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Never buy Epson printers

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31–40 of 170 posts

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#31
I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time.

During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box.

I've talked more than a few people out of buying inkjets.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#32
Epson recently found through customer research that anxiety about ink cartridges was one of their biggest problems and so they are launching printers with refillable ink tanks, currently available in the form of the Epson EcoTank L355. Given that the company has understood this problem and released products to address it it seems that never buying Epson printers might be an incorrect response.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#33
post #14

I don't currently have a printer. I think I'd want an economic laser printer. Probably going to print less than 50 pages per month. Needs to work fine under Linux. Any suggestions?

My Brother HL-2380DW black and white laser with flatbed scanner works great in Linux (Ubuntu 15.04 at least). The scanner I actually have setup to scan straight to Dropbox so I don't even have to screw around with scanning software on a computer. It does cloud print and apple print too so all your mobile devices will work. Supports auto duplexing of printing so you just check a box to print on both sides. Great printer if you just need an occasional use scanner. They make a version without any scanner too that's a bit cheaper, and a version with a fancier auto duplexing document scanner if you do a lot of document scanning.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#34
Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious.

1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon).

2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only.

3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge.

4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black and colours).

5. They are buggy and noisy as hell.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#36
This is not unique to Epson, so if you go out an buy an HP thinking you'll be safe... do your research first.

I have an HP Officejet 6700 Premium right behind me that works the exact same way. If I run out of Magenta, it won't even print in black.

I've been thinking of trying to find a way to inject some water or something into the empty cartridges to trick it. The strange thing is - I almost never print in color, yet somehow, I run out of color ink. I don't get it. And it's costing me way more than I want to spend to print.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#37
I use printers so infrequently, it's usually easier to use the work or public library printer when I need to rather than maintain ink cartridges. They usually go dry before I use them, I typically print less than 10 pages a year.

For the record, it's always government paperwork. Always. If you work for government, I have this super-neat thing called Flask to tell you about, you're gonna lose your shit when you find out!

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#38
1) That's not just Epson. Many manufacturers do that. 2) That's a cheap consumer all-in-one. You're buying a subsidized product which pays for itself via expensive ink cartridges. Requiring all of them in order to print is called "leverage". It's at least ten years that such products exist - if you didn't know, it may be your fault as well. 3) Want a reliable printer with a decent cost per page? Aim at the SOHO market, at least. There you won't get a subsidized price, and printers would actually need to print more than 10 pages per month - hence the higher price tag.

Just an example: I've got an Epson Workforce Pro 5620. It's an inkjet, color all-in-one printer with double sided printing and scanning. It works great, the price-per-page using original Epson cartridges is on par with most non-heavy duty color laser printers (i.e. those in the $400-$600 range) but it's much cheaper ($280 on Amazon right now).

Don't cry for something we all know about.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#39
post #7
post #5

Never buy any inkjet printer. I threw in the garbage a Canon multifunction that refused ton work as a SCANNER when its ink was empty. If you have the space and print a lot of black and white, buy an eight year old used HP LaserJet with an Ethernet interface.

I don't know why people still bother with inkjets. It's like the companies are actively punishing you for buying these models of printers. If they are necessary for work, then MAYBE. But even then, if you're buying commercial hardware you're not dealing with this junk either. It also used to be that laser was incredibly expensive in comparison, now they're about the same price if you compare color inkjet to black and…

Lasers do have disadvantages – mainly their excessively high power consumption and their air pollution.

Modern gel inks don't dry out in my experience, and make for very efficient printers that are much less maintenance intensive than lasers. And ink is cheaper than toner unless you print several hundreds of pages a month.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#40
post #31

I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time. During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box. I've talked m…

I'm a big fan of the Brother cartridges because they include a drum + toner in one, so each time you replace the toner you also get a new drum.
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