What is Digg?146 Comments
- meccano04, on 10/11/2007, -4/+85If i ever see an inkjet printer in my house, im going to stab it with a samurai sword.
- intent, on 10/11/2007, -3/+57Colour lasers are much higher quality, plus they're really cheap now. If the toner runs out, just buy a new cheap printer!
*ducks from environmentalists - dikaiosyne, on 10/11/2007, -0/+50Samir: No, not again. I... why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam? I swear to God, one of these days, I just kick this piece of ***** out the window.
- kuttan, on 10/11/2007, -4/+38Wasn't there a class action suit against one of the printer manufacturers for rigging the printer to say the the cartridges has run out when it still had plenty left. It is common knowledge they make more money selling cartridges than printers.
- jordan314, on 10/11/2007, -0/+34The article didn't even mention HP's worst practice of all, embedding an EXPIRATION DATE on a CHIP on the cartridges that say they're empty after a certain date. I had to pull the CMOS battery out of my HP officejet D145 just to use the freaking ink cartridges I bought.
- silverchrysalis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+29at my old job, we had a POS lexmark that would say 'out of ink' after about 25 pages. one employee would change the cartridges every damn time, costing us about $53 (the printer cost $45).
once we tried ignoring the alert, printed out an extra 200 pages!
then it broke. damn walmart.
switched to a canon and they haven't had any issues since - Chompy, on 10/11/2007, -2/+30"usually when my inkjet says 'empty' i keep on printing ... until it physically stops printing anything on the page because it's _really_ out of ink."
You're right, you *don't* get it. The complaint here is that some manfacturers physically prevent you from continuing to print even though you have ink left in the cartridge. - 2tec, on 10/11/2007, -2/+29If I ripped off as much moola as these fat cats, I'd be in jail for life.
Personally, I'm tired and turned off by abusive marketing from unethical corporations. - RichLatherX23, on 10/11/2007, -5/+30PC load letter? What the ***** does THAT mean?
- RustedGod, on 10/11/2007, -0/+24On Windows, my HP PSC 1210 would produce streaks across pages of text when it reported being low on ink. Using CUPS on Linux however, it would produce perfect printouts. When it actually did run low, fill the cartridge up with one of those cheap refill kits and presto, it printed fine still. Windows, or the HP driver made for Windows rather, still thought the cartridge was near empty however, and continued to produce the streaks on printouts. Pretty conclusive evidence of underhanded programming of the drivers, I'd say.
When you look at this graph, http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripherals/hp-ink-costs-more-than-human-blood-booze-212444.php, the title really rings true. A new black cartridge for that printer costs ~£25. The refill kit, a fiver from Tesco. - wgerik, on 10/11/2007, -0/+23@Error601: Wouldn't that make more sense? I'd gladly pay more up front for the printer if I could buy replacement ink cartridges for considerably less than most printer manufacturers charge.
Take a look at the new Kodak line of Inkjet printers for example: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=9/1441/10580&pq-locale=en_US
I think they have a really good thing going here. They cost a little more, but the replacement cartridges cost much less, and the ink they use is pigment based, as opposed to dye based, so the picture quality is much better and the prints actually last exponentially longer without fading. In other words, better ink for less. I'll take two, please. :P - Pic0, on 10/11/2007, -3/+25They use pencil in Canada
- cassholio, on 10/11/2007, -1/+22Damn printer cartridges are epitome of "capitive pricing". You pay very little for the printer itself, and they gouge you on the replacement cartridges-which you need to purchase in order to utilize the printer afer your initial cartridges run out. I would suggest buying the offbrand Staples type-but manufacturers are now saying that those violate the warranty on the printer.
- Chompy, on 10/11/2007, -2/+20Inkjets are for suckers. Laser may cost more at first, but in the long run it's going to be cheaper. Toner costs much less per page and it doesn't dry out.
- ryodoan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17HP was actually successfully sued by its customers.
I know we got a couple vouchers out of it. - Crosshare, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17Wait a minute, you run an ink jet in a work environment?
- mattvogt, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17Because I rarely print in color and never photos, I tossed my Lexcrap printer out and just bought a simple home laserjet for $250 and it's lasted 3 years with the original toner cartridge.
- Devrdander, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16Should be noted, Canon's have individual color cartridges and they use a transparent plastic so you can actually see the ink. Also i use mine about once a month and i've never had a problem with my print heads clogging or ink drying out. I buy ink once a year with my old lexmark i was buying carts 2-3 times a year and always had to clean my print heads and waste paper just to get a clean print.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -4/+20i don't get it. when your camera says 'low battery' do you all of a sudden stop taking pictures and getting a new battery, instead of using it all up?
when your printer says 'empty' do you just buy and insert a new cartridge?
usually when my inkjet says 'empty' i keep on printing ... until it physically stops printing anything on the page because it's _really_ out of ink. - scabbers, on 10/11/2007, -0/+16For text, a mono laser is the win.
For photos? Take your memory card/cd to a digital print place. - HalFTW, on 10/11/2007, -1/+15I have a Canon PIXMA iP5200 and the cartridges are always dry as a bone when I swap them out.
- phoomp, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14That works, except when the printer is designed to stop printing when it estimates that the cartridge is empty.
- zoli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14@superpotential "usually when my inkjet says 'empty' i keep on printing"
The problem is, most printers are rigged to stop working after the ink low message. In fact my HP All-In-One stops performing ink-less functions, like scanning, after the cartridge is deemed low. See more details:
http://www.zoliblog.com/blog/_archives/2007/6/19/3033115.html - jeffeb3, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14I don't know what to do. I have heard of these new things called "email" and things like "PDFs" I'm not sure how to use them, but apparently, you can get by without using an inkjet or laser printer at all.
- HalFTW, on 10/11/2007, -0/+12Forgot to say, the cartridges are made of clear plastic so you can see how much ink is left.
- gr3yn3t, on 10/11/2007, -6/+17PC Load letter? What the ***** does that mean?
@richlather
edit: my bad. bury me. - Error601, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11People didn't develop the old "shake the cartridge" technique for nothing. Same deal with toner cartridges.
- spiffyfitz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11I detest, loathe, and abhor the greedy world of hardcopies.
- dragon76, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9@Crosshare
Unless you are going to be buying a REALLY pricey colour laser, lasers are still not really up to the task of printing photographic quality. - kiddailey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Same here. Just got a Canon Pixma MP830. Ink cartridges are clear, much cheaper than HP's ink and you can see when they are empty (not to mention they lend themselves to be refilled fairly easily. And so far, it's a great multifunction printer by the way.
- chris9902, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9I have an Epson and hate the thing. You have to have all 6 inks in use to use any colour. So for example if I run out of blue I can't print a black and white letter. It's so ***** stupid.
Anyone know if this is just Epson? if not what make is better? - hasslinthehoff, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Get a laser printer. The initial cost might be more, but in the long run you save a ton of money. My HP Laserjet 1012 cost me $199 about three years ago and I have yet to replace the cartridge. Compare that with an inkjet, where you'd reach $360 plus the cost of the printer if you had to replace a $30 cartridge every 4 months for 3 years. And if you're that serious about color, then buy a color laser printer. The prices have come down considerably to the point where you'll easily recoup your cost in comparison with a high-end inkjet.
Inkjets are teh suk. - codyman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8I went through literally about a dozen sub-$50 ink jets in about a period of 3 years and finally said "***** it" and plunked down $100 for a b&w samsung laser printer... best decision ever because I am on the original "cartridge" or whatever that thing in there is called, over 3 years later (and I print quite a bit), just I bought a refill kit for $10 bucks on eBay which provides with 2000 pages, per bottle of toner, and the $10 kit came with 3 bottles.... problem solved....
- Solstice, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Unless you need color - get a Laser.
I bought an Apple Laserwriter 16/600 from a univerisity suplus sale about 9 years ago for $80. Since then, I've purchased one other toner cartridge for $70. My total printing costs (not including paper) for the past 9 years: $150. I've gone though many reams of paper (especially around tax time). The printer's Postscript and uses the old-school LPR protocol - but it works with everything. Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Linux all can print to it just fine.
If you need to print photos, just take a CD or memory card down to Target, Walgreens, Ritz, etc. You can get regular photographic prints for about $0.19. That's less than what you spend on a typical high-quality inkjet print - plus it's on photographic paper. - zoli, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Better do it when it's out of ink :-)
- selrahc, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I have a Canon Pixma ip4000. Reading through these comments makes it sound like I got one of the better printers out there. The clear cartridges let you know how much ink is left, and it really doesn't run out until they are empty. I also like how it has two separate black cartridges, one for text and the other for photos, so printing photos doesn't affect printing text.
- LacY, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Our lab has an hp LASERjet, and that stupid POS (aside from breaking every few weeks) tells us to replace cartridges a good 400+ pages before it runs out. Which wouldn't be that bad, if it didn't refuse to print *any* color when it thinks one color is empty. So when magenta is "empty"--you can't even print black and white. The only way around this is to go into diagnostic mode and disable the cartridge check (which makes you have to run the printer in diagnostic mode until you get a replacement, and also means you get no input about the levels of other cartridges/if diagnostic mode gets exited, you can't print anything). Usually once we've disabled cartridge check we can get by for months on the "empty" color or black cartridge (and we print lots of full page heatmaps & other color docs). *So* annoying!
- eladriano, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7This is why I use laser. My old cannon inkjet would dry out all the time from it not being used enough. It cost about $30 a month just to have ink.
- johndi, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6E-mail is great, but we have morons where I work that actually print out their e-mail to read it.
- m4szyman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Same thing happened to me, Epsons are awful. I actually took my Epson printer and threw it in the garbage last week when I was cleaning cause all it was doing was collecting dust - the cartridges are expensive (almost as much as the printer) and only last for like 25 pages, also the nozzle cleaning thing (as you mentioned) drains half the cartridge - what a scam. Anyways, I am looking into a laser printer and this time I am gonna actually do some research
- RustedGod, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5OK, slight exaggeration on the price of the cartridge. I just checked it though and one black cartridge holds 19 mL of ink costing ~£12 (£25 was for black and colour). That clocks in at roughly £0.60 / mL or $1.25 / mL. Extortion if ever I saw it!
- Protector, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7Bank ATM Fee's, Gas Prices, Terrorists, and then this... damnit, I'm moving to Canada.
- Speedy7, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6I have a new Epson Printer and frankly it is an absolute joke.
Every few days the ink cartridges dry up so we have to prime and clean them using the Epson Utility. Everytime we do this the ink levels shown on the printer page go down and also for every few colour printouts.
Its a waste of money but i have to live with it now - Matteos, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Stone tablet and chisel?
- franksmith, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5After the agony of learning my lesson on any HP's.....
I bought a Canon and not only does it use single cartridges for each color so you can see that... YES, it is out of ink, exactly as it said BUT ALSO I have been refilling my carts with ink from atanticinkjet.com (I'm sure there are many other good ink companies) and I have had ZERO problems.
Not only that.... but the doc feeder on my Canon MP830 never double feeds and prints FAST. I have only been in tech sine 95 but I have owned a LOT of stuff in those years and this Canon printer has my highest satisfaction rating. I also own a Canon DSLR and needed repair work on it.... Canon USA service ROCKS and is fast.
I hope I never buy another HP scamming piece of "sorry but your ink cartridge has expired" crap ever again.
HP SUCKS!
CANON RULES! - moovitz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5NEVER GET AN (OH)BROTHER PRINTER! (MFC-210c)
Now that i've got that out, I'll explain. I went out and got ink for my printer one day, i needed to print an itinerary, and when i was returned home a few weeks later, the ink was empty. Well.. it wasn't empty, it was full, but the printer refuses to use the cartridges and claimed they were empty.
I also found out it was much cheaper to buy a brand new printer than to replace the cartridges again!
No wonder people are going paperless. Nobody can afford to print! - warispeace21, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Good god, that's over $2 a page! You could have Kinko's deliver it to your office for those prices!
- Fhwqhgads, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"I would suggest buying the offbrand Staples type-but manufacturers are now saying that those violate the warranty on the printer."
Yes, a warranty for a 30 dollar printer. :rolleyes: - silverchrysalis, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5or some hard-working transcriptionist monks
- NSMike, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4We used to have an old Canon "Bubble Jet" printer that no only let you replace each color individually (for about $7 a container, if I recall), but each little plastic cartridge was clear, so you could SEE the ink. Another thing about those, why they were so cheap, is that they couldn't justify the cost because the actual print heads were part of the printer, and these things just served as storage for the ink. I wish that thing still worked.
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