inkjets: a color cartridge gripe...

[Kejtar]

So my last el cheapo ink jet printer (epson) wore out the B&W cartridge in it(again). I went to pick up a replacement one and to my surprise about 2 pages later it complained that the color cartidges are empty as well (it was one of the ones that couple color cartridges; one for each color). Turns out that pretty much all the ink jet printer manufacturers have the ink cycle through the nozzles to keep them clear (whether you print color or not in this case). It makes some sense from the perspective of keeping them clear, but it bugs that if you print B&W only you're still going to have to buy color cartridges every so often. Funniest thing though is that it cost me less(or about the same) to buy a NEW printer then it would have cost me to buy color cartridges.
Where is the logic in it? For now I just picked up another el cheapo ink jet, but I have a feeling that my next one will be a laser as those could be had in B&W flavour only and the toner to text printed relation seems somewhat reasonable (except that the initial investment is higher).
Oh.. Btw, is there any place that recycles inkjet printers? I got about 4 now sitting in the garage All fairly recent models too.

 

[Lawn Cher']

If they work you could maybe donate them to a charity and take a tax deduction.

 

[Glenn B]

just keep buying new printers. It is cheaper. They make no money on the printers... they count on you buying ink. That is where the profit is. One of the most expensive fluids on Earth.

 

[Kejtar]

If they work you could maybe donate them to a charity and take a tax deduction.

I'd feel bad about cause someone will end up buying ink and then spend more money on it then they would on a new printer.

 

[Kejtar]

just keep buying new printers. It is cheaper. They make no money on the printers... they count on you buying ink. That is where the profit is. One of the most expensive fluids on Earth.

Yeah... that's what I keep thinking. I almost bought a refill kit for the epson though, but it turns out that after refilling it I need a special gismo which "tells" the cartridge that it's full so that the printer can see it being full (?). Also in the bast I never had too much luck with refill kits (cheap ink sucks)

 

[RichP]

Comm on you cheap SOB, go buy a decent laser color printer with a nic in it and be done with the pusher manufacturers of inkjets, sheesh.... the only inkjet I have left is a HP T55 all on one that does 90% faxing and a 600 epson that won't die, even loaning it out to customers for 3 or 4 days at a time...
If you *really, really, really* have to have an inkjet go to staples or other sites and look up the duty cycle of a cartridge and pick the printer based on the best duty cycle... I think you will be shocked when you see the duty cycle of the cheap printer carts to be in the neighborhood of 50 pages... :laugh3:
Inkjets under $300 uke: uke: uke:

 

[Kejtar]

Comm on you cheap SOB, go buy a decent laser color printer with a nic in it and be done with the pusher manufacturers of inkjets, sheesh.... the only inkjet I have left is a HP T55 all on one that does 90% faxing and a 600 epson that won't die, even loaning it out to customers for 3 or 4 days at a time...
If you *really, really, really* have to have an inkjet go to staples or other sites and look up the duty cycle of a cartridge and pick the printer based on the best duty cycle... I think you will be shocked when you see the duty cycle of the cheap printer carts to be in the neighborhood of 50 pages... :laugh3:
Inkjets under $300 uke: uke: uke:

Actually I get way more then 50 pages out of each cartridge and last time I calculated the benefit of going to the laser isn't that great for me: while the cost of printing per page is less, the startup cost is higher and the potential maintenace is higher (if the laser printer breaks on me I would be hesitant to toss it like I did my old HP that died).
On top of it, why would I want to spend money on a color printer? If I want to get pictures printed I can get them printed (profesionally on really nice printers) and sent to me for a really good price.
Edit: btw, I try not to spend more then $50 for my inkjet printers

 

[RichP]

I have a bother HL-1850 19ppm with a built in duplexer, I paid if I remember correctly about $280 or so at office max, I added 64mb memory for I think $30 and have been using it for almost 3 years now on the origianal toner/fuser, I use it for billing, pamphlets, my kids use it extensively, it's plugged into my SMC router which has a print server built in. I do need to get the nic for it so I can put the SMC away and really start using my cisco. I bought another newer model one for a customer back in january, another Brother, almost the same except it has a second tray and built in nic. I think that was $460 with a $100 rebate, they have a body shop and use it heavily for approx 30 estimates a day. Bulletproof so far. I would never bother with buying an inkjet again. If the T55 goes it will be replaced with a flatbed laser all in one. Just one less thing to worry about...
The only thing I used the color for is to print visio stuff for customers, they seem to like it better that way....

 

[ECKSJAY]

If you're doing mostly B&W might I suggest MIS Associates' conversion cartridges? http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm

One thing to keep in mind is that yes...you're going to have color ink flow through when printing B&W UNLESS you specify BLACK INK ONLY in the advanced printer settings. Ever mix color paints when you were a kid? Mix them all together and you get very dark tones. That's how your inkjets are working. Tell it to use black ink only and you're not going to have color flow. Only drawback is that with one black tone you're going to have poor quality images...since your lighter, or gray, tones are going to be spaced out pixels of black. Using MIS' conversion kit you get various tones of black in place of color cartridges. When printing, you print a normal 'color' image...but the printer prints in shades of black instead. This yields BRILLIANT B&W prints. Of course this is something you convert once...the print heads need to be cleaned of all color ink, which is somewhat of a bitch.

 

[olivedrabcj7]

i have to say that epsons are some of the shatiest inkjets ive had. my current printer is a cheapo hewlett packard from wally world. its got a scanner built in. it was less than 100 bucks and ive printed probably a few hundred pages through it on the "stock" cartriges. it hasnt jammed once, and it prints fairly quick. my epsons were always printing fawked up looking pages with big black streaks on the pages and running out of ink on brand new cartridges and getting all jammed up. id have to say go get a hewlett packart inkjet. i love mine!!

 

[ECKSJAY]

i have to say that epsons are some of the shatiest inkjets ive had. my current printer is a cheapo hewlett packard from wally world. its got a scanner built in. it was less than 100 bucks and ive printed probably a few hundred pages through it on the "stock" cartriges. it hasnt jammed once, and it prints fairly quick. my epsons were always printing fawked up looking pages with big black streaks on the pages and running out of ink on brand new cartridges and getting all jammed up. id have to say go get a hewlett packart inkjet. i love mine!!

Every HP inkjet at work, home, or that immediate family/friends had were junk. Not only in the crapping out department, but in the "I can work with any OS I'm connected to" dept.

Have an Epson 880 and an R200 photo printer at the moment. Neither has hiccupped even once. Next purchase will be a Stylus 2200.

 

[BruteXJ]

I'm pretty picky about my printers, since I make a buck here and there with my photography. I searched and researched, and re-researched and found Canon printers to be the best for me. The big bonus was that although mine is primarily a photo printer, it has an auxillary black ink tank, extra large, just for b&w documents (web prints will of course print any color on the page), which it automatically selects for documents once you set it up. Staples brand ink cartridges for my printer are only $12.00 each, and do a fine job. Even if I run out of color for photos, I can print documents for six months on the aux. black cartridge.

Mine is the Canon i860, and I paid approx. $135.00 for it a year or so ago at Circuit City. (as far as the photos, other photog friends have returned their $400.00+ photo printers and bought the same or similar models)

 

[Matthew Currie]

I've had good luck with my not quite bottom of the line Hewlett Packard 932C now about 3 years old. One advantage of HP's over some others is that the ink cartridges come with a new head. This makes them a bit more expensive (though not as much more as you'd expect) but because you get a new head every time, the printer is designed not to bother running so many wasteful cleaning cycles, and the ink lasts better. It also means you don't have to throw away the printer or send it off for expensive service when the head clogs. I had an Epson before, and every time it started it ran through a cleaning cycle, and if it sat for a while without use it could require as many as 8 cleaning cycles before it worked right. It was always running out of ink, and it would sometimes stop and demand ink before the cartridges were done, requiring an undocumented software program to trick the printer into restarting. Add to that that you couldn't be sure a photo would come out tolerably well until you'd wasted the sheet, and it was a pretty poor deal. I tossed it happily when it finally clogged for good.

One disadvantage of my HP, at least, is that its ink is not compatible with most other brands of paper (fades quickly), so for high quality photos I need to buy HP paper, which is of course, expensive.

My stepson has a Canon, which was cheap and seems to run perfectly with no trouble, makes good photos, and is less choosy about paper.

Anyway, in answer to Rich P's suggestion of a laser, that's fine if you're not doing photography. If you want really good quality photo printing, you still need ink.

 

[Eagle]

just keep buying new printers. It is cheaper. They make no money on the printers... they count on you buying ink. That is where the profit is. One of the most expensive fluids on Earth.

Got that right.

Bought a Lexmark 515 (I think) for my step-granddaughter in Chile. Printer with both B&W and color cartridges cost $50 (U.S. equivalent). Went to buy spare cartridges before heading back to the U.S. and almost had a heart attack. The color cartridge would have cost as much as the whole shebang. In the end I bought a spare B&W (for about $25) and told her mother not to let her print in color unless it was for school work.

 

[Yucca-Man]

I've had good luck with my not quite bottom of the line Hewlett Packard 932C now about 3 years old. One advantage of HP's over some others is that the ink cartridges come with a new head.

One downside at least with the HPs and maybe others is that the cartridges also have a date in 'em. The printer talks to the "HP Toolbox" and if the cartridge is over a certain age, it won't print. I believe they're doing that with the Laserjets as well - for Joe Average it isn't a problem unless you try refilling, but for an office manager it can be a nightmare if the toner/cartridges are an older lot and don't get used up fast enough.

For the record, I got my HP DeskJet 952c some four years ago and it's outlasted two computers so far...

Anyway, in answer to Rich P's suggestion of a laser, that's fine if you're not doing photography. If you want really good quality photo printing, you still need ink.

Or hit one of the stores with a photo printer kiosk, and print 'em up relatively cheaply).

 

[Kejtar]

Or hit one of the stores with a photo printer kiosk, and print 'em up relatively cheaply).

Actually if you shop online you can get some good prices for photo printing. Last year when my Sis was visiting with her family they took whole bunch of pics and ended up printing the whole lot and their cost came out way less then what I ussually paid for development and prints of the regular film. The trick was though to print them in batches (as in accumulate then print).

Remi

 

[Kejtar]

Got that right.

Bought a Lexmark 515 (I think) for my step-granddaughter in Chile. Printer with both B&W and color cartridges cost $50 (U.S. equivalent). Went to buy spare cartridges before heading back to the U.S. and almost had a heart attack. The color cartridge would have cost as much as the whole shebang. In the end I bought a spare B&W (for about $25) and told her mother not to let her print in color unless it was for school work.

But here is how they get you: even if you don't print in color it still uses the ink (not much, but still) to clean the nozzles. Sooner or later you will run out of color ink and you're back to square one: buying a new printer

 

[XJ_ranger]

in one year at college, i have run through 3 sets of cartriges in my Epson CX6400...

though the last set were el-crapo made in tiawan no-name on the label cartriges... and they sucked... color sucked...

im gonna buy the Epson High-Capacity cartriges next time...

oh - and my excuse for owning an inkjep POS - it was free with my webwheeler... Toshiba Satallite A75

 

[Matthew Currie]

I'm not sure whether or not the cartridges for my HP are dated. It's not that new. In any case, since I do use it for photography, and the inks are pretty critical, I've never tried refills. It's one of the last of a line that used bigger reservoirs than any other model, an advantage, since you pay less per drop of ink than with others (I figure they charge by the drop - if you owned a gallon of printer ink you could retire for life). I live about 35 miles from the nearest place that would do good prints, and prefer to do my own at home anyway, because most places will crop a 35 mm. format to 8x10 instead of printing it at full proportion. Eventually I'll probably have to get a better-quality one, and I'd really like to find one that prints out to the edge of the paper, but this one does pretty well.

If you do a lot of black and white printing, one possible good deal would be to look for an older Canon. They turn up very cheap at thrift stores, and sometimes free. Some of these could take a big black cartridge in place of the color ones. Some others used a small black cartridge that only cost something like 8 or 9 bucks, making them a good deal for students. When my stepson started college I bought him a Dell computer that came with a cheapo Canon printer as a freebie. It lasted nearly 4 years, a pretty good performance considering the amount of stuff it churned out.

 

[Yucca-Man]

Okay, that's pretty decent logic.