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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.
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.
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
Yes! Unless you have a need the better color quality of inkjets, there is no reason to buy one. I've hated every inkjet I've ever had. They would eat ink for no reason and suffer from random problems that would eat up my life in half-hour chunks.
I've owned two laser printers (a color and a B&W). The color is 3 years old and works like new. It's still on toner cartridge it came with. The B&W (HP LaserJet) is 20 years old, has printed tens of thousands of pages, and still going strong. After 15 years it did need a gear replacement - which I considered cheap based on the value I've gotten out of it.
Last post!
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.
Yup. And the entire device stops working if one of the cartridges is empty. You want to scan a page? Replace the yellow cartridge first.
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.
Yes, that annoys the shit out of me.
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.
Good point, and the usual reaction to a dying (or not-well) industry is to lock things down even more and raise prices.
They can't control the price of paper, and they have lots of competition, including the "why the fuck do we need to print this anyway" argument, so raising prices will just make that argument even stronger.
And what kind of infection can a kiosk put in a JPEG?
http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/07/06/0019234/photo-kiosks-infecting-customers-usb-devices
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.
Worried about viruses on a USB stick at a photo kiosk? What is this, the 00's? Upload it to the website and its printed by the time you get to the store to pick it up.
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. . . .
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
I had a really nice Canon multi-function (MX-850) but when I bought a new Mac it came with the OS X 10.10 and I found out that they weren't going to make the drivers for it. So I had to get a new machine even though the old one worked perfectly. Actually the replacement model (MX-922) had a slower print speed and wasn't designed as well.