Bubble jet mountain

[Colin]

I have discovered that on my Epson 860, if I remove an empty cartridge and then re-install it, the out-of-ink light goes out and I can print normally for quite some time.

Colin

[John Rumm]

That is because it does not actually measure the amount of ink left in the tanks but estimates it based on the amount printed. Re-inserting the cartridge resets the counter but does run the risk of trying to print when you have actually run out of ink, which (as claimed by Epson) can result in print head damage.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That may be, but my Cannon i865 eats cartridges and they don't seem to like being refilled by me, whereas my old Epsom Stylus was fine. Of course these things change design so quickly what applies to one model won't necessarily apply to another.

[Stuart Noble]

Re my original point, this may be justifiable on marketing grounds but, environmentally, it's a bloody disaster. Printers for goalposts. They do actually make very good goalposts, being more stable than jumpers.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Mike Tomlinson laid this down on his screen :

If memory serves - the HP 4, 5 and 6 are the one per desk Laserjet printers which are not really all that robust. A better, more robust and probably cheaper to buy option would be the HP4000 range. Cheap as chips, cheap to run and networkable so you could put the printer absolutely anywhere. In none commercial use the cartridge would last forever.

[Andy Hall]

I've had a Laserjet 5M for many years. It's networked and has HP PCL and PostScript. It's done 50,000 pages (obviously not great use) and apart from cartridges (which replace a fair bit of the mechanics) has only needed a new set of rollers on the paper delivery output mechanism - cost about £20.

I recently bought one of their inkjet MFDs Photosmart 3310.

A nice product.

Combines wired and wireless networking, networked printing, networked scanning, network access to plug in memory cards networked fax conventional fax.

I wouldn't use it as a main bulk printer, but for its intended purpose, quite pleasing.

[Mike Barnes]

I have previously adopted the strategy you describe, except that my inkjet was an HP, for occasional use as you suggest. However, as others have pointed out, if you don't use them for a while they block up. Canon might be better but I imagine the problem still exists to some extent. Then you have a vicious circle: I have the choice of the mono laser (first page out in about ten seconds, guaranteed, no fuss) or the colour inkjet (several minutes of frenzied activity resulting in a page with one colour missing and the prospect of replacing or repairing the cartridge). Given the choice I avoid the colour printer, which of course just makes things worse.

Now I've got a colour laser printer

for occasional use, and I'm much happier. Because it's *occasional* use the cost of the consumables will never be an issue. It was comfortably under £200, including VAT, delivery, 1500-page toner cartridges, and a three-year guarantee.

Now available: one hp DeskJet 970cxi, any offer considered, buyer collects, Stockport area.

[nightjar]

As I suspect that a reputable online supplier would have restrictions on the type of pictures they print, it probably wouldn't be much of a challenge. However, if you don't think that having Photoshop and a suitable printer is the modern equivalent of having your own darkroom, I can only assume you are not familiar with the product. Not only does it allow me to do anything I could do in a darkroom, but it allows me to do it faster, easier, with almost instant feedback and with an undo option. It also allows me to do things that would have been difficult, if not impossible, in a darkroom - for example creating a family group photo for a geanological tree, containing people long dead, who never posed together.

...

Between those two extremes come SMEs - small to medium enterprises, which have annual turnovers under £5million and which represent the bulk of British business.

...

There are other considerations. I run four different business names from one office. If I had headed paper for each, I would either need one of the very expensive printers, with multiple paper trays, or I would have to change paper every time I wanted to print something for each business. As it is, it gets complicated enough making sure that nobody is going to send something to the printer when we want to do a sheet of labels that require colour (monochrome labels have their own printers).

Colin Bignell

[Suz]

I use Photoshop regularly in my job, so am very familiar with it. It was the printing side I was referring to. The OT is about inkjet printers and when it comes to image printing I prefer professional printing rather than inkjet output.

[Weatherlawyer]

So can we all learn how to do it ourselves? Somehow I doubt it:

"...do not forget that with a bit of internet research, you can determine the per-milliliter and approximate per-page cost for any printer."

[nightjar]

I prefer inkjet because it is immediate and I have no problems with the quality from my seven colour Epson 2100 onto photo paper. The only problem with it is that it is rather fussy about the paper and inks used.

Colin Bignell

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Mine takes an infuriatingly long time from switch on to print - and if you power the mains down it doesn't switch back on with the mains.

[nightjar]

Mine doesn't take any longer to come up than the computer.

Colin Bignell

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Harry Bloomfield writes

Er, no. HP 4 and 5 (and 4M, 4MP, 5M, 5Mp, and variants thereof) are the classic workhorse department printers. These can print millions of pages without a hiccup (the paper pickup rollers need replacing about every 100k pages though.) They're available ex-corporate for buttons, often come with a network card, parts are cheap, and the cartridges are easy to refill (and cheap if you can't be bothered refilling.)

You're thinking of the 4L, 5L and 6L which were the personal, one-per- desk models, and yes, agreed they are rather slow and flimsy.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Mike Barnes writes

Fair enough Mike, but 1500 pages isn't much; remember that's at 5% coverage. In reality, you probably use much more toner. The cost of new cartridges is almost certainly going to be a large proportion of the cost of the printer, and have you looked into the cost of other "consumables" [1] - the developer/drum, the fuser, the charge roller, etc?

I've found that our departmental colour lasers are far more expensive to run than the manufacturer's (HP) marketing blurb infers.

[1] laser manufacturers now call these consumables, whereas with earlier printers they were regarded as fixed for the life of the printer ("spares".)

[T i m]

As a comparison my Canon ip4000 (inkjet) is 'shared' on my PC and set to 'sleep' after 10 mins or so (so it looks like it's off and in fact is powered off every night and never actually turned on by me).

When my daughter prints to it from upstairs it has turned on and printed her document (auto duplex) before she get's downstairs ;-)

My best printer so far ;-)

My only regret is I didn't go for the one with built in printserver (but didn't think it would become the 'default' printer for all my users) ;-)

All the best ..

T i m

p.s. I just printed Daves post:

With printer asleep, from hitting the ok to print button to having the page in my hand was 40 seconds.

A second page with printer awake, 10 seconds. ;-)

[Mike Barnes]

IKWYM but actually 1500 pages is quite a lot for the occasional use that (as stated above) I have a need for. I doubt if I printed much more than

1500 pages in the entire miserable five-year-ish lifetime of that colour inkjet that's now sulking in the corner. I use a b/w laser most of the time.

Obviously the sums would be different for someone who made more extensive use of colour.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Well, I have a RISC OS computer. ;-)

However the spur circuit it's all fed from is the way I switch it off, and as I say the printer has a 'soft' mains switch so I'd need to remember to switch it on at the same time. And since I don't use it every day never do. ;-)

[DJC]

These were consumables when I first used lase printers over 20 years ago. One of the innovative features of the original HP laserjets (and others based on the same Canon print engine) was that the drum was built into the toner cartridge thus making the replacement of that part automatic and unoticed[1]. Colour lasers seem to be similar to earlier designs with the various component replace separately.

[1]Similar principle to the print heads on hp injets)

[John Rumm]

Some of the bigger Ricoh Alfico lasers seem to offer some of the lowest costs per colour page at the moment (significantly below HP). On a "full service" maintenance contract, prices can be as low as 7p/colour page for all consumables/parts/servicing etc.