I hate Printer Companies

The problem with ink jet printers is that they waste ink to try to keep the nozzles from clogging. This makes them horribly expensive to run except for high volume printing, where you can keep ahead of the automatic cleaning cycles. I gave up after tracking my usage over a year and finding my 6 color HP printer was costing me $.30 per page to run. This was for printing only a few pages a week on average, mostly black and white documents, with the rare photo thrown in. I replaced it with a Brother laser in 2010 or so, and I'm still on the starter toner. I would have spent literally hundreds of dollars on ink to keep running the HP.

printers are disposable today

if you must have color , spend the bucks and get laser

I use a Ricoh MPC 306...don't have those problems.

invest in Brother laserjet printer....

I have to buy a printer today. I've never been more unhappy about shopping for technology.

My dilemma is that I need to print things so infrequently that it makes inkjet a less-than-ideal choice. But, when I do need to print, my production requirements are varied and specialized -- photos, labels/envelopes/cardstock, double-sided, etc. A color laser in my price range tends to be mediocre at photos and not very adept at handling specialized paper. 80% of what I print is in color.

I may just have to settle for a multi-function inkjet again. Looking at the Epson WF-7610. Does wide-format printing, auto-duplex printing and auto-duplex copy and scan. $150 for the printer. A set of genuine ink goes for $49 on amazon.

quote:

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I had to order ink today for a multi-function HP and it's going to be about $90!

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This printer is replacing an HP Officejet. I recall paying about that much for ink for it. It's the HP 940/940XL ink. Decided not to get an officejet this time. The one I had was great when I first got it. The first thing to stop working correctly was the autoduplex. Then the yellow/black print head starting getting clogged constantly. It would inexplicably print a perfect page followed by a totally blank page. I don't expect any better out of a different brand, but at least the ink is cheaper.

Non-genuine ink is super cheap, but there was something weird about the HP ink that refillers couldn't replicate, and I think that's what led to the clogging, because towards the end of its life I was tired of paying so much for cartridges and started getting the generic ones. I imagine the printer companies are fighting back against the non-genuine ink sellers by reformulating their ink and building their printheads to such tight tolerances that refilled ink will destroy them. Or, they want us to think that, and the clogging was just a coincidence. It's possible people who write bad reviews of refill kits and generic cartridges are shills for the printer manufacturers. Printer firmware could be programmed to reduce quality of prints using generic cartridges, or -- even if you use genuine--simulate degradation over time so that the user will buy a new printer, which will of course use a different cartridge design (gotta keep changing the cartridge design so that the generic cartridge manufacturers have to spend as much money as possible to keep up).

I wonder why they don't just cut to the chase and simply reject non-genuine cartridges.