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InkJet Printers Lying, Or Just Wrong?
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jun 21, 2007 08:08 AM
from the running-on-empty dept.
from the running-on-empty dept.
akkarin writes in about a study reported at Ars Technica on how accurate ink-jet printers are when they report that cartridges are empty. Not very, it turns out. Epson came out on top of the study (and Ars rightly questions how objective it was, given that Epson paid for it), but even they waste 20% of the ink if users take the printers' word for when to get a new cartridge. On average, the printers in the study wasted more than half the ink that users bought.
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Considering how expensive ink is (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Interesting)
In an ideal world the model would be unsustainable, as third party ink manufacturers would undercut the official ink packs. But the printer manufacturers have consistently abused their market position and IP law to prevent third party ink manufacturers competing on equal terms. Your average consumer doesn't even know he can get cheap alternatives, and life is increasingly difficult for even sophisticated consumers as the printer manufacturers build in IP-protected electronics into ink cartridges.
All in all, it's clearly bad for consumers and the kind of thing the competition/anti-trust authorities should be investigating.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Informative)
Today you can get a printer for under $100 and EACH color is $15 and it lasts 3 months.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that current case law basically says that it is perfectly legal to cleanroom the special circuitry from a printer cartridge in order to produce 3rd party ink cartridges and that the printer manufacturers cannot stop it. (ob IANAL disclaimer)
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:4, Insightful)
In an ideal world, ink cartridges would not be disposable; the manufacturer would have to take them back for refilling or disposal. Same with the printer itself. If that were the case, the quality of everything would go way up because the manufacturers would have an incentive to make them easily refurbishable. Instead, printers end up in landfills a year or less after people buy them because it's just as cheap to buy a new printer as to replace the cartridges.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:4, Insightful)
Save the trees by getting all of our fiber needs from hemp. No, not the kind you can smoke; the kind that grows like a weed (haha) on even the most marginal farmland, and provides not only high-quality fiber, but oil that can be used as biofuel.
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Kodak has broken this model (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll never ever buy an inkjet ever again. With my laser, I never have banding, never have "cleaning cycles," etc. It just works.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Informative)
Also, cheap lasers tend to wear out quicker than inkjets, in my experience.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:4, Informative)
That is a LOT of ink refills on an inkjet.
That's more than most people pay for a new rig these days, including a tower, monitor AND printer.
If you actually print that much, you already know all this and have already moved up to a more professional printing solution. If you're just a home user, that's just a total waste of money.
Never mind that I can EASILY print over 5k pages on an inkjet with separated and refillable cartridges, WAY more than that actually.
Look, inkjets sell as they are because they are cost effective for most people. If they weren't, they wouldn't sell. Period. Those that are a bit smarter also know that they can reduce the cost by buying a half decent inkjet with separated color cartridges, and by refilling said cartridges themselves. Not all inkjets use microchip locked cartridges you know.
As well, more and more people ARE taking their pictures to walmart ow wherever to get their pictures printed. I know virtually no one that prints off lots of pictures at home as it does use a lot of ink, doesn't look nearly as good, and fades noticeably over short periods of time.
At home I print what I'd deem to be a fairly average amount. My costs for operating my printer are negligible. What would be a waste of money is to throw out what works for no good reason. I'd need a VERY good reason to replace my printer, let alone drop 1k on a laser printer.
Parent
Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Insightful)
And over five years you will MAKE a lot of ink refills on an inkjet. If you print a lot you will use the carts up (or as much of them as they allow you to use up, anyway.) If you don't print a lot, then you either blow out your ink cleaning the heads, or your heads crust up and you have to replace the print head, which may be integrated into the cartridge, or which may only come with ink carts (true or at least formerly true of some HP inkjets.)
IMO it just doesn't make sense to do inkjet prints in any situation. If you're not doing enough to justify buying a color laser, send them out for printing. If you have broadband you can upload them to a website, make a CC payment, and they will mail you prints. If you don't, you can take them to a multitude of places including Kmart, Walmart, Kinkos, etc. (as you say) and not have to worry about maintaining a printer.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:4, Informative)
What doesn't make any sense is taking my opinion as to what you should do (Given that I am not god, I should not have to prefix all statemens with "in my opinion" - of course it's my fucking opinion) as the only possible solution. It is simply the solution that I feel makes the most sense.
One of the ways in which slashdot is enormously frustrating is that if you don't terminate the beginning and end of every fucking statement with a disclaimer, someone is sure to piss, moan, bitch, and complain about the way you said it.
The cost per page for printing on an inkjet is insane. Most people need color only for sharing photos with stupid people who can't handle getting prints, which would be better anyway because they'd be in the size they actually wanted.
Hence, it makes more sense for most people to have a black and white laser and have photo prints done by someone else, who will do it better and cheaper. It makes more financial sense. I have a B&W laser printer good for 20,000 pages per month, for which I paid $300 (including the network interface card, which I added post-sale.) And I simply don't print color because I hate paper and have too much already, but it's still cheaper to send out.
Parent
Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people spend $239 on printing over 5 years? At $40/6 months (whether you use it or not, that $50 printer will tell you that you need more ink in 6 months) the ink alone is $400. You might be able to beat that with refills, but only on some printers, and many people lack the knowledge to do so on any printer. And how many of those people would be glad to have (whether they know it or not) a printer that works with any PCL/PS driver and doesn't require any particular hardware interface or operating system?
There are reasons to buy an inkjet. Printing on things that aren't shaped like paper, for example. A need for color (particularly photo-like blended colors) on a regular basis is another. But price, either per-page or overall is not terribly compelling, even for light users.
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Re:Considering how expensive ink is (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I for one am sure about it. I print a substantial amount and would rather pay the full price of a printer and have a reasonable ink price.
Of course, not to blow a trumpet, but Xerox provide some sweet rental deals so my opinion in this is quite moot, though my point is not.
continuous ink feed system? (Score:3, Interesting)
For how much you print, you might want to consider looking into a continuous ink feed system.
http://www.shutterbug.net/equipmentreviews/paper_ i nk/0706output/ [shutterbug.net]
Though this wouldn't make sense for the average home user because they could ruin their printer from the inks drying out when they are letting their printer sit unused for weeks.
Software (Score:5, Informative)
It allows you to reset the numbers and use the remainder of the ink, before it makes you replace it.
If you ask me, the feature that stops you from using a cartridge after the ink is too low, is pretty ignorant. I think it's obvious when the ink is completely out, so why not let the user decide?
Re:Software (Score:5, Informative)
Inksupply [inksupply.com] seems to have a few solutions.
British company proprint [proprint.co.uk] has some pay solutions.
Also found this [tonik.co.uk].
I couldn't find any "free software" solutions to the chip problem, albeit I only looked for a little while.
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SSC Service Utility (Score:3, Informative)
In a word (Score:5, Informative)
I've found 'extra' ink in both my Epson and HP inkjet printers. I'd use refill kits, but the cartridges tend to leak over time, and refilling takes a lot of time and effort. In the meantime, for Epson printers, just go with the el cheapo compatible cartridges from places like Inkco [inkco.us]. Epson C88 cartridges are $5 a pieces, as opposed to to ~$25 for branded cartridges.
Wow, I just came here to submit this (Score:4, Interesting)
Not buying a printer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not buying a printer... (Score:5, Funny)
Inkjets are so 1993
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Re:Not buying a printer... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Not buying a printer... (Score:4, Informative)
It's hard to say the true accuracy of the Canon tanks, though they do seem to be reasonably accurate. They have a chip based ink couter, but he main meter seems to be the prism, when the reservoir is empty you get a low ink warning. Less experenced people might replace the cartridge, but this indicates there is 20% left in the sponge. From there you can continue printing until the printer says "ink is out", and if you are willing to disable the meter and click the "I accept the risk".
Canons are somewhat wasteful on their cleaning cycles. Users I know tend to say a given cartridge lasts 9 to 12 months before becoming empty. Epson in my experence is worse in terms of raw volume.
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Better alternative (Score:4, Informative)
I also find that I can print quantities of pictures faster by driving to Target, giving them my SD card, and coming back in an hour. At over two minutes each to print at home, it only takes about 30 or so prints to make the whole process faster. Plus I'm not cautiously stacking damp ink prints all over the desk, hand-feeding tiny glossy sheets into the printer, and watching the ink tanks run dry. It's a lot more convenient.
The biggest advantage, though, is the images are exposed on photographic paper and chemically processed just like a film image. The reason this is an advantage is the longevity of photographic paper is well understood. When properly cared for, color photographs are expected to last 75 years or more. Inkjet is a relatively new technology (only about 20 years old), and picture durability is still fairly unknown; although recent tests are estimating properly cared-for inkjet prints will last only 25 years, maybe less. It's definitely variable by manufacturer, paper and ink.
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Inkjet? INKJET!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Laserjets do this too.. (Score:5, Interesting)
For example; I bought a laser two years ago (from a company that rhymes with hell). I bought it because I needed to print letters to clients and do things like print checks. Nothing heavily graphics intensive nor really heavy duty text work either.
So here is what I discovered with my 'efficient' laser printer; My '5000 page' toner cartridge prints about 1000 pages. Pissed, I decided to open one up as they are about $100 for a new one.
Lo and behold it was still full of toner. Somehow, as the printer printed the quality of the prints degraded as the toner 'ran out' a little more with each print. At the time I figured this was because there was no toner but the proof was now in my hands (and all over my desk for that matter) so I decided to investigate further. It seems that these toner cartridges use chips to tell your pc that its running out each time you print.
Now, I'm not electronics guru, so I don't have a machine I can actually read the chip with, but I am under the impression that this chip also purposefully degrades the quality of your prints as it counts down your toner level. To test that theory I ordered some refill kits off of the web.
First thing I noticed after doing the chip replacement was that the quality of the prints immediately improved. I printed for several weeks, noticed the quality go down again, replaced the chip (no toner added in there yet...) and viola worked beautiful. When that chip said it was empty I opened the whole thing up again and took a look. This time it was indeed very low, but not empty. I poured in the new bottle of toner and put in a new chip and went back to work.
I usually order 3 chips for each bottle of toner I purchase . Currently I get about 4000 pages per bottle of toner. My refill purchases cost me $29 for two bottles of toner and six chips (on chip comes with each bottle and I add the other four to the order) Let's see$200 vs $29 for two 'cartridges' worth of prints... hmmm.... yeah I'll refill. Add to that the fact that the purchased carts don't get the same mileage as the refilled ones with extra chips to replace the old ones.
I guarantee I will never buy another 'rhymes with hell' printer again.
Caveat emptor indeed.
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Re:Laserjets do this too.. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Inkjet vs laser is like dial-up vs DSL/Cable.
Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am just gunna call "well duh" on this whole thing. I have worked with HP laserjets that told me I had 200 pages left that I could print. After printing 192 pages it told me I could still print 320 pages. All said and done that day, I had printed some 500 pages and its final number was that I could still print another 250ish pages. Whether they lie, or their math is freaking horrible for figuring it out is up for debate I suppose, but given the problems we have had with that same model and HP accusing us of theft because a brand new HP cartridge out of the box was determined to be not authentic by the stupid machine...well I assume they are just out for blood. 4 hours of fighting with their technician to have them exchange the stupid cartridge.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
With laser printers, what you're describing isn't all that uncommon, because the toner hopper is the width of the drum, but the sensor on most printers is at one end. If the printer isn't level, all the toner ends up at one end o
Kinda sorta Paperless since 1994 and loving it (Score:3, Insightful)
The end of inkjet printers... (Score:3, Interesting)
The letter quality was amazing compared to my dot matrix, and when they started printing in color, and I could print photos, it was great.
Somewhere along the line, the price gouging for ink came about. I had an epson 740 for a long time, and bought ink from some third party source at very reasonable prices (~$10/ cartridge). The ink was just as good as anything else I'd used, as far as I could tell.
I had the sad wake up call about a year ago, when the epson 740 finally died. I looked and looked for a printer that would accept third party ink cartridges, and couldn't find anything reasonable. My wife's in grad school, and does a lot of printing, so I eventually went with a Brother laser printer that ran me about $150, plus $75 or so for a toner cartridge. (Although after many months, we're still using the "starter" cartridge.)
Because my old printer hung on for so long, I was rather abruptly thrust into this brave new world of ink pricing and vendor lock in. It's sad to realize that the five year old printer I had, because of the availability of third party ink cartridges, was a far better product than anything I could buy today. I'm afraid the same thing will happen to laser printers at some point, and who knows what I'll do. Perhaps that will finally push us into the paperless lifestyle we were all promised a decade ago.
People Have Too Much Disposable Income... (Score:4, Insightful)
Inkjet ink works out to be more expensive, by volume, than the most expensive Bollinger champagne which is why the money-grabbing manufacturers can virtually give the printers away but rip you off for cartridges. In some cases, it is actually cheaper to throw the printer away and buy a new one than it is to buy replacement cartridges - how *GREAT* is that for our environment.
Grow up, people! Take your nicely-edited photos down to a printing booth or shop and get your photos printed in *MUCH BETTER QUALITY* and at a cheaper cost than what you can do on a home inkjet. Then invest in a cheap laser printer to just print letters and documents when you need to.
And the sooner VoIP phones and wireless access kicks out the price-fixing cellular phone providers, the better...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
profiling them is a PITA (for color accuracy) and it even depends on the {ink, paper} combo to get the colors right. using different paper this time? oh, you don't have a good calibrated profile for that one? too bad
its slow, its expensive and worst of all, its KNOWN that the manufacturers are bilking the users at every opp.
I don't print photos anymore (I just upload for online viewing); but if I did, it would be at costco (for
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Agreed. That's why I don't bother refilling ink cartridges with ink any more. I use vintage champagne instead.
The results are disappointing, but I can drink anything that's left over in the "refill kit" after I've finished refilling the cartridge.
Re:People Have Too Much Disposable Income... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Ummm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
2) It's pretty easy for Epson to have rigged the test so that multi-ink cartridges did particularly badly (although in my experience they really are that wasteful).
3) Assuming accurate wording of the message, I'd much prefer to get a warning when the ink is low but there's time to get a replacement than to get it only at the last possible moment -- I can figure out for myself when the ink is really gone. The article claims users rush to change cartridges as soon as a message pops up, but those workers are a lot more proactive than those in any office I've ever worked in.
Re:Ummm.... (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work at an outsourced call centre, supporting Epson printers and scanners. By far the biggest customer complaints we received always had to do with printers wasting ink.
During our training, and from talking to various Epson reps, we learned that the printer doesn't actually monitor the amount of ink in each cartridge. Rather, it estimates the amount left, based on the various print settings chosen.
The worst part is that on many printers, once it "thinks" it's out of ink, it will no longer print until you change the cartridge. In some older printers, you could simply remove the cartride and then put it back into place, tricking it into thinking you replaced it with a new cartridge. However, this would make the ink monitor even less accurate. Newer printers won't even allow this, because the circuitry on the cartridge itself will lock you out once it has reached the estimated empty level.
There are some tools available that let you reset the "intelligent cartridges" so that they can be refilled and reused, but of course they aren't supported by Epson and may void your warranty.
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Re:Ummm.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Fucking HP Photosmart D7360!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, if I use the lame HP software that starts up with my computer (and slows it down quite a bit), it flat out refuses to let me print unless I change 'empty' cartriges first. It also annoys the living hell out of me with 'low ink' popups while I'm playing video games or doing other things - like the printer is the whole fucking reason I exist.
In Ubuntu, I just use whatever driver it found for my printer... and I can print beautiful prints with 'empty' cartriges. It pisses me off..
But, I will admit, I really do get about 200 4x6 photos with a single set of cartriges like HP advertises.. this is the first printer I've had (besides laser of course) that actually lives up to how many prints it advertises.
Re:Fucking HP Photosmart D7360!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
I've had good results with Canon (Score:5, Informative)
we are humans right? (Score:4, Interesting)
so wait - the inkjets report that cartridge needs replacement and people just do it? whatever happened to visual inspection?! We have a Dell color printer (laser, not inkjet but same argument) which starts giving out the "replace cartridge soon" message about ~1000 pages in advance. So we buy the cartridge, keep it on hand, and only replace it when we actually see that the print quality is considerably degraded. I can understand the problem if the inkjet stops printing anything at all based on its preemptive warning messages (like a software lockdown), but if it continues to work irrespective of the amount of ink then just look at the output and make your decision.
In fact, I would rather have the machine give the warning earlier than later so I can have one ordered and ready to replace when the need comes, instead of waiting for all the ink to dry out and the printer goes out of service until the cartridges arrive.
Ever seen a toothpaste commercial? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the cleanliness of the teeth proportional to the amount of paste used? No.
Are sales driven by encouraging people to use more product? Yes.
Why does the 'corporate we' seem so surprised when we occasionally wake up and realize that vendors are trying to cajole more sales?
We tape the cartridge... (Score:5, Informative)
John
Several semi-plausible "reasons" for this (Score:4, Interesting)
- They sell more expensive ink that way.
- You'll notice your typical printing regimen uses much less yellow than the other shades, so if it's a trui-color cartridge, unless you're printing a lot of "skin tones", the yellow section will tend to still be mostly full when the other ones have run out, or at least "low".
- Many printers try to estimate the amount of ink used, but if you remove a print cartridge or reset the printer EROM, or the cartridge contacts get intermittent, many printers when they see a "unknown but used cartridge, assume it has unknown quantity and assume the worst.
- The printers with separate print heads and ink cartridges have a serious problem-- if the printhead runs out of ink the little teeasy tiny microscopic print head resistors blow out, requiring an expensive $40 printhead. On a HP D1xx printer, there are four of these. So the printer signals "ink low" when it's really probably still 1/3 full, just to protect the printheads.
- The printers with separate print heads and ink cartridges can get air-bubbles in the plumbing between ink cartridge and printhead if the ink runs low, leading to poor printing and printhead blowouts, so again they thy to err on the safe side.
Not very good reasons, but there they are...Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Which makes me wonder, why not just sell the damn printer at a profit and then stop going so anal about the ink?
Ask Gillette [wikipedia.org].