The ridiculous racket of the printer ink industry

Not I.

I had low toner in my laser printer for 6 months before I got around to it.

 

Yeah, I don't replace until the 'Big Red X' comes on, not just when it says "warning!...warning! Low ink!" Usually get a good month of daily printing out of them, so ya - it can save you a LOT of money to wait until they actually DO run out.

 

Speaking of ink, a cousin of mine asked me to fix a printer he was using. It wouldn't print colors despite new cartridges. Well, my cousin annoys me sometimes.


Well, the print heads were dirty. Instead of me actually cleaning them myself, I just let it auto clean them for about 4 hours straight (kept running the utility).

It burned about 85% of his ink by the time they were clean. I felt bad...for a few minutes.:innocent

 

Not one cartridge.


3! It separates colors.

 

That is evil! but hilarious :-D


At my old job, almost everyone had their own laser printer. Being that the toner for these were pretty expensive, whenever the "toner low" light would flash, we would take the cartridge out and give it a good shake. That would give us another 3-4 months depending on how heavily it was used.

 

Done that many a time. Shaking the toner cartridge up does usually work well, (for a surprisingly long while, sometimes), Dy.:cool
When I used to do a lot of house-calls, When I was younger, (and more patient, I guess), if someone really wasted my time and money - they just got the cartridge shaken up and "goodbye here is the account".rolleyes

 

Adding insult to injury is the price of OEM replacement cartridges.

Example: A single Canon 128 toner cartridge is $86.99 at Office Depot. On Amazon, it's about $76.00.

Also on Amazon is a three pack of remanufactured cartridges (4.5 star rating) for $39.99. Not $39.99 each - all three for $39.99 with free shipping.

 

Adding insult to injury, on May 1, Staples will change it's cartridge rebate policy.

You still get $2 and you still get up to 10 per month.

Starting May 1, you HAVE to spend $30 in the previous 180 days on ink. $100 of ink has lasted me 238 days now.

I guess I will start ordering direct from HP now.

 

I swear by three printers.

Kodak, Kodak, and Kodak.

$35 refills (color and black) and the actual printer is pretty affordable.

 

The last time I had to do printing it had to be bound so it went through the university printers. Otherwise I print an average of 1 page every 2 months for home use (really justifies a £40 b&w laser printer), and upwards of 40 a week on free university printers for lab work.

In short, laser is king. Especially if you get toner drums at cheaper eBay rates.

 

Which is it? Toner or drums? They are separate items

I print as much as you do. Maybe less.

 

OP mentioned cartidges....

Are we talking inkjet [Kodak does not make lasers] or laser now?!?

:confused

 

The person I poster after (and towards) did not

 

They gouge like crazy! HP even does one better, gives you a profiler chip with each thing of ink. When the profiler says you are out of ink, you can't print, even though I can see over half a liter of ink in the bladder...

So, we got some profilers, and found a way to 'fix' them. :-D Plus, if you cancel the job at 99%, the printer does not subtract that ink from the profiler.

Most of the other ones we buy in bulk and fill them ourselves. One printer has an annoying feature that lets you use non genuine ink, but you have a nag screen process to go through each time you boot it up.

Hmm, maybe we should tax Big Ink? They are making a heck of a lot more per gallon than Big Oil is. :-D

 

Kodak lets you print pretty cheap. I had a Lexmark printer/scanner/copier. It was cheaper to buy a new printer with ink cartridges than it was to buy the ink cartridges themselves. I don't know if they still do that, I don't print hardly anything myself these days.

 

Cost over time, Kodak is your best bet, especially if you print photos.

And yes, those are ink cartridges (color/blk), not toner.

I purchased an HP years ago on sale for about $80 USD. More than a year down the road I discovered fresh ink cost as much as the printer on sale.

I swear by Kodak for consumer use, like film buffs swear by John Ford.

:-D

 

I was getting at a drum of toner. As in some newer toner cartridges have the toner drum attached to them now, and these are the only type I have ever seen.

I also print about the same as you or less

 

I can't remember the source on this; however I remember reading that - as part of their bankruptcy restructuring - Kodak is exiting the consumer level printer business very soon.

The absolute best deal I've found for inkjets are Brother printers that use the LC-6x or LC-7x ink tanks. It's a 4 tank system - B/C/Y/M.

The savings on ink are found on eBay or Amazon. I just purchased a 20-pack of the LC-65 aftermarket generic ink on Amazon for $22 including shipping (yes, about $1 per cartridge!). I've been using these generic cartridges for about two years and have had no problems with them.

 

Gotcha. Brother printers still separate the two. So you end up replacing toner regularly, but drums last about twice as long.

I am guessing it is to save on cost.

 

That's why I said some. :-D

The industry standard is drums last 4 times as long but cost 3 times as much as a toner cartridge, thus saving money overall, or at least that is what the internet has told me.

 

3 years, original ink on my LaserJet 2605dn.

 

Yep. Done that. Good advice.

Ink based printer cartridges can be refilled on the cheap as well . . .

 

It's bad when they warn you the ink is low but worse when it won't print because it thinks the ink is empty when it isn't.

The reason they do this is because is estimated, the number of times the print head is used since being full, there's no transducer in each ink reservoir that measures the ink level so you can reset the in cartridge chip so it appears to the printer as full but that's another expense, change printer brand or range and the handy chip re-setter you just bought is useless.

I've kinda given up on printers ATM, never really use them and when I decide to fire up the printer after 6 months without use they never work so I guess I'll be looking at a printer that can take long periods without use, or at least with dripping £20 worth of ink into the absorber.

Gonna put my old asorber on ebay, has about £50 worth of ink in it :-D Maybe it can be frakked out:-D