Epson "ink is low" ripoff

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 14:31:36 -0400, "Dave C." wrote:

....snip...
...Just refuse to buy Epson. Go HP or
Canon instead. The fact that you have to use a zap-it should be enough to
convince you that Epson is a company that you should NOT deal with, in any
manner. -Dave


Can't say anything about Canon, but HP is the brand I'd avoid
altogether. Even in good old times when they actually paid attention
to R&D and engineering, the abbreviation HP stood for High Price.
These days the High Price part stays the same, but Carly happily
outsourced engineering and R&D to India, so the quality went... If you
have a clue you get the picture... Looks like the only parts of HP
that stay intact are Sales, Marketing, and the airline (for Carly
flying commercial is too low, corporate jet is the only befitting
option).

snip
.. Even in good old times when they actually paid attention
to R&D and engineering, the abbreviation HP stood for High Price.
These days the High Price part stays the same, but Carly happily
outsourced engineering and R&D to India, so the quality went... If you
have a clue you get the picture... Looks like the only parts of HP
that stay intact are Sales, Marketing, and the airline (for Carly
flying commercial is too low, corporate jet is the only befitting
option).

Eh, have you had a look at Bristol recently, HP seem to have a pretty big
lab there next to the Uni.

Did you by any chance work for HP?

Mike

oop, just noticed this is the worldwide version and Bristol is just a dot in
the UK.


"fred bloggs" wrote in message
...

snip
. Even in good old times when they actually paid attention
to R&D and engineering, the abbreviation HP stood for High Price.
These days the High Price part stays the same, but Carly happily
outsourced engineering and R&D to India, so the quality went... If you
have a clue you get the picture... Looks like the only parts of HP
that stay intact are Sales, Marketing, and the airline (for Carly
flying commercial is too low, corporate jet is the only befitting
option).

Eh, have you had a look at Bristol recently, HP seem to have a pretty big
lab there next to the Uni.

Did you by any chance work for HP?

Mike

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 05:08:11 GMT, "
wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 14:31:36 -0400, "Dave C." wrote:

...snip...
...Just refuse to buy Epson. Go HP or
Canon instead. The fact that you have to use a zap-it should be enough to
convince you that Epson is a company that you should NOT deal with, in any
manner. -Dave


Can't say anything about Canon, but HP is the brand I'd avoid
altogether. Even in good old times when they actually paid attention
to R&D and engineering, the abbreviation HP stood for High Price.
These days the High Price part stays the same, but Carly happily
outsourced engineering and R&D to India, so the quality went... If you
have a clue you get the picture... Looks like the only parts of HP
that stay intact are Sales, Marketing, and the airline (for Carly
flying commercial is too low, corporate jet is the only befitting
option).

Canon makes some very good printers, especially for printing text.
Just beware of the model that have the same dpi specs as the epsons,
they're running epson print engines under the hood.( 1140x720 dpi
etc...)

Canon makes some very good printers, especially for printing text.
Just beware of the model that have the same dpi specs as the epsons,
they're running epson print engines under the hood.( 1140x720 dpi
etc...)

Do you have a source for that? If it's true, I'll have to cross Canon off
my list entirely. But I suspect you are mistaken, as Epson and Canon are
direct competitors. Canon has been making their own bubble-jets so long, it
doesn't make sense that they would need to borrow inferior technology from
Epson. -Dave

On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 08:07:01 -0400, "Dave C." wrote:

Do you have a source for that? If it's true, I'll have to cross Canon off
my list entirely. But I suspect you are mistaken, as Epson and Canon are
direct competitors. Canon has been making their own bubble-jets so long, it
doesn't make sense that they would need to borrow inferior technology from
Epson. -Dave

Canon makes the engine for at least one other brand of laser printers
so I doubt they would outsource their bubble jet design. While I know
bubble jet != laser, but logically it doesn't make sense for them to
be doing that, would it?


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On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 12:06:05 -0400, Stacey wrote:
Just a heads up, I'm never going to use/buy another epson printer after this
experience.
*snipped*
Epson doesn't measure the ink levels, the "estimate" how much ink is left
by how many pages are printed and shuts down the printer after this many
pages no matter how much ink is left. First the black "ran out" so I bought

Oh yes, I got ripped off too. Bought an Epson laser because it was
affordable with good spec. I've regretted it ever since. The printout
sucks (a fresh toner has banding printing the same stuff as my old HP
on half worn out toner), the printer also refuses to print despite
there being obviously still plenty of toner (the last print out is
still dark and all). The toner is expensive too!

I'm not sure how my friend solved it but he came over to my place a
few weeks back, fiddled with stuff and the Epson's printing now.
Though I just noticed that the Epson software that used to pop up is
now missing :P

But according to another friend who works in one of them printer
companies, he said the estimation vs actual ink/toner level is to
achieve consistent quality of print.

Personally, I think it's just crap to force us to buy new ink/toner.
I'm not running a publishing house at home and if I want to print
draft and misc stuff until I can barely see the print, it's MY
problem. The HP will happily allow me to do that. My next buy is
definitely going back to HP or Canon since it's basically the same
thing at mainstream consumer level.
--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

The little lost angel wrote:


Personally, I think it's just crap to force us to buy new ink/toner.
I'm not running a publishing house at home and if I want to print
draft and misc stuff until I can barely see the print, it's MY
problem.

Exactly, a bunch of stuff I print isn't important and I like to adjust the
printer driver (easy to do in linux) so it uses very little ink per page.
Of course with epson I still get to buy ink like every page was "photo
quality"!
--

Stacey

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 01:23:36 GMT,
(The little lost angel) wrote:

On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 08:07:01 -0400, "Dave C." wrote:

Do you have a source for that? If it's true, I'll have to cross Canon off
my list entirely. But I suspect you are mistaken, as Epson and Canon are
direct competitors. Canon has been making their own bubble-jets so long, it
doesn't make sense that they would need to borrow inferior technology from
Epson. -Dave

Canon makes the engine for at least one other brand of laser printers
so I doubt they would outsource their bubble jet design.

In the 80s/90s, at least HP and Apple used Canon laser engines.
Probably some of the smaller brand printers did.

While I know
bubble jet != laser, but logically it doesn't make sense for them to
be doing that, would it?

Not at all, since an inkjet is pretty simple mechanically.

On a side note, I do know of printer manufacturers that used similar
technology to bigger ones. I for one have a Citizen printer (I think
actually and Olivetti or some European based brand), whose head
technology was close enough to HPs that an HP 26 cart would fit with a
slight modification to the cart, and disabling the in built ink
monitor.

Stacey wrote:

The little lost angel wrote:

Personally, I think it's just crap to force us to buy new ink/toner.
I'm not running a publishing house at home and if I want to print
draft and misc stuff until I can barely see the print, it's MY
problem.

Exactly, a bunch of stuff I print isn't important and I like to adjust the
printer driver (easy to do in linux) so it uses very little ink per page.
Of course with epson I still get to buy ink like every page was "photo
quality"!

I found the best way to save on black ink, when you're only doing text.

Set the level so light that it's darned near white...

....and print on black paper, for good contrast!

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