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And thats why laser printers are the best… they have the highest resolution, they are super fast and probibly dont waste ink like this (though the ink for these is like £40 and they is like 4 of them to buy).
The ink is not “wasted” if it needs to be used up for maintenance purposes. Hard to believe that simply “leaving it on” would address this issue, but thats what good scientific testing/design is all about.
I’ve read you need to print a page every week or so to keep things operational.
Few of us really need a printer when Copies are Us is right down the street.
Oh–I thought the secret was going to be that when showing “empty” and not printing that the reservoir still had 25% of the ink left. Makes you wonder if they change horses in giving those “number of printed pages” to expect for each model–is that using the whole container that the consumer is not given?
What was the question again: Are corporations evil?
My former employer, a large player in the industrial printing business, looked into the cost of inkjets, and found that if the ink was sold in bulk, it would cost $2,000 per litre.
Oddly enough, they went into the industrial inkjet business soon after that.
#1, yeah laser printers are cheap until you need to replace the fuser or transfer unit. Our office has a Xerox 6180MFP printer and we are now at the point that the fuser and transfer unit need to be replaced. Unfortunately Xerox resellers do not sell these parts, they must be purchased directly from Xerox. Total cost for fuser and transfer unit: $450. Total cost of new 6180MFP printer: $600. Not only that, they put chips into the Xerox toner cartridges that store the number of copies that were printed, so if you attempt to refill the toner cartridge then it will give you an error once you exceed a certain number of copies. Thankfully there are chip resetting devices out on the internet now. Not surprisingly the transfer unit has a chip built-in also and websites say you can use the transfer unit twice if you reset it, but Xerox only wants you to print 100,000 copies in its lifetime.
We gave up our Epson dealership because of these wasteful practices. Not only is the overflow tank troubling but if you don’t turn the printer off and leave it idle for a period of time, (contrary to commenter #2) the heads don’t get capped and the printheads clog with dry ink. I use a “magical Epson liquid” and a syringe to unclog the heads, but it may also use half a cartridge of ink (each head) to completely clear. So if a customer wants to purge the head, it cost $40.00 for labor, and possible replacement of all cartridges. Truly a rip off and designed to get you to buy new carts, or a new printer. On some Epson models, on the high end, the printer will require a software reset (that indicates you have replaced the overflow tank) before it will work. No need to replace anything, just reset the firmware and you’re good to go. Kind of like the annoying check engine light on your vehicle.
HP inkjets incorporate the printhead into the cartridge, and that just requires cartridge replacement. A much better solution. But like Apple users, Most Epson users swear by the product, and won’t use anything else.
Laser printers are definitely the best deal.
There is third party (free) software that will allow you to clean individual heads that are clogged, instead of the wasteful utility Epson’s driver uses. This can really save you some money. It’s Russian, but it’s safe, I’ve been using it for years. Link below.
http://ssclg.com/epsone.shtml
OK he got a message to service the printer. He opens it up and finds wasted ink. Supposedly 1/4 of the ink ever placed in the printer. Based on what? How old is the printer? How many cartridges, over how long? How many pages printed in that time? Yes there are dirty secrets to ink jet printers, the cost of the printer is made up from the cost of purchasing ink. I really don’t think that’s all that much of a secret any more. Meh.
Many folks here have probably already seen this Kodak ad, but ink jet printers with a Sopranos spin:
Do you cheer or cry when it costs more to refill the ink than buy a new printer?
For disposable printers (notice the $35 price tag on the whole printer?), this is common practice. It is easier on everybody if you just get a new printer every few years for another $35 than having to cleanout the printer. Imagine having to manually change that mess of ink soaked pads…
Professional printers have user replaceable pads.
Head cleaning is a necessary evil. If you don’t use the printer for a while, the ink dries in the jets, and they need to be purged. When you put a new cartridge in the printer, all the heads get primed. There is a vacuum pump under the head parking area that sucks ink out of the cartridges to clean them or prime them.
The choice to leave the printer on all the time is a good one, because turning the printer on causes a startup head cleaning to occur. But you must print a page every day in order to keep the head cleaning timer from activating and doing extra head cleanings. Printers that get used a lot waste very little ink, printers that sit around getting turned on and off every time you want to print waste a whole lot of ink.
There are ways to replace the pads with a bottle to collect the ink… Google is your friend.
Unless you are printing ‘archival’ things like good photos, you should be using cheap yet reputable ink anyway. I buy my everyday ink from http://supermediastore.com and it works great for less than 1/2 the price of ‘real’ ink.
Looks like a Canon printer to me
Canons, Epsons and now Kodaks have the print head in the printer not in the cartridge
One of the rationalizations why the other printers ( HP, Lexmark etc) have such expensive cartridges is that the print head is in expensive cartridge along with the electronics
Sure Canon and Epson , Kodak cartridges are cheap but they are just basically empty shells with ink ( to waste)
If these printers are barely used , then its not the print head in the cartridge that dries but the print head inside the printer
Throw the printer away then
Why are we wasting our money with these printers. Costco or Wal-Mart can do your printing much cheaper and with great results. I used to make inkjet cartridges for a major manufacturer. They decided they could make more money employing somebody overseas at a quarter of the cost. I say quit using them until they bring the manufacturing back to the US where they claim to be from. Tax the heck out of them in a corresponding percentage rate to where their workforce is. Tax the profits to pay the debt down. How’s that for a FAIR trade liberal idea.
I hsve been using the same used HP laserjet 4+ (with duplexor), with the same remanufactured toner cart for…. watch for it…. 8 years. Obviously only gets used for grocery lists, the occasional ledger sheet and hard copies of my tax forms. The point being that inkjet printers simply have not been cost-effective for a long time now. Boycott the product, now! When this printer dies, I’ll get a reconditioned Laserjet 4050.
#13 I’d like to add that the price of the cartridges has not lowered by outsourcing and transferring the jobs overseas. But the profits have risen proportionally to our national debt.
#14. Smart man. The old HP Laserjets were (still are) un-kill-able. Still plenty of parts out there, as long as speed is not an issue, the early Laserjets cannot be beat.
Laser printers are not too much better, I went to buy a new toner cartridge for my old HP3 and found it was cheaper to buy a new laser printer (with better specs) than to buy the replacement cartridge. I was shocked.
I buy most of my printers at Goodwill. Sure, 99 out of 100 are no good, broken, defective, out of ink/toner, etc., but that 1% has kept me going back. Early this year I got a Samsung color laser with over 60% remaining toner for all 4 colors for NINE DOLLARS! I haven’t bought ink or toner in over six years. Of course, not everyone has the time to spend an hour or so a week browsing thrift shops, but there are 3 or 4 of them conveniently located near places I go every week or month — the library, the recycling depot, my computer user group, etc. Try it, you might like it!
Best printer I ever had was a dot matrix that RAN AND RAN AND RAN. Still running downstairs on my amateur radio packet system, and the paper is free since my employer gave me boxes and boxes of unwanted paper.
#16 The original HPs are built like tanks, and repairable. Problem with them is the huge amount of electricity required to keep them on. That fuser assembly is like keeping a 1000 watt lamp on.
Lets see..
Printers that last about 2-3 years..
In that time, ALL parts are changed, no repair.
In that time, the Ink cartridge STYLE is changed..SAME ink(most times) just the cartridges DONT FIT. Which makes for OBSOLETE, and you have to get another printer.
Waste the INK, which costs TONS of money..$15 for milligrams of INK??
Under the USA copyrights, you have the RIGHT to make your own…You can even get the recipe(if you can find it) and make the EXACT SAME for personal use.
Wow, from this video I have been able to discern one thing. The british sound like queers.
Oh yes- I’m aware of this. When I disassambled my old Canon S520 I found what looked like a fifth print head on the mechanism, larger than the rest, beside the usual black, cyan, magenta, and yellow ones. When I immersed this whole unit in water an amazing amount of black ink came from this fifth “head”. That’s when I discovered the waste ink reservoir. My newer Canon MP620 seems to be burning right through the ink, even when I print only occasionally, and I’m certain the darn thing is cleaning every time I turn it on! We need to get the word out on this. If I can’t correct this obnoxious behavior, Canon will lose much of its esteem in my mind.
I just use ink refill kits. I have a very old Pixma that doesn’t have chipped ink reservoirs, so you can fill them up over and over again with no problem.
And before you defend black & white and color laser printers, they too have waste toner reservoirs. The big enterprise class ones seem to waste about 50% of the toner supplied to it, judging from how full the reservoir is when its changed out.
I went with a cheap laser and never looked back. I got a Brother 2070N. Good for all my printing needs. The one time I needed color, I brought a PDF of what I wanted to work and printed there. We have a selection of ink jets at work for various testing purposes.
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