LaTeX to print documents and envelopes (The LaTeX envelope style is awesome!) and some occasional pictures with the Gimp. I almost never actually print from Windows.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
epson l800 does this and I own it for 2 years already.
How is this news?
So the expensive 11X17 epson color printer I bought 20 years ago that was basically made this way is a new advance?
When I didn't use the printer for 6 months, the print head dried up and the expensive printer was garbage.
How much are replacement print heads?
Greed is the root of all evil.
Old technology is the best technology:
http://www.staples.com/Dot-Matrix-Printers/cat_CL40302
Oki Makes some of the most open printers I've seen. Many of their laser printers still support older dot matrix standards (which just about every OS supports) as well as more modern standards like PCL and Postscript. You will pay more for them, but there isn't a printer manufacture out there with more open standards, and their Tech Support in the off chance you have an issue with the printer is second to no one.
If your OS support any Oki at any age, it will print as long as it knows what port to print to, Especially parallel and LAN. Hell, I've used 15 year old Okipage 8C drivers on modern Oki color lasers, Dot Maxtix DOS drivers on Monochrome lasers, Hell, I used an HP 4000 Driver on a Oki B430dn when the 4000 failed at a critical time and they still printed no problem.
I can't vouch for the latest printers, since I haven't touched an Oki since my last job, but Oki was the best decision I made there. We had B430DN's all over the place and they would outlast anything in their price class. We had multiple 430DN's with cycles over 120000 pages with virtually no issues. New aftermarket toner carts were as low as $20 for 5000-7000 imprints. The only issue I had with them was their drum, which had a 20000 Page cycle, and you had to buy an original drum at $150 since the referbs were junk and would grind up at 7000, although the printers new were as low as $130 so we just buy a new printer and you could usually reset the drum in maintenance mode so you could get another 20000-40000 out of it before it would artifact. Even with the drum costs in play at the recommended intervals the cost per page was ridiculously low vs anything in the same price class.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I'd be curious to see if any of the low-cost ink manufacturers for fountain pen ink branch into inkjets, with this development. Both being water-based and having constraints around lubrication, flow, penetration, dry time, etc., I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fair bit of room for knowledge (and chemistry R&D, for a shop with a wide enough range of ink properties) to translate.
Buying bottled ink is already the cost-effective option for folks writing the old-fashioned way -- the equivalent to a sub-$20 4.5oz bottle of waterproof fountain pen ink (current price for a large bottle of Noodler's Heart of Darkness, 8/4/2015, is $19) would, if purchased in rollerball refills, be in the range of 76 to 82 pen refills, priced from $1.66 to $3.20 each; going the bottled route is vastly saner for folks who are willing to buy several years' worth of ink at one go.
(Up-front costs to use bottled ink aren't that high either -- excellent sub-$30 pens include the TWSBI Eco, Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy Vista).
But then -- with an extra-expensive printer, perhaps simply voiding the warranty if someone used a competing ink would be enough to prevent customers from trying to cut costs there. Hmm.
Here in Brazil I have been seeing these Epson models selling for a year already, maybe more.
Epson has already been selling their "InkTank" printers for last 2 years atleast in India.
Monochrome Epson M100 was the first I guess besides Others including L100/L110 etc
Been using it for last 2 years. Refill Via Bottle . It isnow the best selling printer in India.
Extremely easy to refill the tanks using a bottle besides being cheaper than any Laser
I have used.
http://www.epson.co.in/resource/india/product_brochures/ink_tank_system/M100_200.pdf
Sohojet has been doing this for years.
Now that color laser is affordable, why would I go back to using inkjet? So far I've left my laser print idle for 2 years, fired it up and it printed properly. I've attempted the same on inkjet in the past and the nature of ink and the heads for inkjet make that impractical.
Not that I print out much stuff in the 21st century. It's mostly hobby and craft things coming out of my printers now. Invent a combo inkjet and 3d printer and maybe I would be encouraged by the reduced footprint of having both.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm surprised people still have printers. I graduated college in 2002 and I've never owned a printer in my adult life. I work on computers for a living. I know some people have special needs, but what the heck do most people need with a printer?
I thought many printer makers already phased out ink cartridges by making new printers so cheap that replacing the printer was cheaper than replacing a spent (or dried-out) cartridge ... heck, name brand ink for ink jet printers is one of the most expensive things you can buy ... (look at how little you get for your many $/â/...)
Here I thought to myself "finally a company that has chosen to put its customers first". I was excited about Epson's new outlook until I saw the price of the printer. Epson simply changed its method of operation from being greedy about ink cartridge sales to being greedy about printer price. Come on Epson, why not give the customers what they want and set up a good image for yourself? An affordable printer with affordable ink would be awesome. If Epson is not willing to do this perhaps this will inspire another company to do so.
(Interesting to note when I was about to submit this the captcha word was "betrayed").