What printers use the cheapest cartridges ?

[the snooper]

any one see watchdog the other night, there was a bit on ink cartridges and in the last few years the makers have scammed the customer, they had 3 cartridges the same make the oldest was full of sponge to hold the ink the middle age cartrige was 3/4 full and the newet had a small square in it and they worked out if they bought enough cartridges to harvest a litre of ink the cost would be £2400 per litre

so the answer is to look at what the cartrige holds against the price of the cartriges
they also worked out from a company making pattern cartridges that the cost to make each cartridge was 29 pence.

talk about a license to print money, it seems cartridges are the closest thing

 

[bump]

The Samsung laser is a badge engineered Dell. There was some reason why I bought the Dell in preference, but can't recall it. There were subtle differences. It is the 1320 model and a full set of cartridges is under £30

It's the 1320C, there is one sat in my home office. Full set of high capacity toners £23 from Amazon. I'll keep it running until the drum fails, and then replace with another machine of a similar spec.

 

[bump]

typo

they also worked out from a company making pattern cartridges that the cost to make each cartridge was 29 pence.

talk about a license to print money, it seems cartridges are the closest thing

Yep, the equipment is a loss leader with the revenue being recouped through consumable sales.

The games console market is identical, as is Sky / Virgin / BT Infinity.

If you can get more people to buy your product up front and then accept the lock in costs, your laughing. Looking at it another way would you pay £800 + installation fee and then £10 a month to Sky?

 

[penfold]

I bought a HP laserjet 4 12 years ago for £40; it's the size of a house but just keeps churning out print and spares are readily available although I've not needed any yet. I was perturbed when I first got it that the print count was ~120k but I've added another 20k.

 

[ronan]

Another question on this subject, I refilled the empty cartridges in the hp deskjet, I did the maintenance routine - cleaning the heads and all that, I open a simple single page work document and attempt to print it and get nothing, not a single drop of ink on the page. Yet the printer prints off a test page perfectly after the head cleaning and aligning etc. Someone told me there is a chip in the cartridges that tells the printer the cartridges are empty. Is there a way to reset these chips or fool or disable them ?

 

[Wozzaaah]

If the cartridges are telling the printer they're empty then it won't print a test page.
Does the paper actually feed through the printer but come out blank?

 

[ronan]

If the cartridges are telling the printer they're empty then it won't print a test page.
Does the paper actually feed through the printer but come out blank?

yes , the paper goes around but not a sausage on it coming out.

 

[Wozzaaah]

That's really odd! Try various print quality settings to see if it makes any difference.
I.e. if it prints on the highest quality settings then it could be lack of ink getting through as on that setting it will push the maximum amount through the print head.

 

[ronan]

That's really odd! Try various print quality settings to see if it makes any difference.
I.e. if it prints on the highest quality settings then it could be lack of ink getting through as on that setting it will push the maximum amount through the print head.

i'll give it a whirl and see what happens.

 

[Premiershipman]

There are lots of ways to get round expensive cartridges - compatibles, refills and syringes or a continuous ink system.

I have a Canon MP printer and bought a continuous ink system for it which has saved me a fortune !

 

[MattF]

Another question on this subject, I refilled the empty cartridges in the hp deskjet, I did the maintenance routine - cleaning the heads and all that, I open a simple single page work document and attempt to print it and get nothing, not a single drop of ink on the page. Yet the printer prints off a test page perfectly after the head cleaning and aligning etc. Someone told me there is a chip in the cartridges that tells the printer the cartridges are empty. Is there a way to reset these chips or fool or disable them ?

Several simple things to check first. Disconnect printer from mains for thirty seconds or so then plug back in. Uninstall the print driver, reboot pc and then reinstall the driver. Check your cabling between printer and computer. As mentioned, if it prints a test page okay, the cartridges themselves are blameless.

 

[rtbcomp]

If the cartridges are electronically protected it would a simple matter for the printer firmware to print test pages but not print online.

Are there any troubleshooting tips in the manual or on the HP website?

 

[MattF]

If the cartridges are electronically protected it would a simple matter for the printer firmware to print test pages but not print online.

That's true. Surely none of the manufacturers can be that anal though? I generally never touch inkjet stuff, so have no idea one way or the other. That would be **** poor if they were resorting to those tactics these days.

 

[rtbcomp]

I think that's exactly what they'd do, if someone complains a printer isn't working but it prints a test page then they can say the printer itself is OK and fitting a genuine cartridge will fix the problem.

Printer manufacturers virtually give printers away so they have to make profit on the cartridges.

 

[MattF]

That's rotten. As if the build quality they inflict on people isn't bad enough....

 

[rtbcomp]

In the good old days I used to advise people to buy the heaviest printer they could afford, on the grounds that it would be better built.

 

[MattF]

It was a good methodology. I always stuck to the office level stuff because it was worth working on, but these days, most of it is no better than the domestic stuff. The old units were built like tanks. The newer stuff though...

There's one of the HP desktop lasers which springs to mind, (can't recall the model offhand), which is a prime example of detestable design. For years the method of making the transfer belt a drop in unit has worked perfectly well, then some numpty, (probably in the accounts dept. when they realised it would stop customers replacing them themselves), decided to secure them in place with a couple of screws/spindles instead, necessitating a partial disassembly of the unit to replace what should be a drop in consumable which can be replaced by the customer within a minute or so. Wouldn't be so bad, but the general design of the unit would easily have allowed sticking to the traditional method. Nothing more than an after sale money making scheme.

Had a Dell unit several months ago too. What should have been an owt and nowt fault became a replacement printer jobbie due to their spares pricing and lack of general spares availability.

 

[rtbcomp]

At least if you have to mend it with a new one you can go to an alternative manufacturer.

 

[MattF]

There is that plus point.

 

[J_K]

If you want a printer that'll last a lifetime and you can get spares for then buy an Oki.
Our main office colour laser has done 67836 pages.
I've changed everything in it in that time though.
I looked at changing it last year and the new technology is actually crayon printers.
The machines are expensive but the crayon dust stuff is VERY cheap. And refills do like 20,000 pages.