Printer Makers Are Crippling Cheap Ink Cartridges Via Bogus 'Security Updates' (vice.com) 202
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Printer maker Epson is under fire this month from activist groups after a software update prevented customers from using cheaper, third party ink cartridges. It's just the latest salvo in a decades-long effort by printer manufacturers to block consumer choice, often by disguising printer downgrades as essential product improvements. For several decades now printer manufacturers have lured consumers into an arguably-terrible deal: shell out a modest sum for a mediocre printer, then pay an arm and a leg for replacement printer cartridges that cost relatively-little to actually produce.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation now says that Epson has been engaged in the same behavior. The group says it recently learned that in late 2016 or early 2017, Epson issued a "poison pill" software update that effectively downgraded user printers to block third party cartridges, but disguised the software update as a meaningful improvement. The EFF has subsequently sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that Epson's lack of transparency can easily be seen as "misleading and deceptive" under Texas consumer protection laws. "When restricted to Epson's own cartridges, customers must pay Epson's higher prices, while losing the added convenience of third party alternatives, such as refillable cartridges and continuous ink supply systems," the complaint notes. "This artificial restriction of third party ink options also suppresses a competitive ink market and has reportedly caused some manufacturers of refillable cartridges and continuous ink supply systems to exit the market."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation now says that Epson has been engaged in the same behavior. The group says it recently learned that in late 2016 or early 2017, Epson issued a "poison pill" software update that effectively downgraded user printers to block third party cartridges, but disguised the software update as a meaningful improvement. The EFF has subsequently sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that Epson's lack of transparency can easily be seen as "misleading and deceptive" under Texas consumer protection laws. "When restricted to Epson's own cartridges, customers must pay Epson's higher prices, while losing the added convenience of third party alternatives, such as refillable cartridges and continuous ink supply systems," the complaint notes. "This artificial restriction of third party ink options also suppresses a competitive ink market and has reportedly caused some manufacturers of refillable cartridges and continuous ink supply systems to exit the market."
Local electronics recycling says (Score:5, Interesting)
Every once in a while we have an electronics recycling in our area, and they took a count of how many printers they got that were still functional, and it turned out to be about 65%; about 85% of those they could “resale” (meaning they had power cord, etc enough to make them usable, sans new ink). They tried to give them to the local thrift shops, but they usually refuse them because they already have too many of them to try to sell. So they end up in landfills.
So now the local towns are thinking of putting restrictions on the sale of those types of printers.
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I keep telling people not to buy those printers. Photo printing isn't economical to do at home, it's cheaper to do online and get the prints sent to you.
Get a laser printer. A black and white Samsung costs less than a set of colour ink cartridges. Even colour ones are pretty cheap these days.
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Get a laser printer. A black and white Samsung costs less than a set of colour ink cartridges. Even colour ones are pretty cheap these days.
I paid about £130 for a Brother wireless color laser printer with AirPrint (prints from any iPhone or iPad), and that one takes cheap third party cartridges. Plus I found a supplier selling two black + a set of three colour cartridges in one pack, because the black ones usually run out quicker.
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I bought an Oki colour laser when they were being sold cheap as end of line. I'd printed a few hundred pages at least and the "starter" cartridges it came with are still about 2/3rds full according to the display. I think it was about £120 from memory, although sadly it's wired only and not wireless.
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Is photo printing at home convenient though? You can get prints sent overnight, no mucking about with ink cartridges, blocked heads, expensive paper, re-ordering supplies etc.
Maybe if you are a professional doing high volume it's worth it, but for most home users it just isn't.
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The older samsung lasers were good, we had one a while back where i worked which supported postscript and the toner was reasonable... The newer ones are less so, postscript support was gone and the toner was smaller and more expensive.
I'd generally go for a used office printer like a laserjet, postscript/pcl support and widely available toner.
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Brother printers. Inexpensive, but good. And they support PostScript.
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If you have a makerspace, hacker group, or an electronics class or robotics club at a local high school...it's hard to have too many stepper motors, power supplies, sliding carriages on straight steel rods, LEDs, etc.
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I've had similar issues with cheap printers...
I bought a cheap HP all-in-one a few years ago as i needed something urgently and it's all the local retailer had. The Mac drivers are PPC only, while the Windows drivers are 32bit only. Linux however (tested with ubuntu) supports both the printer and scanner out of the box because the drivers are open source, and there's no reason it wouldn't also work with non x86 architectures.
However this problem is entirely at the low end, if you buy a higher end printer th
We need a law reinforcing capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
And I mean real capitalism, not the fake stuff the nationalists talk about.
If you buy something, you have the right to modify it, repair it, and use it with other people's products. That is what OWNING it means. If you want to rent stuff instead of sell, that's fine, but you don't have the right to rent it while pretending you are selling it.
Re:We need a law reinforcing capitalism (Score:4)
Let's force them to treating it like renting so they can be on the hook for recycling all the printers when they fail.
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This already exists in the EU. In the UK, for example, if Epson send you this bogus update and mislead you into installing it you could return the printer to the retailer as defective. They would have 28 days to fix it, and if they can't downgrade the firmware they can give you a new one (with old firmware) or refund. Of course the retailer is probably already suffering from a huge number of returns on "defective" third party cartridges.
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I thought I knew my consumer rights, but I didn't know this. HP did the same thing as Epson a couple of years back - they did an update in March which stopped 3rd party cartridges working from September onwards. They obviously knew no one would update if word got out, so they went super-sneaky instead.
Since we got the HP from an old employer, we're just using up the ink on the odd print here and there (which are getting worse and worse as the colours run out). When it's empty, it's going to the charity shop
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Brother and Oki are both good, Japanese business lasers. Samsung lasers are not bad either, and very cheap.
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Why update the printer at all? I mean it's not like the printer is accessible from the internet and could be hacked.
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Heh, Printers (Score:2)
I remember when my Mom found out I didn't have a printer a decade or so ago and she treated it like I was going through some sort of financial hardship like when my parents found out around the same period that I didnt have cable TV anymore. Sure enough I got a printer for that years Christmas that still sits in a closet in its original packaging.
Fortunatly people are coming around on how worthless printers are now and what a price gouge they have always been. These companies are just hastening their own d
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> people are coming around on how worthless printers are now and what a price gouge they have always been
Indeed. It's pretty sad when it is cheaper to buy a brand new printer with included ink then to buy the "Official" ink refills. :-/
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The printer companies have picked up on and adjusted for this. Now, many printers come with "starter" ink - cartridges that are well below capacity.
Printing as a service and dry toner (Score:5, Insightful)
What's especially annoying with liquid dye printers is that you KNOW that the great majority of users don't use them regularly, so the ink dries out or the inevitable head cleaning uses up a significant portion of the ink, and the price per page becomes ridiculous. Printer companies *know* this -- it's part of their business plan.
For mothers and mothers-in-law, I recommend mid-level color laser printers. The quality is Good Enough for printing facebook photos to tack on the wall, the toner cartridges last a long time, and they never dry out. It's fairly easy to make this case financially, especially to someone frustrated with how much it's costing, and how much they have to dink with the hardware, just to print pictures of their grandkids.
I do photography, but I outsource all my printing. When customers order prints from my website, an outside service does the actual printing and delivery. For ad-hoc printing, I sneaker-net a thumb drive over to some place that can print it for me. And recently, with grocery store chains and drug store chains buying the same Epson roll printers that used to be found only in professional print services, it doesn't really matter who does your printing, if you do your own color correction and don't need special paper.
In the rare instance I need art gallery level printing, I'm not going to do that at home anyway. I'm going to upload my image to a professional print service and either will-call it or have it shipped to me.
The POINT being, there's NO REASON TO OWN A DAMNED DYE-BASED PRINTER and a whole lot of reasons NOT to own one.
Or if you're going to buy one of the stupid things, buy the printer on sale, and when the demo cartridges run out, THROW THE WHOLE PRINTER AWAY and buy another printer on sale. E-waste be damned. Tell the manufacturers to adopt a less wasteful business model.
Let's all as consumers stop acting like battered wives, shall we? Stop playing the game, and the game will change.
Re:Printing as a service and dry toner (Score:5, Informative)
> For mothers and mothers-in-law, I recommend mid-level color laser printers.
As someone who has BOTH a color laser printer and inkjet I'll second that.
Canon's color laser printer, the imageCLASS LBP612CDW [amazon.com] at $184, is more then "good enough" for most people.
From 3+ feet away you probably can't tell the difference between an inkjet and color laser on "natural" images. (i.e. non test patterns.) But closer then 3 feet and you start to notice the flaws of color laser printers -- especially gradients that have artifacts. If you are printing portraits or HDR photography then the inkjet produces the superior quality -- no contest.
i.e. One of the many standard "litmus test images" are the ones listed on the defunct Outback Print [archive.org] such as this PrinterEvaluationImage_V002_aRGB.jpg [outbackphoto.com]
> NO REASON TO OWN A DAMNED DYE-BASED PRINTER
For 99% of people, yeah, they probably don't need their own inkjet but for the other 1% I wouldn't agree with that statement at all.
e.g. If you have a 10-bit/channel color monitor then you probably care about color consistency / correction across the entire pipeline. Especially with Canon's printers having 8, 10, and 12 ink systems now.
It all depends on the quality you want and at what price point.
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Thanks for the info on the Canon model. I added it to my wish list.
If I had mod points I would mod you up Informative.
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This is exactly right. For the few documents I actually infrequently need to print, I have a brother color laser printer I got off of Amazon for ~$300. It's bulky, but the toner isn't going anywhere, it connects via wifi, and doubles as a copier/scanner.
In the event I need photos printed and they have to look nice, I'll just use Costco/Walgreens/CVS, they probably have better printers than I would have anyway.
Re:Printing as a service and dry toner (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I use the color laser at work for things that need a splash of color. My home printer is black and white,, and it serves me just fine. The only time I needed to print photos, I used a photo printing service.
And the likes of Costco and such don't use crappy inkjet printers. No, they use real photo printers on real photo paper. Basically the same kind of machine that used to generate prints from 35mm film has been adapted for the digital world (they have a very high resolution CRT screen that images the photo paper).
For photos, they are simply stunning and come with your pick of matte or gloss photo paper. And photo paper means it doesn't run at the slightest hint of water.
Inkjet printers are junk. I wouldn't print photos on them - it costs under 50 cents for a 4x6 print from the store. Better than paying $30 for a pack of 10 inkjet printer photo paper and all the special inks.
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It's probably cheaper to send your files to a print house and have them print it than pay for ink at consumer retail prices.
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Which is why I said ... :-)
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Same as Nespresso (Score:2)
I don't think you can fight this sort of human nature though. I have a cheap espresso machine at home. To make a coffee, I put two scoops into the portafilter, press it down, stick it into the machine and turn the knob to push the water through. 30s later I have espresso. To clean, I take the portafilter off and smack it on the top of the rubbish bin.
How on earth it is considered better or easier to use a capsule machine is beyond me, yet millions of consumers choose to become enslaved to those expensive li
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The first time I saw one of those things, I knew I absolutely DID NOT WANT. For the same reason I'll never buy a Mac for my own use—why should I make myself dependent on a single supplier?
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You wouldn't, but if you look at it from the opposite view - as a manufacturer, why wouldn't you want to get your customers dependent on you as a single supplier? Without controls or incentives otherwise, manufacturers will always do what benefits them to the detriment of their customers.
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Well... yeah.
You're just now figuring this out?
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Filters? Buttons? Bah.
Beans, grinder, plunger pot—coffee the way God intended.
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I don't think you can fight this sort of human nature though. I have a cheap espresso machine at home. To make a coffee, I put two scoops into the portafilter, press it down, stick it into the machine and turn the knob to push the water through. 30s later I have espresso. To clean, I take the portafilter off and smack it on the top of the rubbish bin.
How on earth it is considered better or easier to use a capsule machine is beyond me, yet millions of consumers choose to become enslaved to those expensive little non-biodegradable pods every year. It is just the way humans work. If anything it is the scourge of middle class apathy - the same thing that is causing many of the problems with our politics right now.
I absolutely agree. I have a french press. I pour in boiling water, wait 30 seconds, press it and pour coffee. To clean is only slightly more work than you do for your expresso.
Despite this, wife bought one 'a' those capsule machines, so now we have a drawer full of those little single-use plastic cups and lots of new trash. 'Cause it's convenient and trendy and cute. When I mention the waste, I get told that they also have a reusable strainer thingy, but I don't know of anyone who actually uses one.
In
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FWIW, while I agree in general with what you're saying about inkjets having the heads dry out, I brought my concern to a local pro-photo supplier and they recommended the Canon Pixma Pro-10 printer. They said that they did not get complaints about heads drying out and the inks are pigment-based.
I bought the printer and could not be happier. I've had it a couple of years and it has never had a print head problem. I use it once every 4-8 weeks. (though, when I do use it, I generally do a couple dozen 8.5x11 o
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It's true that pigment based printers fare much better than dye based printers. I didn't mention them because they're more difficult to find and you have to know what to look for. So yes, you're right, a printer with pigment based inks does not have the drawbacks of a dye based printer.
I still think that outsourcing my printing makes more sense. Let someone else manage the hardware. Of course, I have an enterprise-class laser printer for stuff that isn't photography. I've had it for years and it's stil
Buy Cheap Pay Dear (Score:2)
There is nobody on the right side of this.
You have manufacturers that are willing to take advantage of consumer's greedy nature. Then you have consumers that think they can get something for nothing.
The only solution is if you don't like it don't buy crappy printers. I know I got good value out of my LaserJet II that finally died last year. It was so nice I was more than willing to do my own repair work on it.
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How did you keep your 2 working?
I threw mine away a long time ago. It always ran out of memory while rendering the page.
HP could have written a better driver, but why would they?
Awesome hardware, bullet proof.
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I am still using office 2003 and have a windows XP VM I use as a bridge for old software and hardware.
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IIRC I junked mine under Windows 2000. Which I did hang onto for a long time.
It worked for really simple documents.
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Hmm I have a windows vms going back to 3.1 Be interesting to see what the determining factor is. Likely when they got frozen
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I don't know about the 2 as i've not used one for a long time, but i have a newer laserjet (4200)...
It supports PCL and Postscript, so i don't have to use official HP drivers (assuming the official drivers can even run on any current systems)...
The memory is upgradeable, it has 4 simm slots and memory is available cheaply on ebay - mine has 256mb, but i think some base models came with 16 or 64, so i've never had problems rendering complex pages.
One of the problems with page rendering and memory use btw is
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Loss leading is companies trying to cheat customers...
Bad experiences with aftermarket ink (Score:2)
I've tried aftermarket cartridges a few times. They seem to be o.k. for a while but inevitably they clog the print head.
Cleaning the head is usually an endless cycle of "clean print head/check print head" attempts that just consume ink like crazy. I have tried removing the head and cleaning it with no success. Once clogged the printer is history.
Canon (Score:2)
Is it still true that Canon inkjet printers don't have DRM-style ink cartridges like Epson?
Because the last time I read about it, Canon was the last refill-friendly printer company out there.
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I haven't had any problems with several different brands of after-market ink cartridges. Found some on NewEgg that are about $2 each (instead of around $20 for official retail). Haven't had any problems over the years FWIW. Their software is also relatively minimal, extra points for that.
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I also use Canon for the same reason. Good quality and I haven't heard of any attempts to specifically block 3rd party cartridges.
They make great cameras too (all the way from point & shoot up to high-end professional gear)
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I have found that Brother printers are also OK with third party cartridges.
The old adage (Score:2)
" If it ain't broke, don't fix it " still applies . . . .
. . . though in the electronics ( especially the computer ) world it should probably read " If it's working fine, don't upgrade it lest you break it "
A change in Point of Sale Law (Score:3)
is needed which mandates display of: (a) ability to use third party parts; (b) ability to use third party repair shops. This should apply to any product that has an expected life of more than one month. The minimum prominence of the display (size, positioning, etc) should be specified. This should also apply to marketing, including web sites.
Once consumers start to notice this they will start to make buying decisions on this information. This will make manufacturers change. It might mean that it costs more to buy a printer, but cost over a few years should go down.
IT product review/comparison web sites could help with the problem today: Include these 2 data points in every review/comparison.
What the printer manufacturers are doing is just the same as John Deere does with tractors.
Don't use chipped cartridges (Score:2)
After that experience I always use chipless cartridges and I will never buy Epson under any circumstances. The reality is that printers do not need to put microchips on a cart for any technical reason - an optical sensor is far m
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Yes there's no technical reason for chips on cartridges, doing so increases the cost and complexity of the cartridges while providing no benefit whatsoever to the customer. Something needs to be done to stop manufacturers from expending additional effort to implement features which are entirely detrimental to the customer.
I've no objection to something which is inferior because it's inherently so due to lower cost, but i am totally against companies investing additional resources to create an intentionally
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Manufacturer Sabotage (Score:2)
In the summer of 2016 I purchased an HP OfficeJet 8100 printer. Relatively fast print speed, duplex printing, offered as an "office printer", able to handle reasonable workloads, but with longevity and long term reliability in mind. Worked perfectly up until earlier this year. Only ever used 100% original HP inks.
Earlier this
One Benefit (Score:2)
One benefit of the "inkjet scam" is that because the printers themselves are often sold at a loss and include a scanner, you can generally get an all-in-one printer for a fraction of the cost of just a flatbed scanner.
I personally use a laser printer for all my printing needs (that itself was a dirt-cheap closeout model for $40 but I've still not exhausted the included toner cartridge), but my inkjet printer I paid $18 for brand new and its never even printed a single sheet. I literally only use it as a doc
Is there a list of printers that have done this? (Score:2)
While one solution to the problem would be "throw the printer away and buy one from some other company", I'd prefer a solution that does not involve spending more money - after all, reduced consumer cost was supposed to be part of the goal here wasn
Won't Buy Epson Again (Score:2)
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You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
It is obvious you've never printed *any* HDR photography -- let alone portraits -- on both inkjets and color laser printers. The difference is substantial up close. Professional, and consumers, use ink jets to get the best quality for photos on premium photo paper such as 8, 10, and 12 ink systems.
i.e.
* Laser printers are awesome for text but OK for photographs such as their inability to produce artifact free gradients due to the toner when placed being ba
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Which have the exact same issues.
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Should be using toner and laser printers.
Even if you want to cheap out on printing, you're better off buying a monochrome laser and sending the occasional photo print order to Snapfish when needed. Even if you need color, color lasers have now come down dramatically in price.
Bonus: toner cartridges don't dry out, so if you don't print every day you no longer need to waste most of your liquid ink running the Deep Clean utility to unclog the heads.
Re: Why no open source printer hardware...? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's no surprise at all. Printers are sold on thin, or negative margins. Consumers will pay $50 for the unit which needs overpriced service and ink, and shun the more expensive models which would be cheaper in the long run.
You simply can't break into the market with a more expensive upfront cost, and you can't make a better unit cheaper. I'd love to have someone prove me wrong.
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> and shun the more expensive models which would be cheaper in the long run.
Yes, because there is no guarantee that they will actually be cheaper to run. This promise has been made a few times, and been broken every time.
The only potential difference in the market is the subscription model, where ink is included, and you pay for a certain number of prints per month. That offers an opportunity to be truly competitive.
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You may not have had the...pleasure...of a copier lease. That's often the model used, so the hardware does tend to emphasize durability and actually sane consumables design(toner cartridges that aren't tightly coupled to transfer rollers, that sort of thing); but the vendors are utter dicks about basically
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Well, yeah, there is; what do you think the total-price-per-print is for a shitty consumer-grade printer (that requires proprietary ink cartridges) vs a workgroup laser printer??
Workloads are not the same, which is why you don't see "workgroup" class printers sitting on kitchen counters, printing the occasional school report or car wash coupon, where color is probably needed. Color inkjet has a much lower price of entry for this class of service and I don't think your average home user has a budget line item for printing costs that they slice down to "cost per click".
I have a Canon Imagepress C8000VP in our print shop that I could send jobs to. I still use a $90 Brother home-gamer
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This isn't to say that expensive print-shop inkjets are bulletproof or anything; but the cheap inkjet that gets used maybe a couple of times a month seems to be magnificently good at being clogged or dried out(maybe it'll come back after a 'cleaning' that consumes a substantial percentage of the cartridge, maybe not; but h
Re:Why no open source printer hardware...? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you should read about how a laser printer works. The laser never hits the toner.
It's used to dissipate the static charge on the drum so it only picks up toner in the correct place to print the image.
The only heating that occurs is the drum that fuses the toner to the paper. That only melts the toner, it doesn't vaporise it.
Ink jet printers on the other do vaporise ink in some types.
HP used to brag that the instantaneous temperature inside the print head heats up hotter than the surface of the Sun. It's called "thermal drop-on-demand" . Canon, HP and Lexmark use it.
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I have always wondered about this and I'm sure one can make new technology to make a different kind of printing.
But then I realized that most likely they have Patents up the Gazoo and anything you come up with you will be sued by these guys.
I hate printers and printer companies for this reason, and don't print unless I absolutely have to.
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and yet here we are every year the printer companies come out with new models with form factors especially for the ink and toner supply, and none of these printers are readily end user serviceable with available replacement parts.
I have a 7 year old Brother printer that I bought for $35. Just recently I replaced the toner and the drum, with whatever I found on Amazon. It doesn't have the brother badge on it so it's after market, but Brother still sells the parts as well. A few years ago I replaced the feed roller, that was also a $5 part from ebay.
I really don't know what your complaint is about, but it sure isn't universal.
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If a friend or family asked me what printer to buy I used to have a few suggestions but now it's only Brother.
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Because the current economic system punishes any system designed to operate for decades unless it requires an ongoing maintenance contract.
The companies producing these devices need to show growth in their business and increased sales, but that's hard to do when your customers will buy one product that lasts 20 years.
The pixelation, not the pigment. Inkjet smooths ou (Score:4, Informative)
Inkjet printers use liquid that spreads out just a bit after it's placed. Laser printers use a solid pigment that stays exactly where it is placed, giving a sharper image.
Text is good sharp. Portraits and most other photography isn't supposed to have sharp, crisp lines between different colors. Photos are best with a softer transition between colors.
Haha that's the guy. This guy ^ thinks I'm white (Score:2)
Lol. There he is again, the guy I was talking about last week. Apparently he thinks I'm white, based on the fact that I'm honest enough to link to the government's own official statements about their policies.
Re:Apparently photo printers... (Score:5, Informative)
> I have been told laser printers make inferior picture prints.
As someone who has BOTH a color laser printer and inkjet that is indeed TRUE.
* Laser printers are awesome for text but OK for photographs,
* Inkjet printers are OK for text (slightly blurry) but phenomenal for portraits, and HDR photographs.
One of the many standard "litmus test images" are the ones listed on the defunct Outback Print [archive.org]
From 3+ feet away you can't tell the difference between an inkjet and color laser on "natural" images. (i.e. non test patterns.) But closer then 3 feet and you start to notice the flaws of color laser printers -- especially gradients that have artifacts. Not Mach Banding [wikipedia.org] but error dot diffusion patterns due to the small size of toner color laser printers basically "print" in a halftone pattern. [mattgrum.com]
> I doubt professional industry-grade printing firms print their photos on inkjet printers.
That's because they care more about cost then quality.
> see no reason why laser printer pigments would have to be inferior.
I take it you don't do much (any?) printing of HDR photos. Here is a primer (pardon the pun.)
First, color laser printers only have the standard 4 color CYMK toners. This means the gamut is not quite as large as inkjets's dyes and pigments.
Second, in Canon printers the large black "PGI" cartridge are pigments which is used when printing text. The remaining color tanks may be dye based inks which tend to have smaller particles than the pigment based inks. See Canon PGI vs CLI [inkhub.com.au] for more details.
Third, inkjets tend to have more dyes then just the standard 4 color CYMK inks. For example, the Canon Pixma PRO-1 is a 12 pigment system. [canon.com] Why 12?
5 are dedicated for black and white printing:
* LGY (Light Gray)
* GY (Grey)
* DGY (Dark Grey)
* MBK (Matte Black)
* PBK (Photo Black)
Remaining 7 are for colors:
* C (Cyan)
* Y (Yellow)
* M (Magenta)
* R (Red)
* PC (Photo Cyan)
* PM (Phtoto Magenta)
* CO (Chroma Optimizer)
If you want the best quality the type of printer inkjet vs color laser matters due to printing technology. i.e. For every day use a color laser printer is more then good enough but if you want quality portraits nothing beats an inkjet.
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Re: Apparently photo printers... (Score:2)
Bought an Epson on sale at a brick and mortar. Had ok reviews across the internet. It fucking blows. If you donâ(TM)t print a few documents a week, the ink clogs up and you wind up printing 10 sheets to clear it along with âoeclean ink nozzleâ functions a few times. If it runs to low on ANY ink, it refuses to print - even if itâ(TM)s a color ink and youâ(TM)re printing black and white! Ironically it says âoeyou can print in black and whiteâ but the only options that come
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But since I doubt professional industry-grade printing firms prit their photos on inkjet printers.
Define professional industry grade. You'll find there's a wide variety of printers out there for a wide variety of purposes including laser, inkjet, and lithography.
In the professional / industrial arena you'll happily find inkjets costing upwards of several thousands of dollars. They are used for professional photos, but you also find them for very large format printers since it is still one of the best ways to make a quality print in a compact form factor while printing on huge rolls of paper.
And I also see no reason why laser printer pigments would have to be inferior.
Inferior to
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Well, I don't use a printer anymore. It's pointless to get a home inkjet anyway unless you print something every day otherwise the head gets clogged. And if you get color then you will always run out of one of the colors long before the others. Laser printers are better but the additional cost can be too much and it's not worth it if you don't print a lot.
So, if the cost of ink is too high, if the printer is being annoying, if the company treats you like crap, then that's just more people who will realiz
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Well, I don't use a printer anymore.
Nor do it. Well, not my printer anyway, I take advantage of my constitutionally guaranteed right (33 1/3rd Amendment) to print reams of crap on my work's printers. Medical, dental, and free printing of as much crap as you can gather, that's the job benefits.
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I used to do that, but nowdays, my work printers don't work 75% of the time.
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Don't know if this is accidental or if it is by design.
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A "signature" is stupid anyway, i just make a random few lines with in osx preview.app and save the pdf. It's different every time, just like a real signature.
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Real, much more secure electronic signature protocols exist with no need to print out documents, sign them, and scan them back in again.
All we have to do is wait a few hundred years for the legal system to recognize the stupidity of doing it the old way.
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Guess what printer I will not be buying in the future...
You would do well to avoid an Epson ink printer anyway. While they may make some high-quality professional printers with 8, 10, or 12 colors, their consumer models have permanent print-heads that are supplied with ink from replaceable cartridges. That means you print-head can clog and need cleaning if you use it infrequently.
Contrast this with other manufacturers who, while they may play some of the same tricks as Epson, at least sell you a new print-head with each cartridge. And remanufacturers can (and ho
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I did the same with an old hp laserjet, has network connectivity, supports postscript and pcl so it works with everything, has duplexer etc... Came with a toner that's supposed to be good for 20k pages and its still around 98% full.
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Who paid you to write this ?
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Or set a static address on the printer but don't set a gateway, it won't be able to route outside of the local network.