Printers /ink.... razors/blades...

[JohnRoberts]

I finally give up.... I do not print a lot, and have a modest HP swiss army printer... combination, FAX machine, scanner, color printer, yadda yadda. The price was right but over several years I've paid for it again with the costly ink cartridges...  Since I really don't appreciate running out and not being able to print , like now,  I have even tried buying spare ink cartridges for JIC, but last time I tried that the spare ink cartridge was dry too and didn't work when i tried to use it...

Today I went to wally world to buy a set of new ink cartridges... even though I only print B & W i have to have a good color cart in the HP or no go (those slick bastids).  The black ink cart was $33, and the color cart was $56.... Seriously.... ?

That was the last straw, of course I didn't buy the ink and promptly came home and ordered a new B&W laser printer (dell) for less than that ink would have cost me.  : Plus the dry toner used by the laser printer does not dry out, it's already dry.  ;D ;D

I won't declare victory until i'm up and printing again, but that old printer is going on the scrap pile well before its time... due to bad business model (good business model for them, bad for me).

JR

 

[ruairioflaherty]

Hi John,

I made the switch to a brother laser printer about 10 years ago and have not looked back since.  I owned two in Ireland and have two here also, one for studio and one for home.  I've probably replaced the toner 7 times in total in all that time at about $45 a pop and I ship back the toner cartridges for recycling using a free label from brother.  The home one has its own wifi which makes sharing a breeze.

Cheers,
Ruairi

 

[PRR]

Many years ago, I had an OfficeJet which gave excellent range on fair-price ink-carts. While the printer was 2X the cost of the DeskJet of the day, the savings in ink more than balanced.

I'm sitting next to two of the greediest ink-sops I ever met. The LexMark was supposed to be government contract and aside from arriving broken, it runs-out constantly. The Brother AIO does hardly better, with inky-dinky carts, and I am sitting here nursing a drop of Yellow before I change it.

> The home one has its own wifi

Mine shouts WiFi on the front. Come to find out, you can have EtherNet -or- WiFi, but not both at the same time. Being an old wire-head, and already wired, I just snorted and kept shoving the bits through the wire. (It came up when my whole clan was here, and I thought someone might like to print, but screw it.)

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I've finally retired my 14-year old Epson 1160. At a time I used to refill the cartridges, but it was really messy, and now unbranded replacement cartridges are affordable. In the meantime I've had an HP and a Canon that stopped working after about a couple of years. Now the print heads of the Epson are clogged beyond salvation, so I bought a new one, guess what brand...
I've considered laser but I need colour and A3 format; that's an expensive combination.

 

[Scodiddly]

I've had a little Samsung monochrome laser for something like 15 years now.  I have to hoard driver software jealously, but I still manage to get it working on every new computer.

 

[Gene Pink]

...even though I only print B & W i have to have a good color cart in the HP or no go (those slick bastids). 

Perhaps you can fake them out, remove the color cartridge and put the same one right back in. When the software asks if you replaced it with a new one, say yes. I don't believe they have tiny little gas gauge floats in them.

If they are going to scam you, scam 'em right the hell back. Bet you wish you held on to that DecWriter..  ;D

My first real printer was a Diablo daisywheel, fed directly from a Wyse WY-50 dumb terminal. A very basic word processor setup, worked just fine, yeah, we're really styling now in the 20th century.  8) Type and edit a paragraph until it is perfect, hit "print screen", CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK...CLACK, and repeat. Learned about RS-232 from that project, swap which wires?

These days, I just go with the cheapest inkjet I can find. Last time I got three identical Canon's at 25 bucks ea. on sale, one still sets on the shelf new in the box, unopened. Black ink for these is less than 10 bucks. I also have little use for color, other than the occasional ridiculously intricate non-faxable full color jpeg stage plot that the crew will need in hard copy.

Gene

 

[iomegaman]

I notice Gillette running ads on TV now to sell razors via the phone...seems like Harrys and Dollar razor club has put a limp in the stranglehold that was once owned by a handful of companys...I've been buying Harrys for a few years now and recently discovered I can walk into Target and buy them off the shelf for tax above what I order online...still beats the hell out of the big boys...

I shifted to laser printers many years ago...still using my faithful HP Laser-jet 1020...a cartridge gets me almost a year and cost $30...

When I first landed back in Tucson a year ago I picked up a commercial color HP laser-jet for $5.00 on Craigslist sold by an accountant...seems the red had exploded and he had bought a new one but hated to throw the old one away...I only used the black anyway, but seems I could only find the cartridges as a "set" (about a $100 for three colors and black) so I made a trip out west and grabbed some stuff out of storage the 1020 fit nicely in the back seat...and I had a brand new box of cartridges that came with...still gotta clean and remove this big office size printer...but I will never buy Gillette or inkjet again...it's money for junk.

 

[Spiritworks]

I notice Gillette running ads on TV now to sell razors via the phone...seems like Harrys and Dollar razor club has put a limp in the stranglehold that was once owned by a handful of companys...I've been buying Harrys for a few years now and recently discovered I can walk into Target and buy them off the shelf for tax above what I order online...still beats the hell out of the big boys...

Harry's - I dunno. I've been using their blades and razor now for about three months on subscription -  thought I'd give them a try.
I've cut myself more while shaving in those three months than I have in the previous fifteen years using big name blades. Not sure what the correlation is, but I'm still undecided on the value. Glad to see capitalism doing it's job though.
HP are the biggest offenders in the Ink Scam. I literally took a sledge hammer to my last HP printer when it shut down because it told me my Magenta ink was too old. Like most of you here, I rarely, if ever, print in color. Currently using an Epson model that tries to do the same thing, though not as often.

 

[DaveP]

I made the switch to a monochrome Brother wifi laser printer last year and never looked back.

I can print from anywhere in the house and my wife can print from her tablet and laptop just the same.

Our new Sony TV also connects via the router so we watch Netflix on that too, this is all good technology.

Only snag is that we are obliged to unplug the router every time there is a thunder storm as they can burn out from a nearby strike.

DaveP

 

[JohnRoberts]

Perhaps you can fake them out, remove the color cartridge and put the same one right back in. When the software asks if you replaced it with a new one, say yes. I don't believe they have tiny little gas gauge floats in them.

Of course i tried that...  I believe some of the carts have chips inside...  Ink is big money business.  Some of the ink refillers replace the interior components too (I think).  I don't care enough to take one apart and make a mess.

FWIW this time the printer didn't complain about low ink, it just didn't print anything onto the paper, so probably thinks it has ink inside (yes I shook the cart and reinstalled it, still no luck). I suspect my carts typically dry out before I print out all the ink.  I never print color and they go dead too.  I found I could extend my ink life, by keeping the printer turned off when I wasn't actively printing, so the carts may use some kind of elapsed time mechanism. 

If they are going to scam you, scam 'em right the hell back. Bet you wish you held on to that DecWriter..  ;D

Don't think that 7 wire (?) dot-matrix would cut it for mailing label barcodes and the like... Not to mention graphics drivers.

I'm looking at an old 24 wire panasonic I haven't fired up once this century, that I need to throw away too.  At least the Panasonic could print graphics, but probably still dicey for barcodes.

Back when I was running my mail order business one major PIA was we had to fulfill orders within 30 days, or notify the customer of the delay and expected shipment date so they could cancel. It is hard to imagine waiting 30 days for anything these days (my new printer has already shipped), but back in the 70's when I was running my kit business I had several 30 day back order situations... one time was just more sales than I could handle  by myself (a good problem to have). A second time I designed a kit around a brand new single sourced chip that the IC company (Signetics) assured me was in stock....  They neglected to mention that they were in stock in Malaysia, in die form, and still needed to be packaged and wire bonded.  : : When you get a kit article on the cover of Popular Electronics you get a lot of sales those first few weeks.  :-[

My solution for communicating with hundreds of customers, was a multipart carbon paper memo-mailer... Printing address and message with a dot matrix printer  would show the address on the outside with message concealed on the inside  (like those carbon paper W2 forms etc... Another thing the dot matrix printers were cool for was the soft metal serial number plates that you could print impressions directly to the metal with the dot matrix printer...

But then was then... now is now.

My first real printer was a Diablo daisywheel, fed directly from a Wyse WY-50 dumb terminal. A very basic word processor setup, worked just fine, yeah, we're really styling now in the 20th century.  8) Type and edit a paragraph until it is perfect, hit "print screen", CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACK...CLACK, and repeat. Learned about RS-232 from that project, swap which wires?

I had one of those too... sweet typewriter quality output. Slow and clunky and consumed a one-use film ribbon just like a typewriter, but good quality output compared to what was available back then. I had a couple different typeface wheels

These days, I just go with the cheapest inkjet I can find. Last time I got three identical Canon's at 25 bucks ea. on sale, one still sets on the shelf new in the box, unopened. Black ink for these is less than 10 bucks. I also have little use for color, other than the occasional ridiculously intricate non-faxable full color jpeg stage plot that the crew will need in hard copy.

Gene

I also had a very early HP laser printer (last century), that sucker was huge, and heavy, and stopped working at some point. As I recall it was SOTA for it's time several decades ago (300 DPI  maybe 600? ).

So I am coming full circle back to laser after two different ink jet  printers that worked for several years each, The first one crapped out with a broken paper feed (from paper jams).  The expensive ink scam finally exceeded my BS threshold.  For my modest printing needs I am optimistic the laser process will be more than adequate.  Like I said this new laser printer is cheaper than new ink would have cost me for my current ink jet... I could buy cheaper 3rd party refilled ink carts, but that does not seem a recipe for reliable printing.

JR

 

[iomegaman]

The one caveat I have about the newer products is the way Microsoft (Windows) and vendors in general no longer give a rats ass about drive space...the intrusive nature of printer programs (and other crap ware call home and update code) and "Windows update" is positively obscene...HP is a BIG offender in this...just give me the dfamn printer drivers I don't need your phot editing software that will make and butter toast according to the stupid video you want me to watch while it installs...

Recently one of my computers starting freezing only online...acted exactly like a RAM issue...ran numerous test, sure enough came back as bad ram...started to purchase some but as an after thought decided to check my SSD harddrive...sure enough it was down to 5% and the page file was bigger than that (Thank you microsoft are you on crack?)...I went to delete and move stuff and discovered my Windows folder which initially had installed at 8-12 gigs had grown to over 120 gigs essentially eating up most of my OS harddrive...HP folder was nearly 3 gigs for freaking printer drivers...

Needless to say I cleaned house and found out that no, my ram was fine and the machine runs like it is supposed to, but apparently the growing wndows folder is pretty well documented and the onoy solution is a fresh install which I am loath to do.

The days of concise code and drivers is long gone though...

 

[JohnRoberts]

What happens when the cloud fills up?  It rains data... ;D

JR

 

[Phrazemaster]

What happens when the cloud fills up?  It rains data... ;D

JR

Good one! ;D So you could also have a Data storm, and hit by Lightening . Lightening is the process wherein your data gets lighter and lighter until it's not visible anymore. Then with no record of you, you would simply cease to exist.

Regarding the laser printer - yeah the only way to go! But I've noticed, at least with Brother, they STILL find a way to scam you. What's happened to me is after a few months, not printing much mind you, I get a message "Toner Low."

I open the printer and get the cartridge. I can shake it and the toner is clearly still in there! There's a little window on both sides of the cartridge that a light shines into, and the printer decides when the toner is low. You can block these windows with black tape and get some more life out of them (er, get to use the actual toner you have already paid for!  )

Another trick Brother does is prevent you from printing when it decides the toner is too low - there's a setting you can google and change, so that it still allows you to print until the end.

My beautiful gf was struggling with a relatively new (1 yo) inkjet from Epsom - she had all the kinds of problems you mentioned JR and I tried to resurrect it for her, but after screwing around with the "calibration" process and the "nozzle cleaning" procedure, which conveniently wastes a TON of ink, I told her she had to get a laser printer. We went to Best Buy and got her a B & W laser and she's been thrilled with it.

I also bought a 4-color laser printer a few years ago, thinking how clever I was. Come to find out EACH cartridge is $90!!! And the printer don't like to print black if the red is low!!! 

What ever happened to honest goodness and fair dealings with your customers? Shouldn't you get the benefit of the product you bought, and not be forced into buying additional supplies when the true motive is just profit? MMM here we go capitalism and ethics again, wrong thread!

Apparently there are some newer inkjet that use an "ink tank." Epsom has one, and it's a huge reservoir of ink. I still wouldn't like to hassle ink, however.

Mike

 

[DaveP]

+2
for laser printer and beautiful GF

DaveP

 

[madswitcher]

If you are going to print quite a lot and need to do so in colour, getting hold of one of the older big HP printers is a good deal, providing you have room that is. 

I bought a HP 5500 colour laser printer about 8 years ago, with partially filled toner cartridges and never looked back.  You can buy partially filled original HP toner cartridges for about the same prices as an ink-jet cartridge on EvilBay  (I had trouble with colour compatibles ) and get 15,000 or so pages from them.  It does double-sided and A3 paper as well.

A little bit of TLC, like all electro-mechanical pays off.

Cheers

Mike

 

[JohnRoberts]

Good one! ;D So you could also have a Data storm, and hit by Lightening . Lightening is the process wherein your data gets lighter and lighter until it's not visible anymore. Then with no record of you, you would simply cease to exist.

Regarding the laser printer - yeah the only way to go! But I've noticed, at least with Brother, they STILL find a way to scam you. What's happened to me is after a few months, not printing much mind you, I get a message "Toner Low."

I ordered a cheap Dell...  They sell two different sized toner cartridges  (the smaller one was still 3x or 4x the pages of an inkjet cartridge.) They also sell a replacement Drum assembly for $70 that is probably a fair price to keep a high volume printer working.

I open the printer and get the cartridge. I can shake it and the toner is clearly still in there! There's a little window on both sides of the cartridge that a light shines into, and the printer decides when the toner is low. You can block these windows with black tape and get some more life out of them (er, get to use the actual toner you have already paid for!  )

Another trick Brother does is prevent you from printing when it decides the toner is too low - there's a setting you can google and change, so that it still allows you to print until the end.

I'll see... I expect Dell is in it to make money too... but HP seems more like a drug dealer than computer business... I think they split up HP into two companies to get away from the smell of the sleazy printer side.

My beautiful gf was struggling with a relatively new (1 yo) inkjet from Epsom - she had all the kinds of problems you mentioned JR and I tried to resurrect it for her, but after screwing around with the "calibration" process and the "nozzle cleaning" procedure, which conveniently wastes a TON of ink, I told her she had to get a laser printer. We went to Best Buy and got her a B & W laser and she's been thrilled with it.

I also bought a 4-color laser printer a few years ago, thinking how clever I was. Come to find out EACH cartridge is $90!!! And the printer don't like to print black if the red is low!!! 

What ever happened to honest goodness and fair dealings with your customers? Shouldn't you get the benefit of the product you bought, and not be forced into buying additional supplies when the true motive is just profit? MMM here we go capitalism and ethics again, wrong thread!

Apparently there are some newer inkjet that use an "ink tank." Epsom has one, and it's a huge reservoir of ink. I still wouldn't like to hassle ink, however.

Mike

I have heard mostly good feedback in my research about modern laser printers...  I hope i can add to that chorus, very soon.

JR

 

[madswitcher]

......... but HP seems more like a drug dealer than computer business... I think they split up HP into two companies to get away from the smell of the sleazy printer side. I have heard mostly good feedback in my research about modern laser printers...  I hope i can add to that chorus, very soon.

JR

From what I remember about 5/6 years ago, HP ink cartridges costed less that 20 cents to manufacture, irrespective of type and colour.  "Drug dealer" seems an appropriate comparison.

Mike

 

[Phrazemaster]

+2
for laser printer and beautiful GF

DaveP

+2 for great sense of humor and for contributing so much to this board!

 

[JohnRoberts]

From what I remember about 5/6 years ago, HP ink cartridges costed less that 20 cents to manufacture, irrespective of type and colour.  "Drug dealer" seems an appropriate comparison.

Mike

I doubt they could make an empty cardboard box for 20 cents, but $33 for B&W ink, and $56 for color ink does not seem a fair price for only a few hundred copies. 

Sadly I considered paying it (only momentarily) just to get my printer working again... but no... that usurious price insulted my sensibility, so they get no more cash from this cow. 

JR

PS: Of course there was a HP ink add running across the bottom of this forum page... they should read what we are saying about HP before doing that.  :-[

 

[madswitcher]

I doubt they could make an empty cardboard box for 20 cents, but $33 for B&W ink, and $56 for color ink does not seem a fair price for only a few hundred copies. 

Yep, less that 20 cents was the internal cost of cartridge manufacture when I worked for them in the late 90s/early 00s.  The exact figure was proprietary,  but it gives you an indication if you are cranking them out by the million.  Of course on top of that you had packaging, distribution etc., and everyone in the chain to the consumer adds their markup, bumping up the price.

cheers

Mike