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HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

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Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#161

Post by zamalek »

ryandrake wrote: post #115
mmastrac wrote: post #11

My HP LaserJet 6P is still running strong, almost 20 years after I bought it second-hand and almost 25 since it was released (!). I've been using nothing but unofficial toner in it and other than some streaking that developed in the last few years (too lazy to clean the toner for now), it's been flawless. Apparently HP made things so well for so long that they've decided to correct that mistake. No subscription requi…

I just held a somber funeral for my 1999 HP LaserJet 4000n. No app, no subscription, reasonably priced toner, built like a tank, survived thousands and thousands of pages, five house moves. It was finally done in by multiple critical plastic pieces that broke and a power supply failure. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life now. I feel there are no new substitutes anymore. I heard Brother is good but I can't…

I had a rotten time with Brother and drivers, especially (but not limited to) on Linux. I'm currently only one year into a Xerox 6515 but it has been extremely reliable so far, and works reliably across Android cell phones, two Linux machines (with a PPD downloaded from GitHub), and a Windows machine.

My line of thinking is that hopefully their pedigree is worth something.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#162

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

rsuelzer wrote: post #85

The printer space ripe for distruption. I have had really bad experiences with HP Printers, specifically related to force installing software / drivers on PCs. I consider the HP SmartPrint app to be malware as it completely locks down the printer if it detects a non-HP cartridge. Or at least it used to, before they were sued. Now it ensures you are constantly harrassed about buying genuine ink, gives false low toner…

> The printer space ripe for distruption. [...] I'd like to see a printer that isn't agressively marketing toner to me or at least offers it at a fair price.

Won't happen. If it does happen, they won't succeed.

The reason being that consumers are short-sighted and price sensitive. If they see two printers with identical features and specs, but one is $100 and the other is $200, they'll buy the $100 one before looking and noticing that the $100 printer requires $75 ink cartridges while the $200 printer can take $25 cartridges.

So printer manufacturers have to sell the hardware at as low a price as possible to compete with other manufacturers and they make up the difference in ink/toner. If someone tried to do what you're asking, they'd have to have a higher price to be profitable and wouldn't make any sales.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#163

Post by selectodude »

pnutjam wrote: post #159
HNdev1995 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Laser vs inkjet, avg ink cartridge does 220 pages.

The printer this article is about is a laser printer. The ink refill for $30 lasts 5000 pages and the drum lasts 50,000 pages.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#164

Post by pnutjam »

selectodude wrote: post #163
pnutjam wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laser vs inkjet, avg ink cartridge does 220 pages.

The printer this article is about is a laser printer. The ink refill for $30 lasts 5000 pages and the drum lasts 50,000 pages.

Yeah, look up thread.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#165

Post by asldjajlfkj »

crazygringo wrote: post #21
megraf wrote: post #18

CISS's (Continuous Ink Supply System's) have been around for decades. You can buy pretty basic printers and retrofit them with a $100 system that will hold enough ink to print 10's of thousands of pages. The problem with this system is that the ink heads dry (quickly). If you're doing a lot of printing (daily / weekly) – a CISS is pretty much your bread and butter. Refilling the ink in a CISS is pretty simple as well…

That's for inkjet printers though, no? This is for a laser printer. No worrying about drying ink heads. But now you've got me curious -- who is printing 10's of thousands of pages using an inkjet? I would have thought that anything at volume is laser, with the exception of photo printing.

On the contrary! Almost all books you buy are printed with ink. Companies buy ink for offset printing in bulk anyway and can use the same for jet printing. Ink is cheaper, faster and can achieve better quality, especially when color is involved.

Laser only exists for offices, : black and white printing, unsteady usage patterns, fast printing on small scale, replacing cartridges are administratively challenging.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#166

Post by nebula8804 »

mmastrac wrote: post #58
nebula8804 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it handle documents with complex graphics/large files? I had this exact same printer and for anything other than text, this thing took forever to "process" the document. Eventually I trashed it.

I've never had issues w/complex graphics. Are you using PCL mode + a print server? It might have also had one of the lower memory configurations. I'm mainly using it for shipping labels and other simple print jobs, but for sure I've printed complex graphics on it and they're always pre-rasterized on the printing computer.

Yes I used a print server + PCL mode. Makes no difference between PS and PCL from from I recall. (Its been 10 years since I scrapped it). I'm talking like 20+ MB PDFs. The printer was blinking forever before it started and it would pause for another eternity between pages. Modern printers, you know...just start printing.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#167

Post by l8rlump »

londons_explore wrote: post #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 patc…

I'd love to read more about this!

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#168

Post by l8rlump »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #162
rsuelzer wrote: post #85

The printer space ripe for distruption. I have had really bad experiences with HP Printers, specifically related to force installing software / drivers on PCs. I consider the HP SmartPrint app to be malware as it completely locks down the printer if it detects a non-HP cartridge. Or at least it used to, before they were sued. Now it ensures you are constantly harrassed about buying genuine ink, gives false low toner…

> The printer space ripe for distruption. [...] I'd like to see a printer that isn't agressively marketing toner to me or at least offers it at a fair price. Won't happen. If it does happen, they won't succeed. The reason being that consumers are short-sighted and price sensitive. If they see two printers with identical features and specs, but one is $100 and the other is $200, they'll buy the $100 one before looking…

Or, if you're HP, you market something that seems like the best of both worlds, and then gouge the value in two years with a firmware update, and/or shenanigans with consumables.

That's what I expect with the machine in the OP.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#169

Post by l8rlump »

kondro wrote: post #120

Just had my HP PageWide 477dw refuse to use non-HP refills. It is the last HP printer I'll ever buy.

Not only that, they've released firmware that invalidates even their own older-generation cartridges after they changed the ink formulation. You may have success by downgrading the firmware (they will happily downgrade). Might have to speak nicely to your HP dealer to obtain it though.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#170

Post by jessaustin »

waynesonfire wrote: post #87
jessaustin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I want to make emergency office supply trips (in fact, I don't), I have to have something on the shelf. How is a half-ream worse than a ream?

I order by the case and re-order when I've loaded the last ream.

So you're happy to have one, two, three, ...{case - 1} reams of paper on the shelf, but one half ream is more annoying than any other annoying thing?
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