HP printer inks FRKN BSTRDS!
I have a HP309g photosmart premium printer that I was given by HP when in the US last. Its a very high quality printer.
Ok so one of the inks has ran out. I went to buy more and for Magenta, Yellow and Cyan it came to ?50. :eek:
Well I needed it fast so I paid. Now I get home and put it in and the printer produces an incompatibility warning. So then I find out that HP regionalise their cartrages, so they can squeeze as much out of people as possible.
So apparently I can get my printer de-regionalised, but I have to phone HP support for which you are very lucky if you find somone who knows how to do it, or that it is even possible.
So, this also means I must replace all my inks, even though they are not empty because you will not be able to mix US and European regioned inks.
Now I see this nice free printer was just a honey trap. If I'm paying I dont think I'd buy a HP printer nexr. Good quality output but @#&%&g expensive.
Ok so one of the inks has ran out. I went to buy more and for Magenta, Yellow and Cyan it came to ?50. :eek:
Well I needed it fast so I paid. Now I get home and put it in and the printer produces an incompatibility warning. So then I find out that HP regionalise their cartrages, so they can squeeze as much out of people as possible.
So apparently I can get my printer de-regionalised, but I have to phone HP support for which you are very lucky if you find somone who knows how to do it, or that it is even possible.
So, this also means I must replace all my inks, even though they are not empty because you will not be able to mix US and European regioned inks.
Now I see this nice free printer was just a honey trap. If I'm paying I dont think I'd buy a HP printer nexr. Good quality output but @#&%&g expensive.
Post edited by Scottie_uk on
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Apparentely most/all printers come with all sorts of (un-documented) built-in features which the regular user never has access to.
One of these "tricks" was that if you pressed certain buttons on the printer in a certain sequence, you could have the printer expel all the ink from the cartridge.
Anywho, I had my doubts about it and asked him to prove it ... lo and behold, it was true!
So, you should definitely scour the Net to see if one you could find a list of these hidden printer easter eggs for your printer ... regional settings might be included.
EDIT:
Googled HP309g printer easter egg and got this, which shows this is not terribly uncommon:
http://www.eeggs.com/tree/10432.html
Yeah I know about that trick. I wish crackers would spend some their time cracking printer firmware. I have not found anything other than phone the customer service.
you live near a cartridge world?
There was a way with many of these printers though to reset the firmware with freebie software.
It was soo annoying, there was nothing wrong with the printer at all, and why 'they' decided to tell me it was at the end of its life anymore was taking the piss.
It certainly gives more credence to the general idea of region coding is so that companies can benefit from globalization (cheap labour in China) but customers can't reap the same benefit by buying supplies wherever in the world they are sold cheaper.
Inkjet printers in particular are sold with the "razorblade" model, sell the razor itself well below market price to make it attractive, but sell the blades for a huge markup, so the blades pay for the razor handle. This is why the cartridges are so expensive, because basically they are paying for the actual printer which they sell dirt cheap (well below cost price) to get you to buy it in the first place.
If you do any sort of volume of printing, it's almost always worth avoiding these sorts of printers and getting a decent laser printer instead. HP still makes good quality laser printers, you just won't find them for under ?100 (because you're paying for the printer when you buy it, you are not paying for the printer when you buy consumables).
I had a HP colour Laser which cost ?220 when new. It was shite, so shite I sold it on. They were clever in that the roller mechanism inside was detachable.This stored inside it all the wasted toner. When it was full this roller mechanism had to be completely replaced and cost almost as much as the printer. The quality of the prints was blurry, and it never fed the pages properly, printing a slighty different starting positions with each page which made multi page documents look awful. So fed up with the cost of running HP's laser printers (expensive toner, and it seemed the speed at which it run out was a function of the printers age in months) that my Uni has now crossed over to Ricoh (or how ever it is spelt). The printers now seems never to be out of toner whilst the old hp ones seemed forever out of toner.
That'd probably the price for an entry-level mono decent quality laser printer. You'll probably not get a decent colour model for much less than ?500.
For medium volume at work we use HP9000 series (printing bills, letters etc). We run ours at about 100K pages per month. Our oldest HP9000s are now 8 years old and they just keep on truckin', they just periodically get a maintenance kit, and have proved incredibly cost effective. Of course an HP9000 isn't a cheap consumer model either :-) Desktop models we use here are the HP2000 series and they've proven trouble free for desktop volumes.
(At the extreme end we have a Xerox colour laser machine that cost somewhere in the region of ?30,000, not something you're gonna install at home of course :-))
Lexmark was a partner I worked with when I worked for Compaq. I was one of 3 who 'liaised' with them and made sure operations ran smoothly..that involved drinking a lot with the Lexmark plant manager in Kentucky.
I think I've mentioned before that the line of printers they sold back then IJ600 etc were built to die at 10000 pages...regardless of whether the printer worked good or not. this was done so you'd go buy another printer.
The problem with that though (which I asked him about..and got the distinct impression by his bemused look..that he hadn't thought about it) was the printers were sold at a loss..they made the money on the ink carts so why have the printers die early??
Another hack on their printers...the only difference with the ink carts was a 'key shape' on the head...you could hacksaw another cheaper models cart and make it fit your more expensive model etc.
Incompatible cartridges:
Some cartridges have chips, so refilling or replacing with "alternative" cartridges is avoided. Never heard about a "regionalized" printer (although some printers are sold only in some countries).
End of life inkjet printers:
I can only guess what happened. Some parts in printers are consumables. In an inkjet I could think about pick-up rollers, cartridges, printer head and the purge. Of those consumables, the printer head is very expensive, and the purge is cheap but a pain in the ass to replace.
The printer head is the place where the injectors are placed. In some printers (HP) the cartridge includes the injectors, so there is no printer head as consumable. In other printers (Epson, Canon), the printer head is sold separately. There may be printers with no replaceable printer head, so when it fails... game over, buy another printer.
The purge is a sponge that gets rid of wasted ink (when the printing finish, the printer spits the remains of ink in the injectors; it is done because if the ink dries into the injectors... time to replace the printer head). When the purge is full (or sometimes when the printer is put upside down), it spills ink all over the place. Liquid ink. You don't want to see that, because it is almost impossible to clean.
Going back to the start: almost all inkjet printers got a counter, and when that counter reaches a limit throw an error indicating that the purge must be replaced (and they won't print unless do so). So maybe, your "expired" printers are printers where the purge counter has reached the maximum, and the designers doesn't sell new purges as spare parts. Some printers (Epson) allow a software reset of that counter, but believe me... you don't want to see a filled-up purge spilling ink.
Laser printers and waste ink:
In that printers, toner is carried by electromagnetic means, and there is no printer with a 100% efficiency (and there is no perfect toner). When toner doesn't adhere to the OPC drum, it is recovered into the developer (and reused later). When it doesn't adhere to the paper, it is recovered into a waste ink depot. In colour printers, there is a part called the ITB (intermediate transfer band) that carries the toner between the drum and the paper. That band also has their own cleaner to recover and dispose the toner.
In low volume monochrome printers, the waste ink depot is placed into the cartridge. The cartridge almost always empties before the waste ink depot is filled, so most users never have to empty/replace it.
High volume printers (most copiers) have a separate waste ink depot, so it needs to be emptied or replaced periodically. Sometimes it is replaced by the user, sometimes the engineers do it for you.
Low volume colour printers have TWO depots: one in the drum and one in the ITB. The drum gets scratches long before his waste depot is filled, so no problem there. The ITB tends to make "subtle" failures when is near his end of life, so most users are angry because their believe that the depot has filled and the ITB is yet a good part. Nope, the ITB had to be replaced long before the depot filled. Your crappy quality prints are telling everyone that your ITB is a wreck.
Cheap vs. expensive printers:
Cheap printers are... cheap printers. They're built using the cheapest materials and fastest construction techniques. Their aim are to give everyone the oportunity to print some documents, with a decent quality.
More expensive printers fall into two categories: volume printers and high quality printers. The first ones are aimed to print high quantities of documents, the later needs to print without the maximum quality.
If you want to make a volume printer, you think about rugged printers made with high quality materials. You need a printer with a life of millions of printings, so cheap materials are out of the question. You don't need to replace the cartridge every week, so you make BIG cartridges. Also, some parts are consumables now: fuser must be replaced every 200000 printings or so.
Comparing my humble laser printer (Canon LBP2900) with a Laserjet 9000, you'll find that my cartridges only lasts 800 printings (Laserjet 9000 seems to lasts 20000); when a Laserjet 9000 needs a fuser replacing, my printer will be dead; but the quality is nearly the same.
High quality printers needs high quality auto adjustment procedures, so tolerances are minimal... so they won't be built around cheap materials. When you bought a cheap colour laser printer, you're not buying quality. Your laser will print without problems logos and colour headers, but it's not a photo-like quality.
Sooooo?
Cheap printers are not bad printers. They're only cheap printers. My printer is a great printer if you plan to use it at home... but working in an office will drain his life in two weeks.
Cheap colour printers are intended for writing letters or documents with some colour touchs, not to print photos or high quality graphics.
The opposite is also true: buying a 1000? printer is a waste of money to me: I don't need high quality, and I won't print more than 1000 pages... a year.
So buy your printer according your needs, and you will be happy with that. There's no point in saying that my LPB2900 is a piece of shit if you're using it as it is not intended for.
An' you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true!
most printer makers make no or near zero money on the printer.
a certain pc maker was selling a new printer for ?10... lexmark.. carts for it were ?27 - 37 :lol:
there was a time where printer ink etc.. cost more than gold..
errm machines / carts used to be able to be "zapped" dunno if thats still true.
I use a mono laser printer an ex g/f gave me as she couldn't use it with her laptop (wasn't usb.. but got a usb convertor recently) .. so , so far it's cost me ?26 for a 2nd toner that lasted ages :)
Now using one of the Kodak printers, the carts are a lot cheaper and the quality is perfectly acceptable for a number of uses, I have only replaced the cartridges a couple of times since I had it, with the Lexmark it was only about four weeks between changings. Today I copied my Police check document and it is an exact copy, so much so that I nearly put the original in the envelope to post off. They are supposed to display a warning sign on them to reveal that they have been copied, this time they didn't, so it must have been a good copy !:-)
Allong side my ink jet I have a monotone, HP Laserjet 1320 and that is a simply fantastic printer. I too used to have a Samsung CLP 300 colour lazer, I brought it 2nd hand, and it was just as un-reliable as the cheap HP laser I had.
It seems its much better value for me to buy my Inks from the USA via ebay, it works out much cheaper than buying them in the UK.
Would you not be hit with vat since its bought outside eu?.
I'd pay VAT if I brought them in the UK too. However, I'm sure there is ways and means to get around that.
I ended up taking my inks back to PC world and they said they would refund me for the open ones only. So I protested and the manager said he was sure they were the right inks for my printer (I kept quiet about the regionalization) and that they would it it for me, only then if it didn't work would they give me a refund.
So I brought my printer in and yes I got a full refund.