Epson To End the Sale and Distribution of Laser Printer (theregister.com) 191
Japanese electronics and printer maker Epson announced this month that it will end the sale and distribution of laser printer hardware by 2026, citing sustainability issues. From a report: According to the company, inkjets have a "greater potential" than laser printers to make "meaningful advances" when it comes to the environment. The company already halted laser printer sales in many markets, but continued in Asia and Europe. Even though new hardware would be unavailable everywhere, Epson said it would continue to support consumers with consumables and spare parts.
"As a company we're totally committed to sustainable innovation and action, and inkjets simply use less energy and fewer consumable parts," explained Epson sales and marketing manager Koichi Kubota in canned statement. "While laser printers work by heating and fusing toner to a page, Epson's Heat-Free inkjet technology consumes less electricity by using mechanical energy to fire ink onto the page."
"As a company we're totally committed to sustainable innovation and action, and inkjets simply use less energy and fewer consumable parts," explained Epson sales and marketing manager Koichi Kubota in canned statement. "While laser printers work by heating and fusing toner to a page, Epson's Heat-Free inkjet technology consumes less electricity by using mechanical energy to fire ink onto the page."
The competition is better anyways (Score:3)
At least for b/w. I have made excellent experiences with OKI and Brother.
Re:The competition is better anyways (Score:5, Informative)
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It would be nice if the software they provide to respond to button presses worked on modern Linux, but it doesn't.
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Brother printers have great features for the money and are relatively clean to install and use. Excellent point on Linux. They also seem to have good distribution in North America at least. But "great" build quality?
I was astonished at how flimsy my new (2022) Brother printer was compared to my ~20 year old HP (from back when HPs were good). Poorly fitting parts, a lot of slop in mechanism movement. Unsurprisingly, labels all print crooked.
If you need a quick cheap laser printer with impressive features for
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Re:The competition is better anyways (Score:4, Informative)
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I realize you probably aren't going to actually try to fix the printer anyway but it really isn't that hard to find trays. Brother sells them directly or you can go to ebay and get used trays.
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At least for b/w. I have made excellent experiences with OKI and Brother.
I haven't followed printers for a while now, but Epson was a very good company in terms of inkjet photo printers. I rarely print photos so I never got one. In fact I can go months between printing, which was bad when you had an Epson because the ink would dry in the print head, which was part of the printer. I rarely bothered with color because I was printing manuals and an oddball text dump for Cisco sh tech.
Considering how cheap it is per page for B&W laser overall, and the fact that I was able to
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When I started going to college 5 years ago I picked up a Brother printer with toner. Saved any print credits at school for color printing and the rare time I had to print on campus. I've printed 2200 pages and have replaced the toner once. The drum still states it has 9800 pages left. It can print on both sides, and can scan from a feeder or the flatbed.
It works out of the box with Ubuntu, and works with Windows. Best part, even if it sits for six months it can still print and the ink wells haven't gone dr
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At least for b/w. I have made excellent experiences with OKI and Brother.
I paid $55 for an entire set of toner cartridges for a Brother color laser printer. Total win.
Who cares...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there actually anyone out there that is hinging their printer purchase based on energy usage vs quality and speed of print?!?
It's a printer! It is not going to cause the glaciers to melt and cause Armageddon....
How about plastic waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
Laser toner cartridges tend to be much more reliable for professional refilling operations to reuse and resell while also lasting substantially longer per run.
This reeks of Starbucks style "environmentalism" which is all like "look ma, no straws anymore" while sweeping aside the fact that their cold cups probably have 50x more plastic than a straw and are almost never recycled.
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That and your are much more likely to throw out the entire printer if its inkjet. The heads get blocked, especially if you don't print that often, and inkjets are much cheaper than laser.
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Re:Who cares...? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, laser printers have much superior quality when printing text and documents (what you will do 99% of the time)
Moreover...
Injket printers might be cheaper, but they really get you with the cartridges.
Toner is so much cheaper per page and won't dry out like inkjet cartridges.
Re: Who cares...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who cares...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Option 1: "We suck at producing competitive laser printers and need to exit the market."
Option 2: "We're doing this 1) for Climate Change or 2) COVID safety or 3) to support the Black or Trans community."
Let's be honest, climate change was their best option here.
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Ok...who gives a fuck if a laser using slightly more energy, etc...if it gives a superior print? Is there actually anyone out there that is hinging their printer purchase based on energy usage vs quality and speed of print?!?
It's a printer! It is not going to cause the glaciers to melt and cause Armageddon....
It's just a lame excuse. The real reason why they prefer ink is the per page cost of ink vs toner is many times higher. Ink cartridges cost nothing to produce. It's pure profit.
Greener for Epson (Score:5, Informative)
In the USA and other countries where currency is green(ish).
It's not about the printers, it's about the con$umable$.
Re:Greener for Epson (Score:5, Insightful)
It is said that printer ink is the most expensive liquid on the planet
Re:Greener for Epson (Score:5, Informative)
By a large margin.
https://boingboing.net/2009/12... [boingboing.net]
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Brand perfume is much more expensive.
Re:Greener for Epson (Score:5, Informative)
I see your brand name perfume and raise you champion race horse semen.
Although in all fairness there is nothing stopping you from using horse semen as perfume.
What costs roughly $49 million per gallon and is part of the horse racing industry?
https://standardbredcanada.ca/... [standardbredcanada.ca]
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Perhaps, but Epson's EcoTank inks are probably the cheapest on the market.
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Was Epson ever that big on laser? (Score:2)
I know they offered them but in my, albeit limited, experience with commercial and residential printers Epson was always more the option for color and professional inkjet solutions wherewas the bulk laser units tended to be Brother, Xerox, HP, Canon and such.
I don't think this is really a sign of the death of the laser printer but Epson focussing on it's core strength and exiting a market they more had to be in just to compete and now they feel like they can make the business case for their inkjets versus c
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Epson also has higher-end inkjet printers - wide format (from 24-240 inches), and proofing. Both of which they are market leaders in.
The proofing printers (with the associated software) are pretty specialized beasts... tell it your press, plates, inks, paper, calibration & profile data, etc., give it the same paper stock and it will print out a press-proof, including dot placement, before you've gone to the expense of creating plates, and taking the press down for the necessary make ready for a short r
Translation.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We can't figure out how to make people go out and buy toner every month for $50 a crack like they do for inkjet printers, so we will just pull the lasers from the market to force people to buy more ink."
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Exactly this. It's the marketing department running out of ideas. Don't "fire" printers, fire those people instead.
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They seem very good at making smaller and smaller laser toners as well. At least in the home office / small business market segment.
My Samsung ML-3050ND (from around 2006 I think) had 8000 pages toner, when you choose the high-capacity one which is the most cost effective. Most recent alternative printers I am looking at have 2000 pages toners (monochrome). They may be a little less expensive but never 1/4 the price, and need to be replaced more often.
And also it is getting difficult to get an Ethernet port
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20 year old HP LaserJet (Score:5, Informative)
(Reposted from my submission to the Register article)
I bought a HP LaserJet 1200 in January 2002 (£235.45). It's still going strong, with just one replacement toner cartridge. I turn it off when not in use. The energy I use is miniscule compared to that needed to manufacture a new printer.
I don't use it very often, but I've just printed out 97 caving rigging guides from the CNCC [cncc.org.uk] web site. It worked perfectly. No nozzles to clog. No yellow tracking dots [slashdot.org].
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I'm in the same boat. I only print a couple of hundred pages per year, and I'm less than halfway through my second toner cartridge after 15 years.
The last time I had an inkjet, the ink cartridges would dry up and become useless after about a year whether I used them or not. If I had bought 15 sets of ink cartridges instead, not only would that be less sustainable, but with the insane markups I'd be in the poor house by now.
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HP Laserjets were solid, high quality durable printers.
Paper is dying. (Score:2)
Printers will always have a reason for being, but the mountains of physical artifacts that have historically driven companies are simply vanishing. I recently went through the entire process of selling a condo and buying a house with the only physical paper involved being the signing of the final document. All else was docusigned.
Inkjets can give you photos. That's still a valid use case. But I'm personally on year 4 with my original Brother toner cartridge, with no end in sight.
and some cops are still on the Typewriter (Score:2)
https://thecrimereport.org/202... [thecrimereport.org]
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Photos are fine, but last time I checked I found it cheaper per page to get them printed professionally than pay for the toner, especially if you want to print on photo paper. So all you are left with is the convenience and for me and the amount of times I need to print a photo right now, is so low that its more likely the ink has dried out than anything else.
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Recurring vs. Nonrecurring - Epson Rewards (Score:3)
will they let you refill inkjets / not have timeou (Score:2)
will they let you refill inkjets / not have timeouts on the carts?
Wait . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Someone other than Brother makes printers? Who knew.
Oh - never mind. The search came up with some brands that upon closer look, turned out to be boutique items. This HP company, looks like the "ink/toner" appear to be some kind of high-value NFTs . . . right?
That doesn't sound right. Is it PHYSICAL crypto currency or something? I just can't get my head around the pricing scheme . . .
Dot matrix (Score:4, Funny)
Bring back dot matrix. Nothing beats the look and sound of dot matrix. It's kind of like vinyl vs. mp3, you know what I am saying.
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A KSR-33 says otherwise.
So Epson stops making printers (Score:2)
I'm not in the market for a print-head cleaning machine that uses a ridiculously expensive cleaning fluid.
Whether you print or not (Score:2)
If you print every day, the inkjet nozzles don't clog and you can use up the ink. If you only print once every few weeks, the nozzles clog and you have to buy new ones. Whether you're using up the ink or throwing it away, you buy the same amount just as often.
When I say "you", I mean "I have a laser printer."
Complete Bulls*** (Score:5, Insightful)
If Epson was even the slightest bit concerned about the environment, they'd move forward with laser printers and make them actually-sustainable.
Unless you're dealing with the five-figure Ricoh / Kyocera / Canon / Sharp document centers, laser printers are treated as disposable items. I've replaced the fuser in printers maybe twice in my career, because the fusers for the old machine tended to be the same price as a new machine. I had a Samsung color laser printer in perfect working order, and I had to throw it away because HP stopped making toners for it, and even the knockoff toners cost more than a new color laser printer. Many printers don't even offer maintenance kits to replace the rollers or transfer belts.
Consumers and manufacturers alike treat printers as disposable items. If Epson's concern was really about the environment, that is the situation to fix. Make a printer with a 10-year warranty, refillable toner cartridge, sub-$200 fuser, and something like the old JetDirect system that allows the I/O cards to be replaced with something else later on. If it supports PostScript and PCL, takes less than 15W to idle, and costs less $500 or less at point-of-sale for the B/W model, THAT will be a way to nudge the needle in terms of environmentally friendly printing.
But no, we all know why Epson wants to focus on Inkjets. Now, in fairness to Epson, they've at least been innovating in the space with their bag-like ink and mega tanks that cost about the same per-page as laser printers do; I give them props for at least trying to do a better job of innovation than HP's printing-as-a-service.
Ultimately though, others in the thread are correct; nobody who is shopping for a printer is doing so based on power usage.
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Make a printer with a 10-year warranty, refillable toner cartridge, sub-$200 fuser, and something like the old JetDirect system that allows the I/O cards to be replaced with something else later on.
Did you ever upgrade a jetdirect card? Neither did anyone else. HP came out with new standards for them before coming out with new features.
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I had a Samsung color laser printer in perfect working order, and I had to throw it away because HP stopped making toners for it
Which brings to mind: why are there SO MANY models of printers ? When you look at the list of Cups printer drivers, there are thousands, and they are not even for specific models, but for series. It's insane. There can't be _that_ much difference between one printer and another. Is it just marketing ? Planned obsolescence ?
It's 2022 ffs. (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
It's about color (Score:2)
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You're shopping wrong. I paid equivalent US$315 a year ago for a colour laser multifunction (scan/print/copy/duplex/fax) printer from HP. It sits in my office plugged into the power and the network and prints colour or B/W, two sided, whenever I want. I never have to clean the ink nozzles, buy cleaning pads, replace half full ink tanks, buy the right kind of paper to avoid ink bleeds, deal with random ink clogs, or any of the other things that happen to inkjets.
It's done 600 pages and it is half way through
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look at Brother. The ink is less expensive and you can reset the number of prints on the cartridge. I have mine for 10 years now. I refilled the original cartridges once.
Everyone talks about the environment but they are quick to jump to disposable for convenience sake. I once bought a Canon Pixma and it was clogged before I could empty the cartridges. I can't afford a free inkjet printer. The cost of maintenance exceeds the savings even if the color laser is over $1000.
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I'm surprised people have so much trouble with inkjet printers. I've only had trouble with Lexmarks.. I will never buy one of those again. But then I don't go more than a couple weeks without printing something.
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Another reason... (Score:2)
had an epson inkjet. now I have a laser. (Score:2)
The Epson inkjet would sit for weeks at a time. If I wanted to print, there was long noisy cleaning/purging process that wasted a ton of ink. The first print was still pretty cruddy, then I'd have to clean/purge/waste again. Eventually buy new cartridges whose heads were not clogged with dried ink. Convincing it to use the aftermarket ink required some fiddling.
Now I have a laser.
It sits on a desk and also does nothing for weeks at a time. When I need to print, it prints. If I print a lot of stuff and
Complete BS (Score:2)
Laser isn't as profitable as inkjet (Score:2)
Life Cycle Analysis (Score:2)
In an answer to a question posted on StackExchange:
Laser are way move ECO friendly (Score:2)
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My last Inkjet... (Score:2)
Scam (Score:2)
I bought a new InkJet printer 2 yrs ago, and it simply stopped printing after a year. Bought brand new ink cartridges and nothing would print. And of course the ink is insanely expensive.
Laser printers last for a long time, don't cause nearly the amount of problems inkjets do, and print much faster. It's clear that this whole thing is a scam to force people to use shitty inkjets as we will have to spend much more money to keep them working.
Really? (Score:2)
Indestructable old lasers lack memory for graphics (Score:2)
The only technical downside of lasers is that many old ones, HP LaserJet4 or whatever, can't print full-page graphics. The entire page has to reside in memory, and there's not enough.
Most people and small offices should have B&W laser and send out color.
Instant film printers are popular some places, Canon and Fuji make them, some built into inexpensive cameras. No ink at all, just a Polaroid-type paper cartridge. Selfy stuff at the low-end, maybe better at the higher end.
Real reason, possibly? (Score:2)
"We finally realized that HP makes a bazillion dollars selling ink."
My 2 cents of ink (Score:2)
People say not to buy the first version of something, but I've suspected that t
What? (Score:2)
Epson is terrible on the laser front. That might actually be the reason.
They have good ink. I give you that. When I was using Epson, I would actually buy the genuine one over the refills, due to quality difference. And given "tank" options, it was not expensive at all.
However their laser offerings are probably not bringing enough money, even though they have about 10% global market share in laser, and about 11% in inkjet: https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog... [tonerbuzz.com]
Utter bullshit (Score:2)
Anyone who only prints occasionally soon learns that inkjet printers are the ultimate consumable product. The ink cartridges dry up and often it is cheaper to buy a whole new printer than new cartridges. Sure the cartridges with a new printer only contain a small amount of ink but if it is enough to get the job done then it may be cheaper.
Smart people soon switch to laser printers as a decently designed one can sit for ages wi
Big Fat Lie (Score:2)
When the cost per page is higher, that is paid for with money made predominantly with fossil fuels.
They can't ignore the ecosystem and say they're for the environment.
Besides, Brother is far better and they went DRM-evil.
Small wonder (Score:2)
People print out 10 pages per year, so, if you sell them a laser-printer, they won't buy toner EVER!
If you sell them an inkie, the ink dries out every three months and you can sell them ink that's more expensive than the printer itself, 4 times per year.
epson makes laers?! (Score:2)
I thought they just made inkjets.
Never seen an epson laser in my life.
Re: It's been a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: It's been a while (Score:4, Interesting)
A spider somehow got into the fuser unit in my laserjet, and while it didn't clog up the whole thing, printouts now have a dead spider shadow printed along with them...
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Re: It's been a while (Score:5, Funny)
Funny story: I was at Epson's Dutch headquarters once, and they were using all HP Laserjet printers. The few Epson laserprinters that were present, were in the broken hardware basement...
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It's all about learning from and copying a successful US product.
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Just make 500 copies a spider (or your ass) and load it back into the printer. See how it takes to figure out.
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...printouts now have a dead spider shadow printed along with them.
That's not a problem. That's a branding opportunity!
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I dunno, methinks it's a watermark from some software that detects your many pirated pictures, movies, and software. :)
Re: It's been a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly. Inkjet is far more profitable
And that is the one and only reason for getting rid of laser printers -- pure corporate greed.
I had an Epson inkjet a few years ago. I only printed black text, nothing else, and yet the color cartridges ran out of ink just as fast as the black. I don't know how they did it but they figured out a scam to use as much ink as possible.
The claim that inkjets are "better for the environment" is only true if you ignore all the gazillions of empty inkjet cartridges that get thrown out every year, and ignore all the printers that have to be thrown out because the print heads become permanently clogged and can't be cleared. Inkjets have inferior print quality and are more expensive to use -- the cost of ink is obscene.
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Corporate greed? I don't see how that makes them any money when I buy the Brother Laser Jet printer because I don't want to wait on 10 PPM inkjet to clog and streak it's way thru my print job.
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They literally use all the colors when printing black to make the black darker... because the black ink isn't really that great on its own. You can see all the color fringes around text. I think most printers do this even when in economy mode.
I've been using an LED printer for years, and would never use anything else. If you need photo prints, have them done on a real photo processing machine at the store, or just have them shipped to your house. Not only will the prints look way better, but they won't
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Re: It's been a while (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine how inkjets are better for the consumer (or anyone) compared to laser printers. I had a really nice HP inkjet, but I haven't used it in 15-20 years or so because it was just so much hassle to use and too expensive. My wife bought an HP Laserjet about 15 years ago and it's rock solid and has never failed us. It's just always there, ready to print, and we literally don't have to think about it except to replace the cartridge or load paper.
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Re: It's been a while (Score:3)
Tbh no OS deals with printers well. Controlling printers should be a simple problem far less complex than video drivers, but for some reason printing ink dots on paper seems to require the configuration complexity of the space shuttle with the same fragility of operation. Wish I knew why.
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Re: It's been a while (Score:3)
They basically just stated we don't want to medium and large businesses as customers.
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I bought a Brother printer back in 2014 to print out tax forms. It was the cheapest one they had. I printed my tax forms and forgot about the printer. It sat for a year till tax season rolled around. I flipped the switch and it worked perfectly.
Since then it has been sitting behind me just waiting to be used. Months might go by before I use it but it has always fired right and printed. I'll never own another inkjet again.