Epson "ink is low" ripoff

I have to agree, my canon printers never printed photo's very well
compared
to how they worked with windows. For printing documents they work fine. I
read HP's work really good with linux and HP supports linux with drivers.

http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/
--

Stacey

With our HP inkjet, we get a low ink warning. We get it months before the
ink actually runs out. But at least it keeps printing until it is REALLY
out of ink. -Dave

On Sat, 03 Jul 2004 04:14:11 GMT, "Noozer" wrote:

Absurd analogy. In fact the way tire use really works, it's a good
comparison with ink cartridges as far how it should work. IOW if you
drive
moderately, you can expect your tires to last longer than if you drive
hard.

You can't control how hard you drive your printer...

Know what a printer driver is?... and what it means to you? Every one I've
seen, laser or inkjet has controls for "quality" or "density" or "dpi"...
whatever they want you to think the result will be. You seem to have
missed something established earlier in the thread - GO BACK TO GO.

...and you can drive on your tires until their on the steel belts, and you
lose control and crash.

I guess *YOU* could - not me!

I assume that you don't change your brake pads until the rivets are cutting
into the rotors as well.. To hell with the safety margin! Who cares if
they're squealing as long as there is some pad left!

Hmmm, quite the little ru... err... ant!

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

Judging from the comments here, it appears that for robustness,
economical, carefree use etc. one should go with lasers, and
with one that has separate drum and toner to save on drum replacement
costs because a drum lasts much longer. Obviously, Linux compatibility
is a must. But is postscript necessary? ps printers generally have
been much more expensive. Error-free paper handling is of course a
requirement. No hassles, no fumbling: just lazy, easy plug-n-play.
Colour is not a requirement.

More recommendations?

Lux

On 5 Jul 2004 02:20:52 -0700, (A. L. Meyers) wrote:

Judging from the comments here, it appears that for robustness,
economical, carefree use etc. one should go with lasers, and
with one that has separate drum and toner to save on drum replacement
costs because a drum lasts much longer. Obviously, Linux compatibility
is a must. But is postscript necessary? ps printers generally have
been much more expensive. Error-free paper handling is of course a
requirement. No hassles, no fumbling: just lazy, easy plug-n-play.
Colour is not a requirement.

More recommendations?

Lux

Depensd what OS you are using, and what you use the printer for
perhaps.

IMO, printers with an all-in one conumables may be cheaper in the long
run, if you refill, as the price of a replacement developer/drum of a
fixed drum printer is rather expensive.

I have a Panasonic KX-P4420 that is sitting idle, because of the cost
ot a developer unit and drum are too much.

On 5 Jul 2004 02:20:52 -0700, (A. L. Meyers) wrote:

Judging from the comments here, it appears that for robustness,
economical, carefree use etc. one should go with lasers, and
with one that has separate drum and toner to save on drum replacement
costs because a drum lasts much longer.

Definitely for me, if you don't need color, laser is far superior.

I used to think like that on the (separate) toner & drum/devloper cartridge
but drums go bad with aging anyway, and start ghosting, often long before
the drum is really bad or worn out. I've seen corona wires break for no
reason, rendering the whole drum assembly useless. Then there's developer
which wastes a lot of toner when you replace. The separate packaging for
each is additional cost so that, in the end, with modern laser engines, I
think the integrated cartridge is best.

Obviously, Linux compatibility
is a must. But is postscript necessary? ps printers generally have
been much more expensive. Error-free paper handling is of course a
requirement. No hassles, no fumbling: just lazy, easy plug-n-play.
Colour is not a requirement.
More recommendations?

My personal preference is for postscript - I wouldn't buy a laser printer
without it and have, in the past, added the option... no where near as
expensive as it used to be and the "emulations" are as good as Adobe's
licensed stuff now IME.

I hate the printers with the vertical loose sheet feed and output hopper
(looks like the stuff is growing out of it :-)) - I prefer a slide-in input
drawer, but a tray is OK if it's covered... and output tray on the top of
the case. Optional straight through path, with say a fold-out output tray
is nice if there's any chance you might want to print to heavy stock paper.

I don't have a lot of experience with different makes - I've been
reasonably happy with Lexmark lasers for home and the office for a while
now, so have not looked at alternatives recently. Considering the abuse
they get in the office, from the err, maladrioits, the fact that we never
get paper jams speaks well for me. The only thng that ****es me off about
Lexmark is the extortionate price on add-ons like network cards ($300.
extra for a $15. card), paper drawers and memory (~$500. for a $40. DIMM).

The printer memory DIMMs are now *finally* becoming (semi-)standardized so
Crucial usually has a DIMM which fits the common printers... something to
check when looking at printers. I recently got a Lexmark T420D for the
office and Lexmark wanted ~$500. for a 64MB DIMM - I got one from Crucial
for $32... which didn't work.:-( Lexmark's usually excellent support could
only say "if it's not a Lexmark part, blah, blah, blah". Crucial, of
course were excellent and replaced it with one which works fine.

Interesting point on that Crucial DIMM: the part which didn't work had
Samsung memory chips and Crucial noted this when I phoned their support:
"hmm, you have a 'K-part'... with the Samsung chips. We'll send you one
with Micron chips".

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

A. L. Meyers wrote:
one should go with lasers, and
Yes.
with one that has separate drum and toner to save on drum replacement
costs because a drum lasts much longer.
No.

gothika wrote:

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 03:06:55 -0400, Stacey wrote:

gothika wrote:

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

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

I'm sure back about 4 years ago Canon contracted with Epson to make
the print engines for a line of their "photo-printers".
They were easy to spot, their specs matched the Epsons
exactly.(1440x1440, 1440x720 etc...)
Just stay away from those models.


I looked at canon's site and none of their printers match epsons numbers,
they are now at 4800X1200 for most of their better (over $99) printers.
Maybe at one point they did this but I don't recall it and as I said my
BJC-8200 from just a few years ago makes really nice prints and isn't an
epson clone.

Try looking at the specs for the BJC 3000

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/con...0&modelid=7971



Interesting... Thanx
--

Stacey

[Followups trimmed]
"Dave C." wrote in :

Go HP or Canon instead.

FWIW, I picked up a BJC-4300 for $15 at a local used-PC-stuff place, and he
had about a dozen more in there. All of them had clogged heads, but a new
cartridge ($35 with black and color tanks included) fixed that, and a new
black tank (BCI-21) can be had at WalMart for less than $8. There's also a
black-only tank for those who don't care about color, which lasts a lot
longer...according to http://www.inksell.com/bpi421bk.html it can be had
for under $5.