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Inkjet Scam

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Salamander_King, Dec 17, 2018.

  1. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    We are tree huggers. We want to save the environment. We want to reduce waste. Over the years we have made almost everything we can to go paperless. All the bills paid online, tax filed electronically, no hand-written checks, and no printed letters for years. As hard as we have tried, there are still some occasions we still need to print out hard paper copies. I still have an old HP laserjet printer, but it has a parallel port and no network capability. Keeping a dedicated PC as a print server is a pain. Besides, none of our current PC's have parallel port connectivity anymore. Also, we are not using PC as much as tablets and smartphones nowadays.

    Canon MX492.jpg

    Accordingly, I decided to purchase a Mobile and Tablet Printing compatible printer for the jobs. On sale for $39.99 at Amazon, the Canon inkjet printer I ordered was cheap yet perfectly functional for our needs. That is until it runs out of ink. A pair of black and color OEM ink cartilage cost more than the printer itself. While searching the internet for cheaper ink cartilage, I found this video. LOL
     
  2. egg_salad

    egg_salad Active Member

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    12 years ago, I found an HP LaserJet 1200 in a dumpster. It still works. Haven't changed the toner cartridge yet. It does choke a bit on huge .pdf files, but it spits 'em out eventually.
     
  3. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Yeah, I am sure my HP LaserJet still works too. That is if it gets connected to a computer with a parallel port. I still have a couple boxes of unused toner for it too. I just did not want to mess with setting up a dedicated print server for our WiFi, but now in retrospect, that may be far more economical than keep buying the ink cartilages for a new WiFi-enabled inkjet. :oops:
     
  4. iplug

    iplug Senior Member

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    Yep, as in the video, most manufacturers have long sold the printer at cost or loss then soak the customer on refill ink/toner.

    We have always been able to find aftermarket ink/toner for a fraction of the cost.
     
  5. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I found aftermarket remanufactured cartilages, but they are still around $30. I am going to try ink refill, but before doing that, I may order another printer to get just an extra set of ink cartilages. LOL
     
    #5 Salamander_King, Dec 17, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2018
  6. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    When I used to use inkjets, I refilled cartridges. But there were always problems with printheads clogging, even with the million dollar an ounce name brand cartridges. I went to a color laser printer about four years ago and have never had a problem since. Toner is pretty pricey, but it's way cheaper per page and you don't have to keep clearing its throat to keep it functional.
     
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  7. iplug

    iplug Senior Member

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    As in the video, we also had poor experiences with inkjet printers besides the ink refill issues - they malfunctioned or completely failed frequently. They were cheap to buy but that was about the only upside.

    As with most people, our usual needs were standard black printing for routine documents, so a laser printer worked great for that. Our experience with Brother laser printers has been much better than our inkjet woes. We had one for almost 10 years then gave it away about 3 years ago - it was still working, but we wanted doubled sided printing and WiFi for our laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

    But we missed being able to print the occasional color stuff. A couple of years ago we got a new color laser printer for $200 and still have yet to replace the color toner (looks like we will soon). We recently purchased a set of 4 aftermarket toner cartridges (1 black + 3 yellow) so have that ready to go when the color cartridges need to be replaced. It is also WiFi enabled and prints double sided.
     
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  8. VFerdman

    VFerdman Senior Member

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    InkJet is the absolutely WRONG technology for the occasional printer user. The ink dries out and when you most need to print something, you can't. I have figured it out about 15 years ago when I bought my first (and last) inkjet printer. I have been using an inexpensive laser printer ever since and am on my second one in said 15 years. I have a similar use case as the OP. We mostly print shipping labels and occasional other things. We are still on the toner cartridge that came with the printer, which is an introductory small capacity one. The printer works great, has network capability, we can print from mobile devices connected to our wifi. It was not $30 cheap, more like $200, but here we are 7 years later still using it and its original toner cartridge. I have no idea how inkjets are still around. The only way to sell them is to "give" them away. It's a travesty how wasteful and deceptive they are.

    I highly recommend spending a little more on a decent, but inexpensive laser printer for the occasional use. Laser toner does not dry up and is always ready to print something no matter how long it has sat unused.
     
  9. walterm

    walterm Active Member

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  10. iplug

    iplug Senior Member

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    Our 4-pack aftermarket color laser toner replacement cartridges (black + 3 color) were only $30. This should last us at least another 2 years at our rate of use - probably several years more as the original manufacturer cartridges are usually teaser, low capacity ones.
     
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  11. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    In addition to an old workhorse, HP LaserJet Printer on which I printed thousands of pages for my dissertation many many years ago, I still have an old DOT MATRIX PRINTER somewhere.:D
     
  12. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    we just picked up a b&w cartridge for our hp inkjet for $6.50 freight free on amazon prime

    comparable hp is $35. for one, a bit less for multiples.

    looks like new and works great. we have the same problem with occasional printing, and the cartridge always dried up in between.

    even if we spend $13./year, that's cheaper than going to laser
     
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  13. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    For a real print job, I just use LaserJet at work. We will likely to use this inkjet as a scanner more often than a printer or copier.

    Yeah, thought about that. But having a dedicated PC for just occasional printing was not something I wanted to do. Besides, LasarJet does not have the scanner capability we needed more than printing ability.

    Come to think of it, I also have Phaser 8500 solid ink printer I bought from my work when our office upgraded to HP color laser printer. Got it almost free, but it's so heavy and huge! And it did not come with the inks. A set of color ink costs over $300! I never set it up and used it at my house. LOL

    Yap, that's about what I am hoping to spend on our inkjet. We print less than 12 pages/year.
     
  14. VFerdman

    VFerdman Senior Member

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    Scanner function can be handles by your smartphone, if you have one. Apps like this one provide very good and free way to scan your documents.
     
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  15. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Yes, I have used those apps for occasions. The problem with using a phone as a scanner is that often lighting is not perfect and trying to get the whole page scanned into perfectly focused flat images are difficult. It becomes more problematic when the original is paper with folded crease. I use to own a flatbed scanner too, but don't remember what I did with it.
     
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  16. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Got a Brother Color LED printer (HL3040-CN, comparable to laser) a few years back for about $80. A suite of 3 color and one black cartridges sets me back a bit over $200 IIRC. They are very durable and long-lived though. But: the printer is not photo quality. For that I've got an inkjet: Canon Pro100, takes 8 cartridges, and IIRC I can get them as a suite for, huh: a bit over $200.

    B&H often outdoes Amazon for printer supplies, btw.
     
  17. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    had to look them up:)
     
  18. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Oh, yeah I almost forgot. For photo quality printing, I also did have photo only dye sub printer somewhere. I have no idea where it is now. lol
     
  19. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    you're talking new oem? i don't see anything for less than $6.50
     
  20. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    I started scanning film with a flatbed, still have it, can't remember the last time I used it. It IS vastly superior to a cell phone pic, but a hassle. I run it with VueScan, fwiw.

    I dropped the the flatbed for a dedicated film scanner, a Minolta Dual Scan IIRC (scans at around 2800 dpi). Then moved to the Minolta 5400 scanner. For most stuff. For color negatives I picked up a Nikon scanner.

    I mostly finished scanning my color slides, about 1800, have a 2 or 3 rolls worth, really old ones too, that I really should do, just sorta hit the wall. Scanned a comparable amount of black and white negatives. Got 6~7 rolls into the mountain of color negatives, another mountain. A lot of work. And the thought, in the back of my mind: all things pass, just let go, you've done enuf.

    I actually resurrected my black/white film processing up until a few years back. Still have a single roll of out-of-date Tri-X I should shoot. Sometime...

    Funny, I was mixing my own developers and fixers from scratch when I was just a kid, long time back.

    Here's something I played around with in the darkroom, many years ago:

    upload_2018-12-17_14-4-10.png
     
    #20 Mendel Leisk, Dec 17, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2018
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