Bubble jet mountain

[Stuart Noble]

Exactly. Sharp practice or what.

[Tim S]

That is true, the amount I have to clean out of the wiper sponge.

Tim

[Stuart Noble]

And on Canons you may then get the famous "waste tank full" error, rectified only by taking the machine to bits

[Stuart Noble]

I didn't mean that. See later post.

I used to sell them in my very first job a million years ago.

I think a mono laser at £70, with supposedly 12,500 pages worth of toner included, is the way to go for me. Kodak can handle the photos, or I'll view them on screen where they look a damned sight better anyway.

[Andy Dingley]

It's true, but not because black is made of 3 colours. Epsons (IMHE, most at least) simply sulk with an "ink low" warning if you don't have a usable colour cartridge installed, even if it's a purely black and white print job.

The worst culprits for smart carts are HP though, not Epson. If you want good refilling, go for a Canon. Nathan (of Noodler's fountain pen inks) has been talking about moving into inkjet ink and he recommends them. news:alt.collecting.pens-pencils would be the place to look for more.

My two main printers are a HP LaserJet and an (old square) DeskJet, both of which are something like 15 years old. The DJ has been refilled ever since its first couple of cartridges. They've outlasted a number of cheap colour inkjets since, just because of the ink costs,

[John Rumm]

Not necessarily. Some print heads would be damaged if run without ink. And some of the better photo printers will use small amounts of colour even when printing just black so as to get a better range of grayscales and more luxurious blacks.

[dennis]

The chip was there for a reason. If you run an (older) Epson dry you risk knackering the printer. If you don't mind knackering the occasional printer then just reset the counter and use up the remaining ink.

The newer Epsons don't suffer from the same problem so you can use most of the ink.

[<me9]

I got one recently, the colour is better than the previous two inkjets, and it was about the same price. Running costs are lower, but the tober does cost more than the printer but has 3 times the capacity of the original cartridges. The original colour should last at least two years, the black six months, and then a full black one for eighteen months, slightly longer than my B&W laser.

There's no hassle unblocking print heads and replacing them every other time it's used, which seems to be the norm for inkjets.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

IMHO they're usually ok if used every couple of days or so. It's the once in a while use that blocks them. Like my use.

I don't need to print photos, but would like a reasonable colour laser. What do they start at these days? Preferably one which takes an A4 envelope horizontally? It annoys me that my Cannon has to do this vertically, while my ancient Epson doesn't.

[T i m]

I have a good old HPLJ4 (or two, one with a Jet Direct card) but they need roller sets now.

After many years with HPDJ's I've gone onto a Canon ip4000 and so far it's been brilliant. New (copy) carts cost me 3 quid each, it's prints duplex, has a decent sized (covered) A4 paper hopper (at the front not sticking up the back collecting dust and paper clips) and prints directly onto CD's.

It's quiet (it goes to sleep if not used for 10 mins), prints quickly and my daughter has set it as her default printer in spite of having an Epson C44UX connected to her own PC ("because it's crap Dad" .. ) ;-)

I'm not into printing 'photograps' as a photographer as such (just as reference shots / interest etc) and when printed onto unbranded 'photo paper' it's good enough for me (us). ;-)

I was given the C44 by a guy who owns a PC shop because a customer had got it home brand new, (forgotten the shop had said they had 'set it all up for him') and ripped the head ribbon cable out thinking it was part of the 'packing' .... ;-)

I managed to repair it by using the ribbon from another faulty machine but it's not as good as my first inkjet (HPDJ 500C .. £350 as a staff discount ditect from HP!)

But the OP is right .. more and more of these things (along with CRT TV / Monitors, HiFi, kitchen appliences, cars, bicycles, garden furniture etc etc) are being thrown away rather than repaired or re-cycled

Few fix their own stuff any more (and at the current money (not environmental) cost why would they bother) and the current generation wouldn't even think to try. ;-(

But "every cloud has a silver lining" and I have much that I wouldn't have had in the first place had someone else not declaired it 'beyond economical repair' or un-repairable (the last being a Dell Inspiron

8100 laptop with a faulty display (new CCFL, sorted ) ) or 'still got' because I was able to fix it myself (the last of which was the AEG washing machine tripping the RCD and that turned out to be carbon dust in the motor) ;-)

I believe the newer stuff is probably more economical to run, but I bet the difference in consumption between old and new (over the rest of it's life) isn't as much as the energy / materials needed to make a new one ... ?

All the best ..

T i m

>

[Adrian C]

I've cleaned up a few Epsons. Here, an Epson Photo 750 still going strong, great photo prints and slightly more than peanuts to run. I've got a 3 year old Panasonic KX-P7510 Laser printer as well just for mono stuff - which would workout cheaper to run - but because it was a network enabled model it had a bit of a cost premium on it! :-( For multiple photo printing, I'd use an online printing service.

I recommend Windolene (the clear stuff - not the pink!!) as a great cleaner for well blocked Epson jets. Remove the cartridge, a tiny drop over the feed needles, then leave overnight.

Good utility here for general mucking about with Epson ink level counters and cartridge chips for those printers.

[dennis]

8<

Lasers are OK but have you seen the price of an A2 colour laser? I run an old Epson 1520 Inkjet which will print on A2 paper and the carts are dirt cheap. I bought four of them for £10 but I had to break one for spares.

[nightjar]

Send me a photo of it and I'll do a far better print than you can buy online :-)

You were speaking of business headers, not personal use.

Cheap is relative. ISTR my colour laser was about £2,500, which I consider cheap for the job it does.

Have you any idea how long it would take me to use up the minimum print run on a four-colour printed headed paper? I moved address before I used up the last lot I had printed.

Colin Bignell

[Mike Barnes]

I just bought a Konica for about £185 delivered, with a three-year warranty. I'm very pleased with it and even more pleased to give my HP inkjet to someone who's prepared to pander to its needs.

Note sure exactly what you mean. It wouldn't take A4 long-edge-first, and is much more fussy media-wise than an inkjet.

[Owain]

It depends, of course, on what you mean by 'reasonable'. Argos has a Samsung for £180. Cheaper ones tend to be Windows-only and have a higher consumable cost.

I'm thinking about a Konica-Minolta at about £330 (inc VAT and starter toners) as it's Linux compatible, 3 year warranty, and the replacement drum cost is lower than many others. Consumable costs appear towards the low end of the range, according to reviews. Colour quality is admittedly not great apparently, but on the rare occasion I want proper photos I use Jessops or suchlike.

Printing colour on an envelope might be difficult on any of the cheaper machines as they are usually 4-pass and envelopes tend to crumple.

Owain

[Suz]

"nightjar .uk.com>"

I'm nearly tempted...

Yes, that was confusing. I was thinking of a one-man-band business versus personal. Big businesses all have headed paper.

I suppose it really depends on the work. Certain businesses don't need the "image" of colour printing, and others definitely do but may not have the turnover in paperwork. I would imagine the latter would be professional and could afford to do the colour laser option properly.

[Andy Burns]

At least some of the Epson inkjets *DO* have a built-in fault code that kicks in at a certain volume of printing. Basically the overspray of ink (and the ink wasted during head cleaning) gets absorbed into a sponge stuck inside the printer, after "n" cartridge changes the printer knows/suspects the sponge will have soaked up it's fill so puts up a fault code suggesting it is returned to factory for maintenance (when for most users it'll be cheaper/easier to buy a new one)

You can find the correct sequence to reset it on the net, but if you simply reset it without emptying/replacing the sponge you risk the excess ink overflowing and gunking up your desk ...

[Tim S]

It's at this point that I decide it's time to strip and clean. The SP890 doesn't have an actual error code for this condition, but the symptoms are random muck and blobs appearing on the paper as they fall of the head.

The one thing I *do* like about the cheap Epsons is that they were open about the print control codes early on, so the linux drivers (courtesy of gimp-print) are of exceptionally high quality and functionality.

I heard the Canons were lacking in that respect, though I suspect the HPs should have been Ok as HP were usually pretty open about their printer standards and pro open source (at least a few years ago).

I've got some high end Canon lasers at work and they work well with Linux, buty I had to extract various bits of knowledge from their developer support dept to support them under lprNG. Even now, some of the info needs a click-agree to an NDA before downloading. Easier if using CUPS these days, just blag the MacOSX PPD and plug it in.

Tim

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes

200 quid or so, but the cost per page is very high, and the makers are now putting chips in things like the developer, the fuser, etc. (which normally last years) so you're forced to replace them regularly. This provides them with a nice income stream to compensate for the low initial cost of the printer. It's razor-blade marketing, just as they do with inkjets.

If you have the space, I'd suggest a good B&W laser (HP 4 and 5 are very cheap secondhand, practically bombproof and spares are cheap) and a mid- priced inkjet for the occasional use of colour. Canon inkjets are better quality, don't seem to suffer as much from the drying-up-and-blocking problem that the Epsons have, and they usually come with separate ink tanks for each colour so you don't have to chuck a whole colour cartridge when one colour runs out.

[Andy Burns]

would be nice if they told you what the error meant so you could decide to clean it if you wanted, rather than just saying, return to factory

agreed, though I don't think gutenprint (nee gimp-print) uses the lightcyan/lightmagenta of my 6ink printer, and it can't print to the CD tray.

to the point that it literally is usb plug and print :-)