Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Balog on March 10, 2009, 11:11:40 AM
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My printer is out of ink. I goto Staples to buy some new ink, and it's significantly more expensive than the freaking printer was! Something is wrong about that....
I'm no hippie, but it seems horrifically wasteful to buy a new printer every time the old one runs out of ink. =(
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It's the same as buying refills for your razor. Get 'em hooked on your brand, then charge an obscene amount when they come back for more.
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I don't even like this printer! ;/
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I've not had a working printer at the house for well over a year now.
I got sick and tired of playing that dance.
I print so little that my ink was always drying out anyways.
So, I just bring stuff that I need to print into the office and print it out on the lasers.
If I get another printer, it will be a laser.
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This is precisely why I got an HP laser for $65 after rebates.
It's laser. If you leave it for a year, it will still print.
I got sick of playing the "dried out ink cartridge/won't print black without all five colors loaded" game, too.
Also, inkjets are the loss leader for ink sales.
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Inkjets as a loss leader for ink sales..... My God, that's so true! How did I not see that.....
Note to self: buy laser printer....
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My printer is out of ink. I goto Staples to buy some new ink, and it's significantly more expensive than the freaking printer was! Something is wrong about that....
A lot of the companies provide 'starter cartridges' with their printers; they only contain a third to half of the ink of the normal cartridges. Still, I agree with Mike.
I'm looking at something like this: HP LaserJet CM1312nfi CC431A MFC / All-In-One Up to 12 ppm 600 x 600 dpi Color Laser Printer (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115205)
$399 with free shipping. No ink to dry out. Hugely expensive for the amount I print, but I'd likely to never need to replace the toner in it. Each toner cartridge is ~$60, but rated for ~22k pages. 11 cents per full color, 2.7 per black.
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Inkjets as a loss leader for ink sales..... My God, that's so true! How did I not see that.....
Note to self: buy laser printer....
Check the specs on those, too. HPs are pretty low-cost. Some Brother models are horribly expensive, they need a replaceable $125 drum on a $100 printer.
HP is still pretty much the best plug-it-in-and-print laser, plus the toners are cheap whenever Staples runs an instant savings thing.
Many stores run specials on this little HP, which is 600dpi and fast as hell, actually, for $50-$65.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fh10003.www1.hp.com%2Fdigmedialib%2Fprodimg%2Flowres%2Fc01082567.jpg&hash=9145e7eb786b17d036f971b5a4a59547f8a51962)
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Kodak makes a series of printers with refills that cost 20 bucks.
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Also, RE: Inkjets -
There are different designs to the print heads.
Epsons typically have a series of micro-tubes going from the ink wells to the permanent print head. Guess what happens when ink congeals in the tubes? Yep. You run a bunch of purges to get it out, wasting your ink supply. If the head itself gets badly clogged, your printer is dead.
HP's, on the other hand, have print heads directly attached to the ink cartridges. While this allows for print alignment problems, HP drivers are typically kind enough to include alignment software to take care of this. The distance from reservoir to print head is shorter, and there is no gasket or air leak to aid in ink drying out. If a print head does go bad, just buy a new cartridge and voila! you have a new print head, too.
Lasers kick butt compared to inkjets, though... unless you want to print high-resolution color or do fancy graphics on irregular media like CD's.
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I have an old Canon S900 photo printer, a cheap Brother laser and a Canon MP all in one. I use the laser most frequently followed by the faxing, scanning, copying and color printing functionality of the Canon MP. I hardly ever use the Canon S900 anymore, but it still works, so I have no reason to dump it.
That HP color laser all in one looks interesting. I have had some form of all in one machine for about 10 years now, and boy do they come in handy.
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Check the specs on those, too. HPs are pretty low-cost. Some Brother models are horribly expensive, they need a replaceable $125 drum on a $100 printer.
HP is still pretty much the best plug-it-in-and-print laser, plus the toners are cheap whenever Staples runs an instant savings thing.
Many stores run specials on this little HP, which is 600dpi and fast as hell, actually, for $50-$65.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fh10003.www1.hp.com%2Fdigmedialib%2Fprodimg%2Flowres%2Fc01082567.jpg&hash=9145e7eb786b17d036f971b5a4a59547f8a51962)
Disagree.
HP used to be... until their drivers got clogged with bloatware and their lower end consumer grade lasers moved away from PS/PCL compatibility to proprietary language host-based printing (Mac and Linux incompatibility).
I consider Dells to be the best consumer grade laser printers out there right now.
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Dell printers are (or at least used to be) just lexmark printers with a different branding put on them.
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I have a Canon Pixma IP4300 inkjet. It has been pretty good and was inexpensive at about $80ish a couple years ago. If I had to buy all of the ink at once, it would set me back about $60, but with all of the colors separated into discrete tanks, I can replace the ones that are out. I buy singles if I only need one, but if I need two or more colors, I buy a multipack and replace the colors that are out, saving the others till they too are empty. Even if one color is out, it will let me print B&W, though it does complain. Performance is good and it works with Mac, Linux, and Windows.
Chris
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I have a Canon Pixma IP4300 inkjet. It has been pretty good and was inexpensive at about $80ish a couple years ago. If I had to buy all of the ink at once, it would set me back about $60, but with all of the colors separated into discrete tanks, I can replace the ones that are out. I buy singles if I only need one, but if I need two or more colors, I buy a multipack and replace the colors that are out, saving the others till they too are empty. Even if one color is out, it will let me print B&W, though it does complain. Performance is good and it works with Mac, Linux, and Windows.
Chris
The Epson I had and got rid of would not even print black if one of the color tanks was out. That's why it left.
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Dell printers are (or at least used to be) just lexmark printers with a different branding put on them.
Used to.
Dell stole several of HP's designers about 3-4 years ago and their recent products have been outstanding. HP's? Meh. Not so much anymore.
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I have had wonderful results with two Samsung desktop laser printers
ML 1710 Laser
SCX-4x21 Laser ("x" is some number)
ML is a printer-only. Bought for less than $100. My wife tried to wear it out, replacing the toner 3 or 4 times. Thousands of pages printed. Printer is still alive & operable, just needs a new toner, as it has become superfluous since we bought..
SCX-*, which is one of those multi-function jobbies: print, copy, scan, fax. Bought for less than $200. Only replaced toner once, so far, but it has been a rock.
Drivers for both are great and they are easy to operate. Also, they come with linux drivers.
BTW, my wife is in school and prints out all her lecture slides & notes.
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The absolute best purchase I may have ever made was for this beast:
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv282%2Fnick1911%2F5Si.jpg&hash=669859577c22282136364befddab9454dc66409f)
It's an HP LaserJet 5Si. It weighs about 200 pounds. It just barley fits in the backseat of a 1995 Honda Accord, with the front seat pushed all the way forward. The toner costs $140, and lasts for 15,000 pages. I bought it used, with 350,000 pages on the internal counter for $35. I have used it for about 5 years, and have not had to put toner in it yet.
When the toner eventually does run out, I won't hesitate to buy more, even at $140. It's been a fantastic printer.
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The absolute best purchase I may have ever made was for this beast:
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv282%2Fnick1911%2F5Si.jpg&hash=669859577c22282136364befddab9454dc66409f)
It's an HP LaserJet 5Si. It weighs about 200 pounds. It just barley fits in the backseat of a 1995 Honda Accord, with the front seat pushed all the way forward. The toner costs $140, and lasts for 15,000 pages. I bought it used, with 350,000 pages on the internal counter for $35. I have used it for about 5 years, and have not had to put toner in it yet.
When the toner eventually does run out, I won't hesitate to buy more, even at $140. It's been a fantastic printer.
The old HP's are workhorses.
Anything with an EX/EX-II/EX+ engine from HP (LJ 4 and 5 series, various models) can be counted on for at least 2 million pages with proper maintenance.
The older SX series engines (HP LJ II and III, Wang, Apple LaserWriter, etc) can be counted on to run until Ragnarok. Unstoppable. They only print at about 6 pages a minute and only at 300dpi, but they are almost bomb proof.
My very first IT job was a part time gig in college, rebuilding laser printer fusing assemblies for HP series printers and clones.
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My very first IT job was a part time gig in college, rebuilding laser printer fusing assemblies for HP series printers and clones.
Do you know a good place to get parts for them? Several of the rubber rollers are drying out on mine, leading to intermittent feeding issues from tray 2.
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Laserwriter IIg Ethernet printers with the Canon engines will also work forever. Staples even still has toner for them, and they're almost twenty years old! (Plus the toner refills are like $20)...and yes, they support PostScript. It's why they were insanely expensive when introduced.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F0%2F08%2FApple_Laserwriter_II.jpg%2F200px-Apple_Laserwriter_II.jpg&hash=7062337bcfc2a20e8e19967e499f717b00cf7cd1)
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Do you know a good place to get parts for them? Several of the rubber rollers are drying out on mine, leading to intermittent feeding issues from tray 2.
http://www.printerworks.com/
This was my old parts vendor for the work I did. Rubber rollers, plastic drive gears, fuser elements, teflon rollers. They got it all.
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http://www.printerworks.com/
This was my old parts vendor for the work I did. Rubber rollers, plastic drive gears, fuser elements, teflon rollers. They got it all.
Thanks! =D
I'll have to talk to the wife, but they have a $90 kit that looks mighty nice.
My wife, (being a teacher) uses the heck out of that thing. It would be nice to get both trays feeding again.
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Check the specs on those, too. HPs are pretty low-cost. Some Brother models are horribly expensive, they need a replaceable $125 drum on a $100 printer.
I couldn't be happier with my Brother printer. Various family members HPs all got bad rollers, and even after replacing them, they didn't last much longer. The drum on the brother has a life of over 25,000 pages, and the price (for my model anyway) for a new drum is less than half the cost of a new printer. The comparable HP units have the drum in the toner cartridge and the toner cartridges cost more, so after a few toner changes the cost difference between HP & Brother toner/drum replacement is a wash as you're paying extra for the HP drum replacement every time you change the toner.
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A lot of the companies provide 'starter cartridges' with their printers; they only contain a third to half of the ink of the normal cartridges.
Yep. In fact, IIRC, HP got sued a number of years ago over this exact issue.
They won, as their ad didn't say "Comes with a FULL ink cartridge" but only that "a" ink cartridge was included.
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If you still need new ink, see if there is a Cartridge World store in your area. They sell refills more cheaplier than you can buy new. 'Course you can probably do that online, too.
But I must say I really hated them at first. They're logo has some star or something, that always made me think they sold, ya know, the really fun kind of cartridges. Every time I saw one of their stores, I'd get all happy, then let-down. =( =)
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Kodak makes a series of printers with refills that cost 20 bucks.
Kodak is, I think, the ONLY company that has rejected the "printer as loss leader, ink is the major profit center" model.
I read an article about that last year or the year before. It's a pity that more people don't realize it when they buy a Dell or Epsom printer for $25 and the damned ink cartridges come to over $100.
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" more cheaplier"
More cheaplier?
God I hate you.
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And I hate you more hatelier. :P
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Around here Walgreens will refill inkjet cartridges, except Canon, at a modest savings. Canon sucks for drivers anyway so I'll never buy a Canon again, considering how trouble-free my HP has been. It's an all-in-one and cost $20 new from walmart on sale. I think walgreens charges $10 for black and $15 for color.
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Regarding "starter" ink cartridges...
Many newer, home-sized laser printers also ship with a "starter" toner cartridge.
Both my Samsung ML-1430 and Lexmark E120 had them.
They're smaller, and hold only a fraction of the toner that the normal toner cartridges for those machines contain.
Nothing says durability and cheap cost-per-page than the Sherman tank of a printer that is my HP LaserJet 4. I sometimes wish I hadn't sold my backup LaserJet 4. =|
Which reminds me, I have 3 each Tektronix Phaser 780 Tabloid professional grade color lasers here, one in the office and two in the garage. The Spousal unit says I don't need all three, and the city will charge me $15.00 each just to move them to the curb. Let me see how the garage units survived the cold temps, and I'll probably be putting a "Free to a Good Home" ad up soon...
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refill your cartridges
its a couple bucks a pop
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Wish you were closer to me G98, that sounds like a heck of a nice printer.
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Regarding "starter" ink cartridges...
Many newer, home-sized laser printers also ship with a "starter" toner cartridge.
Both my Samsung ML-1430 and Lexmark E120 had them.
They're smaller, and hold only a fraction of the toner that the normal toner cartridges for those machines normally have.
Nothing says durability and cheap cost-per-page than the Sherman tank of a printer that is my HP LaserJet 4. I sometimes wish I hadn't sold my backup LaserJet 4. =|
Which reminds me, I have 3 each Tektronix Phaser 780 Tabloid professional grade color lasers here, one in the office and two in the garage. The Spousal unit says I don't need all three, and the city will charge me $15.00 each just to move them to the curb. Let me see how the garage units survived the cold temps, and I'll probably be putting a "Free to a Good Home" ad up soon...
Aren't those a special funky thermal wax? I used to have several Tektronix 870's that were definitely wax printers. Ambitious users would unplug them and try to move them, then realize they were HOT and jostle them setting them back down. It wouldn't print then. Duh... you spilled hot wax all over the innards. Gotta let them cool before moving and allow the wax to congeal again.
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Laserwriter IIg Ethernet printers with the Canon engines will also work forever. Staples even still has toner for them, and they're almost twenty years old! (Plus the toner refills are like $20)...and yes, they support PostScript. It's why they were insanely expensive when introduced.
...
In college I caught a falling newspaper and ran it one summer converting it from the optical typesetter that the colleges printing program was deciding to not replace to a couple Macintosh SE's and a laserwriter for paste up. Not that new fangled laserwriter II by golly, we bought the ram and installed it -after- the $2,000 printer arrived (iirc that was the price after the 30% educational discount). My children are now in a play at that college and I walked up to the papers office to see that that laserwriter is still in use.
Things really don't have to fall apart. We just make them that way. -Boyd
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They're damned nice printers, and heavy as hell. I won't, and cannot, ship them. My office specimen has the optional 3-drawer paper magazine underneath, so it's an even bigger space hog.
I bought them for pre-production proofs, before they head off to the big offset printers. The two backup units came from a graphics company near Lambeau Field who upgraded to newer versions of the same. It cost me more in fuel to drive up and back to retrieve them than my $50.00 winning bid on eBay.
Each is capable of full tabloid photo quality, Pantone corrected, and makes all the prints glossy regardless of paper quality.
Nope, the Phaser 780 uses powdered toner cylinders/cartridges. I don't know what a Phaser 870 looks like, maybe it does something different. The wax/gloss layer comes from the separate fuser roll. Toner cartridges aren't really that expensive, either. They sit in something that looks like a revolver cylinder, real easy to check toner levels, fuser remaining, toner waste cartridge status, everything via either the front panel or the internal HTTP website accessed through the LAN. They all have hard drives for buffering large print jobs and storing fonts, etc.
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.neximaging.com%2Fimages%2Fneximaging%2F%2FPrinters%2F780.jpg&hash=648650f1f99bc4924e1b187f6426ad78652cb520)
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laser FTW here
I have a 4mp HP that does postscript
one of my pastimes is pushing printer engines into processing mega postscript scaled files
I have output 50, 11x17s and taped up long banners for gun rallies
We had those wax keyed crayon tektronix at NGM
they needed a substantial table or the print head would shake the poor stand to oblivion
at work we have these huge 8150 series HPs that barf to reams of text when ever i print any photoshop to it
if i save the photoshops files as PDF & print those it renders fine
I suspect a postscript emulation that is not real PS
it doesn't matter how I encode the file
binary/asci or jpg any PS file barfs to 12 characters of text on a zillion pages
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Wax On, Wax Off
As a solid-ink (also known as wax-jet or phase-change) printer, the Phaser 8400 works something like an offset printing press, or a cross between an ink-jet and a laser. Its yellow, cyan, magenta, and black ink come not in liquid or powdered (toner) form, but in waxy chunks or small cubes -- actually, not cubes but four slightly different, drop-in shapes, carved toddler-toy-fashion to fit into the proper slots underneath the hood of the printer.
Accustomed to conventional ink and toner cartridges, we were slightly unnerved that the Phaser's front-panel LCD and software driver don't offer an ink-remaining gauge (though the former does display a low-ink warning); instead, you simply lift the hood and look. You can top off or add ink anytime -- such as before starting a big print job, with no more wondering whether an installed cartridge will go the distance. And compared to the usual rigmarole of throwing away or recycling consumable cartridges and waste tanks, the 8400 is a friend to the environment, with one small, plug-in "maintenance kit" or imaging-drum lubricator to replace every 10,000 pages (the $100 standard kit) or 30,000 pages (an optional $150 kit), plus a waste tray to empty and replace periodically.
According to Xerox, printing some 6,800 pages takes six sticks apiece of the four colors, with a total ink cost of $700 -- by our rough calculation, something like 10.8 cents per page, somewhat more costly than most color lasers but thriftier than desktop inkjets.
Inside the printer, the stubby crayons are melted -- drawing, speaking of environmental impact, up to 1,500 watts, though Xerox says the printer averages less than a fifth of that -- into an ink reservoir. A 1,236-nozzle, 600 by 600 dpi printhead sprays the ink onto a heated, rotating drum, which transfers the image to paper in one pass (versus the four passes of most low-priced color lasers). The ink almost instantly solidifies again on the page, with no inkjet-style seeping or blotting on plain paper, and won't smear if swiped by a damp finger -- though it can scratch off if rubbed with a fingernail.
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Those are neat. They smell like crayons left in the sun.
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Those are neat. They smell like crayons left in the sun.
Well, I'll be dipped in apple butter!
THAT was the reason the old color laser printer smelled like it did in operation.
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we had roll fed tektronix wax printers for NattyGeo magazine layouts
at christmas time, i would unroll them and make festive holiday garland and wreaths featuring CMYK negative plates of the old output
those roll fed donor printers must be a security nightmare
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That's a nice printer, Gewehr98.
Let me know when you're looking to get rid of it... I might be up for a road trip. I could use something that would do color.
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I have had wonderful results with two Samsung desktop laser printers
ML 1710 Laser
SCX-4x21 Laser ("x" is some number)
ML is a printer-only. Bought for less than $100. My wife tried to wear it out, replacing the toner 3 or 4 times. Thousands of pages printed. Printer is still alive & operable, just needs a new toner, as it has become superfluous since we bought..
SCX-*, which is one of those multi-function jobbies: print, copy, scan, fax. Bought for less than $200. Only replaced toner once, so far, but it has been a rock.
Drivers for both are great and they are easy to operate. Also, they come with linux drivers.
I'll second the Samsungs. We have several ML-1710s, ML-1740s, and ML-2010s, none of which we paid more than $75 for, and they each have a minimum of 10,000 pages through them with very few problems. The 17 series had the openable back, which provided great print quality on heavy envelopes and other things that don't like to bend much. I miss that on the newer ones, but they do have generally excellent quality print and are really fast. We've got a couple of SCX-4725FN laser all-in-ones, too. I have one in my office that I use for most of my printing, light copying and scanning. I really like it. They're usually around $300, but can occasionally be found for $100 or more off. I think the last one we got was around $150 after rebate! Pretty amazing for a network ready, 20+ page per minute printer, copier, scanner, and fax machine.
We used to have mostly HPs, including LJ II & III, but they all died. We might still have one or two in the storage room, but even if they started working again, I have no use for super-heavy, super-slow printers. Come to think of it, I still have a Panasonic KX-P4410 laser that I bought in 92 or 93 that still works fine at 4ppm.
I've owned two personal ink-jets. One was a Lexmark that printed approximately 27 pages before it ran out of ink, and 50 pages before it quit working and I stripped it for parts. I should have known better, but I picked up an HP all-in-one inkjet which has cost me about a dollar a page to use. =(
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This is precisely why I got an HP laser for $65 after rebates.
I musta missed that. HP Laserjet P1006, $100.
Came with a "starter cartridge", that was supposed to last 700 pages. I'm over that now, with now sign of faintness yet.
Sharing across a network is a bit iffy. It didn't seem to much want to work with the cheap-ass USB print server I borrowed from work, and sharing via Windows/printing via Samba ain't the slickest solution.
At the same time, more or less, I bought 2 dinky cartridges for my Mom's HP inkjet. $60 for the pair. :mad:
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Disagree.
HP used to be... until their drivers got clogged with bloatware and their lower end consumer grade lasers moved away from PS/PCL compatibility to proprietary language host-based printing (Mac and Linux incompatibility).
I consider Dells to be the best consumer grade laser printers out there right now.
I agree with the disagree, the low end HP laser printers are horrific. For many they quit providing just a driver, you have to go through their whole installer process with TSR programs. The Dells are nice.
Personally I have a 12 year old HP Laserjet 1100 at home that runs like a champ.
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I agree with the disagree, the low end HP laser printers are horrific. For many they quit providing just a driver, you have to go through their whole installer process with TSR programs. The Dells are nice.
Personally I have a 12 year old HP Laserjet 1100 at home that runs like a champ.
OSX found it and printed to it five minutes after plugging it in. The page went through so fast I thought it had just fed one through blank. It hadn't.
It was $65.