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Inkjet printers, I have had it.

NickD on Sun October 19, 2003 12:29 PM User is offline

When to print some envelops on my HP, the cartridge was bone dry, had some I purchased new two years ago, both were bone dry, yes I tried the cleaning routine and even soaked the bottoms in alcohol, not a drop of ink came out. I already got angry at my Epson the print heads corroded away and the HP made more sense. I took the rounds of the office stores in town, these things really came down in price. Looked at a Lexmark and with a rebate I had, the price was $39.95. The salesperson is very willing to help, the first question I had, does the printer come with "full" cartridges, he said yes, too many people were complaining about that so they fill them now.

How much are replacement cartridges for this thing, it was about 33 bucks for the black, 37 for the color, and if I wanted the photo quality cartridge, that was around 42 bucks. It didn't take me long to add up the 33 and 37 to realize I would be paying 70 bucks for cartridges for a 40 buck printer.

But wait, the printer was not 40 bucks, it required a special USB cable, normal on one end, special on the other, how much is that, $19.99 he replied. Well don't any printers come with the USB cable? Well he said the higher end Epsons still have the parallel port. So I replied, I just past your mouse area, and you have a six buck mouse with a nice long USB cable already on it, will you toss a USB cable in on the deal? I cannot do that he said. Well why do you charge 20 bucks extra for a USB cable for a 40 buck printer, but give on free with a six buck mouse?

Then I asked, how long are sealed cartridges good for? He said four years, I said I purchased HP cartridges two years ago and they are as dry as a bone. I feel I will kick around buying another inkjet.

For the fun of it, I got on ebay, hundreds for sale for 99 cents, two bucks, the hitch is, no cartridges, and some want outrageous prices for handling.

I though over my inkjet needs, I tried photos, forget it, the paper price is outrageous, if I want a true photo quality print, will use my 35 mm camera as an 8 by 10 enlargement is only a couple of bucks. It's just the envelops, went back to the office supply and found some laser envelops without the folds in the middle, just a few cents more.

Screw inkjet printers, I have had it, both my extra two each color and black cartridges were bone dry and I just pitched 120 bucks in the trashcan, along with that HP printer.

Edited: Sun October 19, 2003 at 12:30 PM by NickD

k5guy on Sun October 19, 2003 1:19 PM User is offline

If you are really fed up, the price on laser printers are down. You can buy a decent COLOR laser printer for around $2000. You can buy quite a few inkjets for that. But if your business depends on the printer working, its worth it.

At home, I have a HP Deskjet 930C for me, and a HP Deskjet 840C for the wife. No problems with either. We buy our ink cartridges at places that sells a lot of them. So, we have never had a bad one.


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Bigchris on Sun October 19, 2003 1:38 PM User is offline

Nick, I always get my HP cartridges on eBay for $12-13 each, color or black and white. I just search on the HP part number and reject any that aren't genuine HP (no refills) or don't have future date codes. Sometimes it takes a week or two to find what I want but I've never been disappointed. Someone in the ink business told me that spare cartridges will last longer if you seal them in a ziplock bag and store them in the refrigerator. He also told me that carts that have been opened (unsealed) can be stored the same way by including a piece of dampened sponge in the bag.

NickD on Sun October 19, 2003 3:56 PM User is offline

I checked on cartridges on ebay as well, most kill you on the S&H charges for around 6-8 bucks even though it cost them about 70 cents to put a stamp on it and drop it in the mail. If this jacks that price up to closer to the 20 buck range, I will still be better off buying that new Lexmark for 40 bucks with two cartridges, provided, the guy isn't lying about the fill of these cartridges. I have an old mouse around here, can cut off the USB cord and hard wire it in. And when the cartridges go dry, just pitch the entire printer, maybe by then, a new one will be down to 20 bucks with two new cartridges. Even now it's cheaper to buy the entire printer package than the replacement cartridges, it's crazy.

FrankD. on Sun October 19, 2003 4:29 PM User is offline

Hi Nick, what HP cartridges are you using ? I have a old DeskJet 890C that uses # 45 and # 23 cartridges. Most of the ink goes in the spit well so i was not about to spend $60+ to replace cartridges. I found a refill kit at Sams Club for $16. called Stratitec, comes with 8 bottles of ink.. The black did not want to print after refilling, but the instructions showed how to inject air in to make the ink flow. It sure was messy to refill but worth it. I think HP makes there ink cartridges finicky on purpose so you will not refill .

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FrankD.

JJM on Sun October 19, 2003 4:37 PM User is offline

Nick,

When you see those outrageous S&H some eBay sellers charge, it think it has more to do with the sellers trying to evade the high final value eBay fees, since those fees are computed on bid price and not the shipping and handling.

You always need to check the price of consumables when purchasing a printer, copier or fax. What usually seems to be the case is the cheaper the device, the higher the consumable cost, and vice versa.

Joe

Bigchris on Sun October 19, 2003 10:47 PM User is offline

And my experience has been that the Lexmark consumables are much more costly than the HP stuff.

NickD on Sun October 19, 2003 11:01 PM User is offline

Ebay is getting a bit greedy from when they first started, used to be a fixed fee, until they gave themselves a substantial commission. It's strange, some of those 99 cent auctions use pages and pages loaded with pictures for a two bit commission while some real high end items have a very short ad but would have to pay several hundred dollars.

I have (had) and 812C, but long gave up on trying to refill a cartridge, the trick is to inject about 1 cc or so a week to keep it full. I ripped oven a dried up cartridge, there is a rather stiff sponge on the inside even when wet. The one I opened was as hard as a rock and the ink would just bounce off of it. I used a medical syringe with a long needle and just drilled a #80 hole.

Don't those marketing guys realize they are charging more for the cartridges than the entire printer with the cartridges? And why do they have to have so many different cartridges? With every printer change there has to be a dedicated cartridge. And I believe 4,800 DPI with the same belief as the Easter Bunny.

k5guy on Sun October 19, 2003 11:02 PM User is offline

I buy cartridges at Costco (like Sam's club) and they buy bulk and sell cheap. Since they are cheap the stock turns over fast. Yes, the printer manufacturers like HP and Lexmark make the money on the ink and give away the printers. People used to complain about spending $800 for a printer. Now they complain about $50 for a ink refill. The people selling printers have to make money somewhere. They can't give away for free and stay in business.

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NickD on Mon October 20, 2003 11:38 AM User is offline

I still feel anyone would be foolhardy to pay 75 bucks for two cartridges when they can buy a whole new printer with even two half filled cartridges cheaper.

Guess I don't care to pitch things that still function or can be made to function and detecting that with all this recycling BS, the fact that I have to now wash my garbage before putting it out or spend $115.00 for an idler pulley just because a two buck bearing is bad is getting to me. Getting constant mail from the city how important it is to recycle. Why is soda put in aluminum can when reusable bottles were reused for well over a century. As a poor kid, finding an empty pop bottle on the ground was a miracle and worth it's weight in gold for a nice ice cream cone or a candy bar. Today, I get pissed off when I find an aluminum pop can tossed in my yard.

The government is putting all the pressure on consumers to recycle when the consumer has no choice. Why doesn't Wal-Mart for example that sells motor oil provide a container for returning your used motor oil. Found one place in town that will take the old oil for free, but other places charge for this service. Our wrecking yard was taking appliance for free, they can smash them and sell at a profit, but with the city charging a fortune for taking recyclable, they too have added a fee, but slightly under what the city is charging.

I am be old fashion in my thinking, but the best way to recycle is not to have to recycle, getting tired of reading in SAE Engineering on how $50,000 vehicles have to be designed with recycling in mind. In the 60's, you could buy the parts to make a complete unit for any product as the assembly and test labor was not in the cost. Today, one or two parts greatly exceeds the value of a brand new unit. A, just a CRT for a monitor supposingly at my discount price was 50 bucks more than a brand new monitor! Ha, the garbage man just took that monitor, the CRT was with the glass, and the plastic was with the plastic, it only took me ten minutes to break that down, saved me a trip across town and 25 bucks, it's crazy. If I could have purchased a new CRT for even 75 bucks, it would be still here.

Delco wants $125.00 for a brand new alternator with a brand new rotor, but they want $175.00 just for the rotor, the inkjets are not much different. Why not an inkjet where you can pour in the ink, or take apart the ink holder and clean it? Too much junk like this is already on the market. I love my Konica copy machine, for ten bucks I buy just the black power not replacing the entire drum assembly just because I printed out a hundred or so 99% black test prints.

I had the opportunity to buy an HP inkjet plotter cheap, ha, until I looked at the price of cartridges they wanted. Still happy with my ink pen plotter, some of my pens are over ten years old and still working. And I can see how much ink is in the pen before starting a very long plot. You can't do that with an inkjet cartridge, and it can go dry right at the end of a long plot, it's stupid in my humble opinion.

On one hand, we are being hit hard on recycling, and on the other, the corporations including the entire automotive and computer industry is selling us throwaway crap. So who is getting screwed? I don't like getting screwed this way.

k5guy on Tue October 21, 2003 3:34 AM User is offline

Nick, things still haven't changed. I recall replacing the drum on some old mainframe line printers because they wore the zero out. Since they were a financials outfit and printed a lot of payroll checks, it was always the zero. That drum was $5000 a pop.

Sure there are printers that let you refill them or replace the colors independently. It just won't be the one that you find on sale for 75 bucks. Tektronix used to have wax disublimation printers. They did a really good job too. Those didn't have problems with ink drying out, cause the pigment was in the wax. You could refill them too, but the wax was a little pricey. Very nice output, though.

I used to have a HP designjet 755CM at work that was great. Some of the postscript drivers could cause it to reboot, but the HPGL was nice. We used to do a lot of E sheet plotting on it. But, they aren't cheap either.

One way or another, the big outfits will find a way to get some cash out of you.

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Karl Hofmann on Tue October 21, 2003 6:08 AM User is offlineView users profile

Nick,

It all comes down to price and profit. The manufacturers know that 80% of buyers will buy on price and price alone, I know of some folk who will waste half a day on the phone to save a fiver (£5). Quality is not important, that it is cheap IS. The manufacturers must still show a profit, so they make their profit on the consumables, spares and other bits, at the end of the day it does pay to buy quality unless your cheap ink jet is bought to complete one task or job over a short period of time when at the end it will be empty or worn out and the printer is simply chucked in the bin

The thow away attitude annoys me too but untill the masses figure out that to buy cheap works out more expensive in the long run we are stuck with it. My buddy almost broke the bank 15 years ago when he set up his new buisiness on buying a new colour photocopier, but that copier works all day every day and has proven to be a tough and reliable piece of kit but he can no longer get spares for it and he cant get the salesman who is trying to sell him a new one to commit to the reliabillity of a new unit, I guess that there is no point in building quality if the bottom line is king

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Never knock on deaths door... Ring the doorbell and run away, death really hates that!

Edited: Tue October 21, 2003 at 6:11 AM by Karl Hofmann

NickD on Tue October 21, 2003 8:16 AM User is offline

I am pleased with my laser printers again now that I found that Canadian source for toner, 7-8 bucks a fill and it works great. My Konica copier uses just a toner refill, cheap. I was told the drum is good for 300,000 copies and would cost about $300.00 to replace. I just happened to hit ebay one day and purchased a brand new drum kit for 15 bucks in a sealed carton. I also found the service manual for it for five bucks. I think I can change it if the time ever comes if I can find a screwdriver somewhere in my tool box.

Color is the only reason to get an inkjet, I heard on the news that the treasury department changed the color of the twenty dollar bill as photocopy equipment is getting so great. I did try scanning a one dollar bill at supposingly 9,600 DPI and printing it out at supposingly 4,800 dpi using all that fancy gamma and color correcting software. I couldn't pass that off to my dog, this was just a test to see how crummy this stuff is and how much the marketers lie on the box. I tore up the results and burned it and they it made any difference.

Watched a counterfeiter on the History channel program on money using a color copier, he past off some after lots of experimentation, but hardly made it one day before getting caught.

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