Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements? Durable, Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or cartridge costs

Subject: Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements? Durable,
Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in
interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or cartridge
costs

Note that while I may want to print out web pages with illustrations
and other images, photo quality is not important as the other
requirements (have two Epsons already) as long as the images are
readable.

How well it prints on quality paper such as paper suitable for resumes
is also important.

I imagine that a 300 by 300 dpi printer (if available) would be a
decent choice. The ink ought to be cheap to produce (and therefore
buy). The heads shouldn't be clog-prone, even with 3rd party inks.
Of course, I doubt that anyone manufacturers even produce
multifunction units at that "low" resolution anymore. Also, I prefer
new since buying used has the potential to turn out to be a case of
purchasing someone else's problems.

Another concern is that a "low" res printer produced today would not
only be cheap but also be cheaply built.

I prefer printheads that are either replaceable or on the cartridge.

From what I have read so far, it sounds like nothing really matches my
criteria. Canon looked good until I read that "There are few good
free software drivers for Canon and Lexmark inkjets. Do not buy one
and expect success." http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.html


Also, from my understanding Postscript (and probably PCL) are unlikely
to be found in a inkjet in the price range I can consider (definitely
under $300, probably half that).

Also, must be available in the 48 continental states of the United
Nations of Texas

Thanks in advance.



Bill Haught
Extract tooth to reply.
Enron is a case of compassionate conservatism.
Republicans have *morale* clarity.
Reselect George Bush http://georgewbush.org/ Four more wars!!!

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Bill Haught" wrote:

Subject: Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements?
Durable,
Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in
interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or
cartridge
costs

Boy, you want it all, don't you?

I've heard that sort of thing before in response to other questions
posted to forums and newsgroups. Pretty much sums it up. Doesn't
look realistic though.

In case you haven't noticed, the entire inkjet printer industry is
based
on the fact that these things are throw-away devices. They design
them
to fail, and expect them to fail, so as to keep people buying new
ones
out of the factory.

So durability is determined: they're not. Period.

I have read that really cheap inkjet printers (I think the price
mentioned was something like 20 or 30 dollars) tend to last about a
month. By "durable" I mean in relative terms. Epsons (and even
Canons) last longer than that. Of course, this may have been written
before the "milk 'em with the consumables" marketing reached today's
extremes (or perhaps they were referring to Lexmark?).

You need to move to color lasers to get on-board print processing,
and
even then many of the low-end models don't have that.

I figured that I'd be lucky to find a printer with 1) a motor at least
no cheaper than a typical high res inkjets combined with 2) decent
printheads that don't push the technology to the point of high ink
costs and problems and 3) on-board processing. A strange request for
sure. However, one model meeting the above requirements would do, so
despite the apparent futility I decided to ask anyway in hopes of a
pleasant surprise.



Bill Haught
Extract tooth to reply.
Fan of oldamericancentury.org

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" ) writes:
In article ,
"Bill Haught" wrote:

Subject: Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements? Durable,
Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in
interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or cartridge
costs

Boy, you want it all, don't you?

In case you haven't noticed, the entire inkjet printer industry is based
on the fact that these things are throw-away devices. They design them
to fail, and expect them to fail, so as to keep people buying new ones
out of the factory.

So durability is determined: they're not. Period.

Let's not forget that consumers want that low end stuff. And once
the price gets low enough, there has to be design cutting.

I paid $500 for my first printer, a Radio Shack dot matrix printer
in the fall of 1982. It was terribly slow, had lousy print quality,
and was pretty much the cheapest I could get a new printer for in
Canada back then.

My next printer was a Smith Corona daisy wheel, for $399 in the summer
of 1984. I needed something that would print good quality, because
the dot matrix sure wouldn't qualify. Real slow, and I had to roll
in each sheet of paper just like in my previous typewriter. And,
it too was about the cheapest I could get a new daisy wheel printer
at the time.

In 1989, I replaced both printers with a $300 dot matrix printer,
that had "near letter quality" that indeed was good enough that I
could get rid of the really slow daisy wheel. By this point, dot
matrix printers had come of age, and I have no idea if something cheaper
could be had.

When I switched to a Macintosh in 1994, I picked up a used Imagewriter,
for about thirty dollars. Could have been as old as ten years old at
that, but still worked fine. Might have used it up to 2001, but I found
a cheap Imagewriter II for about the same price a few years later, so
I switched because the later model was supposed to be faster. Both
printers could still run, had I not retired them.

My first and only inkjet printer, I got in the spring of 2001. I
paid $20 used, but this was one that would have originally sold for
hundreds of dollars, because that's what printers used to sell for.
But I wasn't happy about the ink useage (or cost), and even the fact
that the printout smeared when wet, so I only used it through one
refill.

I snagged my first laser printer, and old TI, for $25 that fall. Printed
out a few thousand pages with the toner in it, then retired it when the
toner ran out. It was old, but also not too common, and I'd gotten my
money's worth.

Replaced it with an HP Laserjet 4P, for fifteen dollars at a Rotary
Club sale. Had to shake the toner cartridge to get printout, but
that lasted at least 500 pages. The printer itself had a mere 3000
pages on its counter. Again, it sold for hundreds of dollars when new.
I'll be keeping this one.

This is the same issue as with winmodems. Consumers want low prices,
and then they complain because there are tradeoffs. The tradeoffs come
not because the companies want to cheat the consumer, the tradeoffs come
because consumers want things cheap. As my history shows, printers
traditionally cost good money, and you got something that would last.
People no longer want to spend that money, so the only way to give
them a printer that issues pretty pictures is to make a product that
has faults, that may fail early because it's not as solidly built as
a similar product made some years back. On the other hand, on those
cheap printers is vastly better than printers I spent far more for
decades ago. People print out high quality graphics like they make
toast, when even a few years back we'd only print such things on
the rare occasion because it just took too long, and th results weren't
so great.

Michael

Yes, and sadly, practically all consumers want the cheapest price point
on everything related to consumer electronics, not only computers and
peripherals. Prior to computers becoming a mainstream and commodity
product, prices were high for everything. Remember the days of a
Seagate ST-225 20MB hard drive at a price point of $300???

Without a doubt, Microsoft certainly has its faults. But, without the
gang from Redmond, WA, we would all still be paying ultra-premium prices
for everything related to computing. With the commodity mentality of
computer marketing today, low-end products are everywhere, especially in
the ink-jet printer market.

I, too, remember paying high prices for such products as an Okidata 82a
or 182a 9-pin dot matrix printer. My first laser was a HP LaserJet IIIp
(circa 1993) with a cost of nearly $1500. Only 4ppm, but built like a
tank and still functioning today.

I came from the electronics field, and the name HP meant first-class
quality in the test equipment market. The biggest marketing mistake HP
ever made was to enter the consumer computer market using the HP logo.
After years of success in that market, they had to change their original
name for the high-quality test equipment market to Agilent Technologies,
due to the quality perception of their consumer computer line.

You can still buy high-quality industrial-strength products that meet
the original poster's basic technical requirements, but you do have to
pay the price. A high-quality color laser printer is the best solution,
but be prepared to pay multi-thousand dollar pricing for it. However,
it will outlast a myriad of cheap inkjets, and be ultimately cheaper to
operate.

Linux is a fine operating system, but it really needs to get its act
together regarding up-to-date hardware compatibility and drivers. Much
of Linux development tends to target European standards, and most
consumer computer users here in the USA don't use Postscript-based
printers - rather PCL-based printers. Up until recently, some Linux
distros did not inlcude PCL drivers for popular HP LaserJets! And, if
your using a 3Com/USR controller-based PCI internal dial-up modem, good
luck on finding a proper driver under Linux.

I've used practically every distro of Linux since its rollout, and
although Linux is certainly improving with every version, it's not ready
for "prime time" for the average consumer computer user - close, but not
close enough. For the hobbyist, or computer geek, yes it's a fine and
stable OS. But, for someone who just wants to play a DVD, output photos
to a photo printer, or easily install updates, Linux has some work to do
before its accepted as a viable alternative to WinXP.

Don

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 02:34:14 GMT, "Bill Haught"
wrote:




I usually put messages in the message body and perhaps a clue as to
what the message is in the subject line.

give that a try

Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:

In article ,
"Bill Haught" wrote:

Subject: Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements? Durable,
Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in
interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or cartridge
costs

Boy, you want it all, don't you?

In case you haven't noticed, the entire inkjet printer industry is based
on the fact that these things are throw-away devices. They design them
to fail, and expect them to fail, so as to keep people buying new ones
out of the factory.

Do something about it!

One of my earlier posts.....

Well you know guys, printers and ink are expensive
and there is a nasty conspiracy to prevent it from
becoming popular on the GNU/Linux platform.
So what say some of you out there
to an Open GNU/Linux printer project?

The inkjet and laser printer can be standard
mechanism as there are no patents,
and the cartridges can be deliberaly designed
for continued re-use forever - again no
patents on those.
The inks and powder are pennies as the
raw materials are cheap before they are
packaged into cartridges and us lot
made to pay inflated prices for it.

The printer electronics can be driven
with GNU/Linux OS and could have
as interface an ethernet port so that
it works anywhere with any modern PC
hooked up to ethernet. It can have a
web interface to configure and control it.
So even grandma can configure it by using
her browser.
It should have a socket for big memory
(256Mb costs now only $20) and that memory can act as buffer for
many print jobs or very high definition output
using multi-size spot rendering - something that
produces really high quality output (but requires
big memory). The electronics and software is completely
open, and easy to put into flash.
Other items such as the print heads, the ink
formulations, cartridges and everything
under the sun is left as open projects.
Anyone can copy and make their own version of printers and
configure to their own language because it
is an open project. A certain amount of knowhow
and experience will give those involved
in the project the edge over newbies
when it comes to getting hold of
investment but of course
everyone should be doing their best anyway.

To set up the project, we can start
making the software, electronics and
drivers, and then hope some investor
or big government department, or some schools will give
us the contract to produce several thousand printers
and we are in the money. There is money in making
the printer by the way - don't believe all you
might hear - if you make it
for $20, and sell it for $25, there are plenty
of factories in China that can survive on that
if the orders are 10,000 pieces at a time.

Having studied these mechanisms before,
I know it can be produced for between $10 and
$20 for 10,000+ pieces FOB Hong Kong.

To put it into production,
the number of engineers required is 10 people
working for about 6 months - thats about $50,000.
I can get them to design all the plastics and
metal parts. Then the cost of tooling is about $100,000.
Add in contingency and some cash for processing the
orders, the total investment figure is about $200,000.

So for around 200,000 dollars new printers can be
made. And if we take orders for say 100,000 pieces
from someone like Wall Mart, there will be
big orders for cartridges on the back of that.
Any group of people with small beginnings can
become a very large and open printer company.
With GNU/Linux becoming ever more established,
this could evolve into something of a big
service to the open source community
when M$ supporters might be trying to shaft us all
from access to good printers.

I'd love to be part of something like that
if anyone wants to do it.
I have experience of developing products in the Far East.



So durability is determined: they're not. Period.

Low ink costs? Canon, with refills. But they're not durable printers,
so....nor, due to price pressure from the buying public, will any of
them have anything even remotely resembling an on-board print processor.

You need to move to color lasers to get on-board print processing, and
even then many of the low-end models don't have that.

Bill Haught wrote:
Subject: Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements? Durable,
Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in
interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or cartridge
costs

If you want PostScript, durability, and other high-end features, be
prepared to pay for them. Most of the commonly available printers are
disposable, as others have said. However, HP does offer a high-end
"Business Inkjet" line that offers PCL in all the models, and PostScript
in the more expensive ones.

The HP Business InkJet 1100 starts at an MSRP of $200 and offers PCL
built-in. For $500 you can get the model 2300 with PostScript. Ink
isn't terribly cheap at $34 per colour (four colours, estimated 1500
pages per refill). However, these models will be *much* more durable
than the home units.

Check out any of the "Business InkJet" models (not the DeskJets) listed
on HP's site:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en...51-236261.html

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 01:14:20 +0000, Bill Haught wrote:

Subject: Inkjet printers meeting the following requirements? Durable,
Linux-compatible (or Postscript or PCL in FIRMWARE (built-in
interpreter)), quality text & graphics, low ink refill or cartridge
costs

Note that while I may want to print out web pages with illustrations
and other images, photo quality is not important as the other
requirements (have two Epsons already) as long as the images are
readable.

How well it prints on quality paper such as paper suitable for resumes
is also important.

I imagine that a 300 by 300 dpi printer (if available) would be a
decent choice. The ink ought to be cheap to produce (and therefore
buy). The heads shouldn't be clog-prone, even with 3rd party inks.
Of course, I doubt that anyone manufacturers even produce
multifunction units at that "low" resolution anymore. Also, I prefer
new since buying used has the potential to turn out to be a case of
purchasing someone else's problems.

Another concern is that a "low" res printer produced today would not
only be cheap but also be cheaply built.

I prefer printheads that are either replaceable or on the cartridge.

From what I have read so far, it sounds like nothing really matches my
criteria. Canon looked good until I read that "There are few good
free software drivers for Canon and Lexmark inkjets. Do not buy one
and expect success." http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.html


Also, from my understanding Postscript (and probably PCL) are unlikely
to be found in a inkjet in the price range I can consider (definitely
under $300, probably half that).

Also, must be available in the 48 continental states of the United
Nations of Texas

Thanks in advance.



Bill Haught
Extract tooth to reply.
Enron is a case of compassionate conservatism.
Republicans have *morale* clarity.
Reselect George Bush http://georgewbush.org/ Four more wars!!!

Strictly speaking, I think you are correct - the beast does not exits.
Look for a cheapie that does some version of PCL and refill the cartridges
- that's about as good as you can do. HP does make some low-cost units
which work fine with linux - I got an Apollo P2200 a couple of years ago
from OfficeMax - it's an HP print engine, basically Apollo was HP's low
cost brand for a few seasons. I've been quite pleased with
operation/durability.

Mostly, for Linux, Canon makes good boat anchors.

"Michael Black" wrote in message
...

People no longer want to spend that money, so the only way to give
them a printer that issues pretty pictures is to make a product that
has faults, that may fail early because it's not as solidly built as
a similar product made some years back.

So if you aren't a dumb consumer that wants a $9.99 toy or a Fortune
500 company with deep pockets for a $ 5,000 laser that can chug out
1,000 11 by 17 inch duplexed pages per milisecond with a mere four
colors (I could care less about 16 million 64 to 256 would be fine),
you are screwed.