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Never buy Epson printers

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Re: Never buy Epson printers

#91

Post by pjc50 »

JensRex wrote: 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 have an HP LaserJet 4L. It's noisy and has an inconvenient Centronics interface. This is because it's over 20 years old, but it has been similarly reliable and repairable because it dates from the era when HP were a respected engineering company.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#92

Post by nommm-nommm »

danbolt wrote: post #27

I don't own a printer, and I feel like when I have to print something I usually employ one of the following strategies: 1) Going to an office supply store, library, or university with the PDF of what I need to print on a USB drive. 2) My workplace providing a printer for work-related printing. I can imagine good reasons why someone would need to own a printer, but it seems almost like a car these days. If you don't w…

That's a good strategy.

I own a printer, because I need to print shipping labels. I didn't own one until I started doing a lot of shipping. Even in college the CS lab let us print for free (the library charged) so I used that to print out assignments. I bought the cheapest black and white only laser printer in existence - $25.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#93

Post by jafingi »

Printers (for consumers) need development. They still function like the old days with all the bad stuff comes with that.

I personally just have a B&W Dell laserprinter that cost almost nothing. It's fast, prints everytime, and one cartridge lasts very long time.

Before my Dell, I had a 3-in-1 HP printer. It was the worst printer I've ever had. Paper jammed all the time. And half of the time it wouldn't pick up the paper, and told that there was no paper in it even though the paper tray was completely full. And those problems started on day one.

I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#94

Post by decasteve »

I had an Epson 3800 photo printer. It once ran out of ink in the middle of a print and stopped mid-stream. I replaced the cartridge and it started back as if not missing a beat.

Paying more upfront for a printer saves you in the long run. Avoid cheap multi-function printers like the plague.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#95

Post by gherkin0 »

mchahn wrote: post #42

Not too long ago I bought a cheap printer (don't remember the brand), took it home, and returned it after seeing the horrible quality of the print. Then I brought home another cheap printer of a different brand, had the same experience, and returned that. The reason I was buying cheap printers is that they were the only ones locally available, other than one very expensive model, the epson XP800. Apparently the marke…

Is there a name for the scenario where market forces push new products to be objectively inferior to older ones?

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#96

Post by fapjacks »

JensRex wrote: 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…

Their inkjet line of crap are the worst printers I've ever had to use and continually clean themselves out of ink, even when you aren't using it. If you unplug it and plug it back in, the damn thing will clean itself for a proportional amount of time. So it will use ink at a nearly constant rate regardless of whether or not you use it. It is totally some kind of fraud.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#97

Post by jschwartzi »

JensRex wrote: 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 have a Dell 1110 which I bought when I was a student. Same story except that I've put 1500 pages through it over the past 9 years. TCO: $300.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#98

Post by chrischen »

kaonashi wrote: post #45
csomar wrote: post #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 an…

The purpose behind the engineering of the printers is to drive the sales of as many ink cartridges as possible while being as cheap as possible to produce. From this perspective, offering many additional features which turn off when the ink rent hasn't been paid makes much more sense.

Makes sense until people stop buying them for laser printers.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#99

Post by eosrei »

dpcan wrote: post #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, ye…

The simpler option is to buy a high quality laser printer. I'm on the same cartridge in my HP4200N for almost 10 years since it's good for 12,000+ pages.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#100

Post by johnminter »

soneca wrote: post #56

Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market? I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects. Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?

They are quite complex and the consumer versions are commodity items. There are printhead - ink - paper interactions and the electrophotographic process for laser printers requires optimization to print on different media. There are lots of things that can go wrong - and do. I have spent much of my career in an analytical lab analyzing these problems. Such problems raise costs and with commodity items, very high yields are required to be profitable.

Years ago we had a professor (I forget the name) from MIT come to our Research Labs and give a talk on his research. He was using game theory to study product research, development, and manufacturing. When all was said and done, he concluded that if you were not first or second to market, you spent significantly more money to enter the market and your probability of being profitable was much lower.

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