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Printer Hardware Technology

Epson Is Trying To Kill the Printer Ink Cartridge 223

Posted by Soulskill from the print-with-lasers dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Inkjet printer cartridges have been the bane of many small businesses and home offices for decades. It's interesting, then, that Epson is trying something new: next month, they're launching a new line of printers that come with small tanks of ink, instead of cartridges. The tanks will be refilled using bottles of ink. They're reversing the economics, here: the printer itself will be more expensive, but the refills will be much cheaper. Early reports claim you'll be spending a tenth as much on ink as you were before, but we'll see how that shakes out. The Bloomberg article makes a good point: it's never been easier to not print things. The printer industry needs to innovate if it wants us to keep churning out printed documents, and this may be the first big step.
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Epson Is Trying To Kill the Printer Ink Cartridge More

Epson Is Trying To Kill the Printer Ink Cartridge

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  • dry ink (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:08PM (#50250717) Homepage

    I ditched inkjet printers because the ink dries out before the next time I want to print something. Toner cartridges don't seem to have that problem.

    Can Epson overcome that problem?

    • Re:dry ink (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:13PM (#50250769)

      Has solved it already a few years ago with Epson Claria inks. They are still costly (based on the cartridge-pricing-model), but the whole point of that product is that it doesn't block the heads if you don't print anything for a while.

      I have an Epson PX720WD myself (got it cheap out of a dealer going of of business), and use it *very* rarely. There may be several months between sheets, and nearly a year between color printings. I've replaced the cartridges once. And never gotten a blocked printing head.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        the Epson PX720WD came out in 2011 you've printed 4 color pages and 48 b/w pages and replaced the cartridges once, that doesn't seem like very good numbers to me.

      • If you're not printing much, why did you need to replace the cartridge?

        My guess: The way the cartridge prevents dry ink from blocking the head is by printing occasionally to keep the ink moving.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Zarhan ( 415465 )

          1) Because the bundled heads only contained like 6 grams of ink, while the replacements have two or three times that
          2) When I do print, I usually print larger documents, so dozens of pages get printed at once, and then there's again a long pause

      • Re:dry ink (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @07:44PM (#50253129)
        Back in the early days of inkjet printing, Epson had their print heads on the printer, and the cartridges only held ink, making the cartridges cheaper than the competition. They also had separate cartridges for each color, while the competition (HP, Lexmark, Canon) combined the color cartridges into a single three cell cartidge and in some cases even included black in a four cell cartridge so you had to replace all at once. I was a light user, and had the same printer for about 3 years, going through two sets of cartridges in that time (maybe one or two more black cartridges). After three years, the printer was still in good condition and printing well, and I gave it to a friend because I was moving overseas. No inkjet printer I have had since has matched up to it. Unused ink clogging up print heads was an artificial problem caused by additives in the ink, it was never a fundamental issue with the technology.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      I had a similar experience. Bought a decent HP wireless printer but the cartridges went bad before I could even finish the ones that came with the printer. I cannot justify buying new ones for the very limited amount of printing I do. It's just an 8lb paperweight now.. or something for my 2 year old to play around with.

    • Re:dry ink (Score:4, Informative)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:14PM (#50250779) Homepage

      I'm in the same boat as you with my current ink jet. I needed to copy something yesterday. It took 5 minutes of cleaning/priming the cartridge before it printed the one page. I think I've printed less than a dozen pages of your average color office document and all 3 of my non-black cartridges are empty. My last Canon when it bit the dust I disassembled to see if there was anything salvageable for a 3d printer. In the bottom I found a quite large thick absorbent pad that is used to soak up ink when it's primed. It was completely saturated with about a kabillion dollars worth of ink.

      • Re:dry ink (Score:5, Informative)

        by Golden_Rider ( 137548 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:44PM (#50250985)

        Same problem here, same problem for my parents. I owned a HP colour inkjet printer years ago, cartridges always dried up and I ended up using over half the ink via "cleaning mode" just to make the damn thing work again when I wanted to print a page again after a few weeks. Even worse for my parents, they bought an inkjet printer, I helped set it up, it worked, a couple days later it already had missing lines in the printouts due to clogged-up print heads. Of course my father was pissed, "every time I just want to print out one or two pages, I have to clean the damn printer for five minutes before it works again!"

        So I bought a €100 black and white laser printer for my parents, they are happy with it and the 3000 pages toner cartridge will last them forever. I myself had already switched to laser printers years earlier, I bought a colour one last year (previous model to this: http://accessories.us.dell.com... [dell.com] ). Cost me €250, the toner lasts a long time, print quality is very good even for pictures (of course not suitable if you REALLY want to print out glossy photographs on high quality photo paper) and a third party set of toner (all colours) costs about €30.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Even with lasers you have to be careful though. A place I worked bought an Oki one years ago, and it only lasted about 2000 sheets before needing an expensive part. The manufacturer explained that it was because were it was used to print invoiced it had printed 2000 individual pages, instead of say 500 documents of 4 pages each. That apparently stressed this part out a lot and caused it to fail rather quickly.

          The other issue is turning the printer off as soon as the last page comes out. You need to wait for

    • Re:dry ink (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:15PM (#50250785)
      Same here. I got tired of paying $10 per use due to cloggage. I bought a scanner / color laser for regular prints and started sending photos to Walmart. Even then I would try harder to buy a laser printer with less expensive toner cartidges.

      I did an analysis once and it seemed the black stylish laser printers cost more per page to refill then the beige office tone ones, generally speaking.

      • The point in the original story is good. There is no need to do a lot of printing. The printer industry is serving more and more of a limited market.

        What do I need to print? An occasional airline boarding pass, although I guess I could use my phone for that, too. Copies of stuff for my writing critique group. Very, very little else. Maybe an infrequent occasion (once or twice a year) when I actually need to mail (snail mail!!) printed documentation.

        No need for color printing at all. So a cheap laser printer

    • Re:dry ink (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:33PM (#50250919) Homepage Journal

      Canon solved this problem ages ago. They use an ink that is melted during the print phase, so it never dries out. They're great for people who print quite infrequently.

      • Xerox did as well. Have an pre-cursor to the Phasor 8560/DN kicking around here. For text, print quality and speed is great. For pictures, print quality is not bad, not bad at all. The only downside is that you have wait 5 mins at startup for the wax to melt.

        * http://www.amazon.com/Xerox-Ph... [amazon.com]

        For HDR printing though nothing beats an Canon inkjet on glossy paper. Kirkland Photo Glossy paper at $20 / 150 sheets is a fantastic bang/buck for "proofs"

        * http://www.amazon.com/Kirkland... [amazon.com]

    • I had the same problem ever since the home printing had a high TCO for printing photos. Ever since traditional film processing locations switched to digital and prints are about a dime, I have the same problem. Most of the time the printer has no working ink and Laserjet has replaced the inkjet for most tasks due to economics.

      Epson has seen the handwriting on the wall. Adapt or die.

      Inkjet has become a nich market catering to either graphics artists, digital plotters and other commercial applications that

      • Photo print services are now a far cheaper-for-given-quality model for the average person, whether you want ordinary 4x6's of your vacation for that one relative who isn't on Facebook or a framed giclée wedding print.

    • Canon (Score:2)

      by bogie ( 31020 )

      Others here say it's not an issue anymore with Epson but it certainly hasn't been an issue with Canon for many many years. I've been buying Canon printers for really long time and just don't have ink issues. The ink prices are reasonable and the inks don't dry out. Historically this was always in contrast to HP where the inks were crazy expensive and Epson where the inks dried out. Once I switched to Canon I never went back.

      I've heard that in just the recent timeframe Canon has started to maybe cheap out a

      • I had a really nice Canon multi-function (MX-850) but when I bought a new Mac it came with the OS X 10.10 and I found out that they weren't going to make the drivers for it. So I had to get a new machine even though the old one worked perfectly. Actually the replacement model (MX-922) had a slower print speed and wasn't designed as well.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      I ditched inkjet printers because the ink dries out before the next time I want to print something. Toner cartridges don't seem to have that problem.

      Can Epson overcome that problem?

      This. To anyone who will listen: buy a color laser. They are cheap compared to the pain of most ink jets. I don't miss the
      Bzzzt... Rarararar... Merrrrt.... Merrrrt..... Merrrrt... Nytnytnytnytnyt.... S$@t still lines missing on my print.

      Color laser toners are cheap on fleabay.

      • Re:dry ink (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @04:11PM (#50251787) Homepage Journal
        Even better: Get a network postscript color laser printer.

        Not only will it last forever, but you will be able to use the generic drivers that come with your OS to print on it. No more 200MB driver downloads only to find out that they've dropped support for your OS or don't work on 64 bit systems or whatever. The network postscript color laser is the last printer you'll ever need to buy, and they can be found in the $200 range easily these days.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Copid ( 137416 )
        100% agreed. I fight with family members on this one all the time. I try to share this basic piece of wisdom with them. Consumer-grade inkjet printers are designed to do one thing and one thing only: Turn full inkjet cartridges into empty inkjet cartridges. If any printing happens during that process, that's fine, but it's completely incidental. These machines are not your friends.

        "But what if I need to print pictures?" they ask. Don't print pictures. Unless you're a pro graphics shop doing proo

    • Yep. The B&W laser I got three years ago has been excellent. £20 refurbished from eBay, no problems with ink clogs and only on the second toner cartridge. I haven't missed colour - if I want photos printed I'll take them to the shop.

    • I ditched inkjet printers because the ink dries out before the next time I want to print something. Toner cartridges don't seem to have that problem.

      Can Epson overcome that problem?

      HP Lazerjet 5P here (Win7), I've been using it for many years now and still haven't needed the toner cartridge replaced; nor any signs it's going to need one soon, and I do a fair amount of printing.

      An earlier printer Panasonic KX-P4410 would print out 2 boxes of paper before needing the toner replaced.

      Lazerjet has IR to IR data transfer ability, would be nice to use that.

  • The printer itself will be more expensive... and the refills will be expensive too, but since you've already bought the expensive printer, you're locked in.

    • depreciation.

    • Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thaylin ( 555395 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:20PM (#50250817)

      Except with just refill bottles instead of cartridges it means that it is vastly easier to sell off brand ink, no pesky DMCA and such on the cartridges, so you are not really locked in.

      • Re:Don't believe the hype (Score:5, Informative)

        by marciot ( 598356 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:43PM (#50250979)

        Except with just refill bottles instead of cartridges it means that it is vastly easier to sell off brand ink, no pesky DMCA and such on the cartridges, so you are not really locked in.

        You haven’t seen the bottles, have you? They come with pentalobe shaped tips that only fit the pentalobe shaped hole on the printer’s ink reservoir.

        • So you are saying these little pentalope shaped tips/holes are patented?

          • Doesn't matter.

            Buy one ink bottle. Use it. Keep the bottle.

            Cut the bottle off somewhere above the pentalobe nozzle tip and use it as a funnel for off-brand ink you buy in liter bottles.

            There is no ???. Just PROFIT!

  • This used to be the case in the past... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mlts ( 1038732 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:09PM (#50250741)

    Early inkjet printers basically did this. The ink bottle was replaceable, but what ended up happening is that the nozzles got easily clogged, so a number of printer makers went with replaceable ink reservoir/nozzle assemblies. Similar with laser printers which had separate toner/drum parts, but eventually, those were merged into one unit, so all consumables were in one unit.

    I'd just be happy with larger ink cartridges. It is sad how few milli-liters most cartridges have, and when one weighs the cartridge full, before loading, and empty, it drives the point home.

    • Re:This used to be the case in the past... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:36PM (#50250943) Homepage

      I'd just be happy with larger ink cartridges. It is sad how few milli-liters most cartridges have.

      Also: Individual colors, and a head declogging routine that works on a single cartridge at a time instead of draining the perfectly good colors as well.

      The final straw for me was when one color was blocked, so I did a couple of cleans to sort it out and that drained another color so I had to put in a new cartridge (luckily I had separate colors), run the cleaning again, by which time another color was flashing as empty and I had to change that as well. During this time my brand new black ink cartridge went down by about 25%. All in all that page cost me about $20 to print.

      I went out next day and bought a color laser. I've had it about 10 years and only bought one new set of cartridges. It's always worked first time - switch on and print. I'd rather stab my own eyeballs with forks than own another inkjet.

  • Obligatory TheOatmeal comic (Score:5, Funny)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:11PM (#50250751)

    Classic: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/p... [theoatmeal.com]

    Seriously though, who prints stuff outside of work anyway?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )

      Seriously though, who prints stuff outside of work anyway?

      Photographers. Specifically those that like to hang their work on the wall and/or enter their work into photo club competitions. Given how many people tend to be milling around the printer stands at photography trade shows, I suspect there's more of them still around than you might think, and presumably Epson thinks so too since this could easily be a huge cost saver for the right print volume.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        I just shoot my stuff off to one of the many, many dye-sublimation online printers if I need something larger than 8x10 (or it can wait a week). Shutterfly, Snapfish, etc all print 4x6 prints for under $0.25 each and I think I was paying under $2 for 8x10 prints. Send it off, it arrives in a box a couple of days later. Owning a multi-hundred dollar printer, doing my own maintenance, keeping up with the ink is a huge hassle. And dye-sublimation is such a better technology than inkjet. I've been using onine p

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      Most of our printer use in recent months/years has been school related. School projects, notes, copies of paperwork, etc.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GNious ( 953874 )

      People with kids

      School work, schedules, calendars, notes/tags (some required by school to be printed), or even just the occasional "almost-disney-themed" colour-in drawing.

    • Re:Obligatory TheOatmeal comic (Score:5, Informative)

      by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @03:20PM (#50251325)

      Musicians. I keep an android tablet on my piano too, but a lot of the time it's more convenient to print out the sheet music that I'm currently using and lay the pages side by side on the stand instead of working with a smaller tablet screen. Tablet is great for trying stuff out and whatnot but it's nice to print the sheets out for longer term study.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ranbot ( 2648297 )

      Seriously though, who prints stuff outside of work anyway?

      Yeah, I read this article and thought, businesses with large volume business printers/copiers are the real market for this, not home printers.

    • I work from home, you insensitive clod. Well actually I don't work at all at the moment, but anyway. 8 years ago I bought an HP all-in-1 color laser that pretty much fits that cartoon's description regarding drivers and not printing when the cyan cartridge is empty, but otherwise it's worked pretty well. I got a laser because I didn't print a lot and I didn't want the ink to dry out. For the few times that I do need to print or copy something, it's well worth having the convenience of a printer at home.

  • ...as if I didn't already have reason to avoid Epson printers.

    This is just stupid. It's adding an inconvenience and another obvious opportunity for end user error.

  • They were easy to refill too, if not meant to be.

    Too bad the printer was an expensive waste of money. Beautiful pictures, I didn't use it all that often, it just broke unexpectedly sitting idle after having printed less than 100 pages over it's entire lifetime.

  • Who uses inkjet? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:13PM (#50250767) Homepage

    Have they solved all the nozzle cleaning problems, etc. as well? Why would I want an inkjet?

    I can buy a color laser for less money that will also print thousands of pages between refills. Plus it "just works", no messing around, ever.

    • I doubt you can buy a color laser printer for $49, but that is how much many HP inkjet printers used to cost new. It sounded like a good deal until you got home.

      • I'm talking about the amazing new one they're trying to sell me. The new one with cheap cartridges.

      • They're actually not that expensive anymore (i.e. $100-$200 range):
        http://www.newegg.com/Product/... [newegg.com]

        I bought an Epson All-in-one inkjet a couple of years ago. I've printed maybe 100 pages over its lifetime, yet have changed the cartridges twice. I bought a black original Epson cartridge recently (because apparently the ink in the previous cartridge had evaporated or something), only to find out that after a certain period the printer refuses to print anything if you don't replace your color cartridges as we

  • in other words... (Score:3)

    by steak ( 145650 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:15PM (#50250797) Homepage Journal

    a laser printer.

  • You can buy a laser printer for under $40, or a color laser for $100. Ink jet printers have their place, but for most people, a cheap laser is a far better (and cheaper) option.

  • > The Bloomberg article makes a good point: it's never been easier to not print things.

    Good point, and the usual reaction to a dying (or not-well) industry is to lock things down even more and raise prices. Epson should be commended for going the other direction, and make their printers more attractive. Good differentiation, too.

    Just a few weeks ago I replaced mother-in-law's Epson printer with a color laser printer (2400X2400, probably dithered). It's not quite the same tonal quality, even with photo

    • Good point, and the usual reaction to a dying (or not-well) industry is to lock things down even more and raise prices.

      They can't control the price of paper, and they have lots of competition, including the "why the fuck do we need to print this anyway" argument, so raising prices will just make that argument even stronger.

      • Good point, and the usual reaction to a dying (or not-well) industry is to lock things down even more and raise prices.

        They can't control the price of paper, and they have lots of competition, including the "why the fuck do we need to print this anyway" argument, so raising prices will just make that argument even stronger.

        That's exactly true, but it doesn't stop companies from trying it. I'm a little surprised that Epson appears to be doing something rational.

  • One thing I'd pay a lot of money for: (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:30PM (#50250887) Homepage

    An open-design mono laser printer, with drivers for all platforms, that can do 300dpi, and honestly DOES NOT CARE what toner you use (literally just a reservoir that you fill).

    If we can eliminate drums that "die", in some way, any way, any way at all, and leave us with just toner and sheer fatigue of components (but large quantities of cheap, standard replacement parts), I'll happily spend more than I've ever spent on any printer I've ever bought.

    I have an old Samsung printer that is refillable like this, and damn close to the rest of the requirements, but is showing it's age and hard to get working (but possible) on modern Windows/Linux. And the rubbers that do wear out are getting harder and harder to find.

    • An open-design mono laser printer, with drivers for all platforms, that can do 300dpi, and honestly DOES NOT CARE what toner you use (literally just a reservoir that you fill).

      This is like asking for a space age buggy whip, printing is dead, dead dead. You're chopping down trees and mixing nasty chemicals for no good reason at all.

    • This is why I believe in buying ONLY Postscript printers.

      A Postscript printer will never lose operating system support. It's standardized, and universally supported on every operating system. Hell, all the printers at work are added on my Mac as "Generic Postscript Printer" and work flawlessly with that driver.

      Postscript or nothing.

      • This is why I believe in buying ONLY Postscript printers.

        A Postscript printer will never lose operating system support. It's standardized, and universally supported on every operating system. Hell, all the printers at work are added on my Mac as "Generic Postscript Printer" and work flawlessly with that driver.

        Postscript or nothing.

        or get a printer with a ghostscript driver

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pontiac ( 135778 )

      The old OKI C5200N color laser used toner tanks.. I could get a refiled set of 4 for $100.

      I ran it for 7 years on the original imaging drums until it started having feed problems.

      It was replaced with an HP Pro 200 color laser.. I'm a little over 1 year in on the demo toner it came with.. We did replace black once..
      It's been complaining about the color and black being 0% left for a few months but it keeps printing so why bother..

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:33PM (#50250923)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Lexmark === Total Garbage. You'd pick one up and know just by how it felt in your hands that it was the cheapest, waiting-to-break POS printer you could buy. I had a couple of those printers offered to me by family/friends for free and I would turn them down - and they'd end up in the dumpster. It wouldn't surprise me if Lexmark's products were so epically bad to users that they actually played a role in cutting printer usage overall...

  • ... Its nice that epson is finally offering CIS in their consumer printers but the reality is that people have been buying third party CIS systems and using them with their epson printers for ages.

    My real worry here... I know some great third party ink companies... they make really really good ink. And this will screw them.

    I'm going to stick with what i have for now. I bought about half a liter of ink for 50 bucks last time... identical to the epson ink so far as I can tell.

    Still, nice to see the old ink mo

  • Knock it off, businesses! (Score:4, Funny)

    by xenotransplant ( 4179011 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @02:46PM (#50250999)
    Why does it still happen? The only time I ever need to use a printer is at work. I had a client ask me why we still print copies of our orders. I replied with "I don't really know" because I really just don't get it. Everything else we do is electronic. We are spending money on paper and toner in order to have copies of repair orders that are stored on at least 6 different hard drives across a wide tract of the earth. Having all these copies on paper is only going to make it easier to burn the place down when they take my stapler and move me to the boiler room.
  • They are talking desktop market here. They are talking to people who print a lot. You know go over to the art dept for you company. A lot of you sound like my departed grand father, "Who uses photographs? " as he flips through popular mechanics magazine. Im not talking abouy the magazine but its contents.

    • They are talking desktop market here. They are talking to people who print a lot. You know go over to the art dept for you company. A lot of you sound like my departed grand father, "Who uses photographs? " as he flips through popular mechanics magazine. Im not talking abouy the magazine but its contents.

      an art department making proofs on a $100 consumer printer? huh?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AgNO3 ( 878843 )
        No on a stylus pro 4900 or better. "They are" is typo, "THEY AREN'T" For which Epson is getting its lunch eaten by pantone accurate after market ink sellers already. I have 5 1000ML bottles of each each we use at my company on hand most of the time. Your name isn't, Troll I don't know how to ask questions, by any chance is it? Oh right its slashdot.
  • I have an HP printer/scanner at home that I pretty much use only for the scanner. My wife uses the printer on occasion, but I'm convincing her on the virtues of saving things as PDFs and putting them on her iPad. Likewise at work whenever someone wants to give me a printed copy of anything, I tell them to email or share the document. That way I can search for it, and I can search in it, and make changes/notes instead. Some of my coworkers are slowly picking up on this too. I can't wait for the day when we'r
  • Kodak tried this some years ago: sell consumer printers that have higher upfront costs but lower consumable cost [computerworld.com].

    Like a lot of things they tried before ultimately declaring bankruptcy, Kodak failed at this.

    • Kodak was trying other things at the time too, so can't necessarily say the ink tank idea was the problem.

  • What comes around... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scotts13 ( 1371443 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @03:01PM (#50251139)

    Well, this made me laugh. The very first color inkjet I ever saw (circa 1987) used refillable reservoirs, and simple squeeze bottles of ink. The printer (Tektronix) was pricey - perhaps $1600 1987 dollars - but cost almost nothing to operate. I think an 8 oz. bottle was six or seven bucks.

    BTW, that printer was a wide-carriage, 300 dpi model with a SCSI interface.

  • Can do this for laser printers too. (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @03:13PM (#50251257)

    Kyocera (and perhaps others) has made cartridge-free laser printers [kyoceradoc...lutions.eu] for a while now.

    KYOCERA's ECOSYS printers incorporate "cartridge-free" technology using a durable print drum and high yield toner container that provides thousands of printed pages, a low total cost of ownership and less routine user involvement.

    A company for whom I worked back in the 1990s had one and it worked pretty well. It had a print drum rated for 300,000 copies (like a copier) and used toner refills you dumped into a reservoir. The cost per printed sheet was really low compared to toner/drum cartridge-based printers.

  • Laser printer (Score:3)

    by GrandCow ( 229565 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @03:23PM (#50251351)

    Dumped inkjets years ago, went with a laser. Never looked back.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by steveg ( 55825 )

      "Friends don't let friends buy inkjets."

      I've been telling people (and employers) this, not for years, but for decades.

      Unfortunately, I haven't gotten my sister to listen, but who do you suppose she calls when she has a problem with hers? :)

  • The Bloomberg article says, "The cheapest of its five new printers starts at about $379 ...". I wonder if it's an all-in-one.

    Personally, I don't like all-in-ones. I don't need scanning, faxing, or wireless or photo-quality printing. I just need a printer that does color text printing, like my two Epson Stylus Color 740 printers, which have lasted 16 years between them. Also I want it to be small enough to fit on a shelf in my computer table.

    If anyone from Epson (or any other printer company) is reading this

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It's always been easier for me to not print. I don't print all of the time. I forward and reply to emails. I don't print them. I use presentation tools and share the content electronically instead of printing them. I copy and paste information to different screens instead of printing it out and typing it in. (We all know people that still do this)

    The only time I print anymore is to sign contracts, and even then I use a digital signature when it's possible.

    Hell, the first printer that my wife and I bou

    • Who prints? I almost *never* print anything for my personal use. But if you're in business for yourself, you invariably have to print stuff. You'll need a scanner as well, incidentally. A lot of government agencies or banks still require you to send in paper documents of various kinds. Essentially, I find myself needing to print documents once or twice a year. I prefer not to outsource the printing of confidential documents like that.

      And inevitably, I need to buy one or more new ink cartridges, becaus

  • That's a great idea, but only if the printer lasts more than a year... I think I had 2 HPs crap out before I could perform my 1st ink cartridge replacement. Paying more for a unreliable printer, though lacking cartridges, will not sell for long.

  • It's about time.

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