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HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

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Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#151
post #60
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the best Linux support has been from brother. Also, their printers seem more light weight (in a good way), and their compatible ink is cheaper. Good for basic documents etc, but probably not for printing photos.

OKI has absolutely the best color laser (really micro LED strip) printers, and they work flawlessly with PCs, Macs, or Linux, PCL, PS, or native, and wired or wireless (depending on model). I swore off all inkjet printing after buying my first color OKI over 20 years ago, and that decision has saved me thousands in ink and uncounted hours of frustration as I watched that ink being spewed out to clean clogged printhea…

I miss my 1993 OKI OL-400ex, such an elegant printer for its day. Like current Brothers.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#152

Okay wanted to post "hahahahahahahahahahaha!" but that doesn't add much to the discussion. The HP printer product managers really seemed to believe "because HP" was a license to rip off people who bought their printers. I knew they were in trouble when I was forced to replace my completely functional HP inkjet because they refused to provide drivers for Windows 10. Did the research and found an Epson Ecotank printer[…

Isn't Epson the king of user-hostile MBA stunts? If one company has forever lost my business, it would have to be them.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other news one toner of a generic HP laser printer prints about 3500 pages, without apps or subscription. And then you can send them to HP and they’ll recycle it for free, if you care about the environmental impact. I don’t quite understand what is the market for this product.

I think the idea is to reduce (its reduce, reuse, recycle in order of preference) as a bag of toner needs less resources than a cartridge. The internet indicates a 5k page cartridge costs ~5kg of CO2 to make, and each trip to the recycling center costs ~1kg of CO2 (rough average cost of shipping a package). A 5k page pouch in a box weighs 0.2kg, assuming a 4x weight->CO2 cost (high end of plastic production), it come…

If you’re the kind of party that prints so much a 5000 page toner bag is worth the effort, you’re not going to be returning single toners to HP. You get a big box and send 50 at once.

Also you should be aware a lot of those toners include some other roll that has a limited life, which means you can’t recycle (or refill) them forever. But if you get toner from a bag you’d have to replace the roll separately anyway. This might be skewing your figures.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#154
post #8

> Requires the HP Smart app download. > Subscription may be required; subscription may not be available in all countries > HP account required for full functionality > Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner The disclaimers, or more succinctly, the anti-feature section.

HP already asks for a login for using their app to pront or scan, wtf HP? Anyway using NAPS2 for scanning on windows, on linux works out of the box, even better than on windows (how come?).

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#155
post #132
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly still valid for current brother printers. I bought one last year, and the web interface looks exactly the same on the one I bought 15 years earlier. The only difference: it can do wifi now.

AirPrint is also great.

Funnily my old printer can already do air print. I think it came with an early firmware update.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#156
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's annoying news but my Brother laser, regarded for its serviceability, needs new drums every 12-15k pages at $90/ea. That's on top of $75 toner cartridges every 5-7k pages. This $400 printer with $30 ink refills that ends up being disposable at the end of its service live has a lower TCO than anything else I've seen.

so $400+$240 every 12,000+ pages, vs $400+$300 (10 x $30) for about 2,200+ pages? It's not even close....

What printer are the second set of numbers in reference to?

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#157
I just reverse engineered the firmware of my laser printer so I didn't have to buy $100 worth of chip cartridges....

Silly HP, they thought they patched out the logging and debugging functions by putting 'return true' at the start of them, but the compiler still left all the calls in...

So then it was just a matter of finding the function which called the 'TonerLowAlert', finding where it gets its data from, and patching it to always think it has a full toner tank (and full imaging unit... And full transfer roller... And full finisher... And 15 consumables any of which could make the machine stop printing!). There was the minor hitch of a custom RPC mechanism between all the components, but that was quickly overcome.

Then patching all the firmware checksums (which obviously all use custom algorithms - and the machine has 5 different firmware images!)

And finally reflashing, and we were done! I even customized the 'Ready' homescreen message so everyone knew it was modded.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t able to find much info on it. I went around compared all the printers i could find then compared the third party ink options for the ones i was interested. i’m still experimenting with ink mixing. decent results so far. the thing is there are so many ways to go about it with 8 base ink options available.

I’d be tempted to try official inks too. When you adjust the color, does the old color stick around long? Make your prints muddy?

I don’t think you can use the epson ink because it is pigment based opposed to dye. the pigment-based ink require a specific medium for suspending pigment that differs from color to color.

dyes on the other hand can mix. mixing takes experimentation.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#159
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so $400+$240 every 12,000+ pages, vs $400+$300 (10 x $30) for about 2,200+ pages? It's not even close....

What printer are the second set of numbers in reference to?

Laser vs inkjet, avg ink cartridge does 220 pages.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Linux I use Postscript with a PPD from https://www.canon.com.au/support/sims-content?pid=e3b6d5519f... Most Canons also understand PCL6 too. I guess you've checked your own machine though.

The one I used understood neither PCL nor PDF. It wasn't an entry level device either. It was a networked office-class device. This was a work endeavor, so I don't have the machine handy, so I can't provide you a model number.

Would that Canon be something like the i-SENSYS MF9220Cdn [1] (who comes up with those names?) I just got for free (had to swap the black toner cartridge, for the rest it works just fine, it only has done ~12700 pages according to the counter...) which uses Canon's proprietary UFR II? There seems to be a Postscript-compatible version of the same hardware as well (i-SENSYS MF9280Cdn) so I guess I can always attempt to wrench that driver into this machine but for now it works quite well. Drivers are available for 'Linux 64-bit' and 'Linux 32-bit', x86/x64/ARM/MIPS. Everything I tried thus far - printing, copying, scanning to mail/file server using sheet feeder or flatbed, did not try the fax functions because who needs fax functions - works fine, toner for the thing is cheap (~€22 for a 6000 page cartridge) and the print quality is quite good.

[1] https://www.canon-europe.com/support/consumer_products/produ...

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