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HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

arstechnica.com

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Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#31

Post by gduchgdjv »

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #9
gduchgdjv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

both hp and epson offset the expendable costs on those. even if you avoid the fixed box trap, you cannot avoid the "replace printer head nozzle" trap that the driver will use to lock you out of your printer in a year or so.

I have printed over 5000 pages with mine, the head is fine (head test printout looks good), I don't know what you're referring to? To me it rather looks like consumers have been so thoroughly conditioned to distrust printers that they aren't even capable of trusting the good ones anymore maybe - and thus unfortunately keep buying the garbage ones, thinking it doesn't make a difference. I.e. whenever one of the actual…

[flagged]

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#32

Post by emodendroket »

ksec wrote: post #11

Again it is very much an Inkjet problem. If only we could somehow get Colour Laser to sell below say $149.

People are just buying far fewer printers, so they're desperate for new ways to monetize printing. If consumer laser jets became more popular they'd find a way to monetize those too.

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#33

Post by Spivak »

emodendroket wrote: post #32
ksec wrote: post #11

Again it is very much an Inkjet problem. If only we could somehow get Colour Laser to sell below say $149.

People are just buying far fewer printers, so they're desperate for new ways to monetize printing. If consumer laser jets became more popular they'd find a way to monetize those too.

Yeah, it's so much cheaper to rent a printer by way of FedEx the few times a year I need a printer.

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#34

Post by RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm »

RobotToaster wrote: post #22
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #6

Get an Epson EcoTank printer. Ink for those is available in *bottles* from Epson, it's dirt cheap. No more cartridges! Make sure to get one which has a user-replaceable "maintenance box", the cheaper ones have a fixed one. You can find that out by e.g. looking at the supplies list on the Epson website, see if the maintenance box is listed alongside the ink. The box contains the sponge where ink goes to during the cle…

>Make sure to get one which has a user-replaceable "maintenance box", the cheaper ones have a fixed one That seems really sneaky. Making a sponge replaceable isn't hard or expensive.

I would guess the reason the cheaper ones don't have it is that making it removable implies making it accessible from the outside which implies adding a pump and hoses to pump the ink into it:

The slot for the box at my printer is at the back of it, not at the ink head, so the ink can only get there by pumping it.

(Not defending Epson's design choices here, just trying to explain them.)

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#35

Post by xp84 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #19
ninth_ant wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a simple workaround too — not buying HP printers. Nor other HP products.

I own several HP LaserJet, including the 4M+ "upgraded" with more memory / fonts / an ethernet adapter etc. Amazing machines for the time. So I'm an "old HP printers" fan. And yet I'd never ever buy anything from HP. FWIW I'm very happy with Brother. We've got several Brother laser printers and "laser printer + scanner" and we're very happy with these. Zero problem. HP fell really low.

This is gonna be a hot take, but I use an HP laser from about 2012 or something, which takes cartridges that are like $20 for 18 months’ worth for me ($20 for maybe 3 months when my wife was doing her masters degree), and for the times I need color I have a couple bucks a month HP Instant Ink subscription for my cheap inkjet thing. It’s like $2 for more pages than I need, and I never have to worry about how inefficient inkjet is. I was super skeptical of Instant Ink but at the low price they ask, it solves the problem of color printing quite well for me.

Edit: once I disabled ipv6 on the inkjet. It caused it to drop its IP connectivity completely, about 40 times an hour. Lol. Took hours on the phone with HP to discover that.

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#36

Post by aezart »

Andrex wrote: post #25
fuzzy2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the “correct” direct action of course. However, other printer brands are ever hard at work to copy HP’s advances . So when buying a printer, make sure to research in depth.

I've heard that it's pointless to research, just go with Brother.

I've had bad luck with third-party toner cartridges on my Brother printer. Eventually it just stop detecting them at all.

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Andrex wrote: post #25
fuzzy2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the “correct” direct action of course. However, other printer brands are ever hard at work to copy HP’s advances . So when buying a printer, make sure to research in depth.

I've heard that it's pointless to research, just go with Brother.

[deleted]

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#38

Post by sammax »

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #18
MobiusHorizons wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inkjet as a technology doesn’t stand up well to intermittent use due to ink drying out. I think a lot of consumers buy a printer and use it rarely (idle for weeks at a time). In my experience using an inkjet this way leads to dry ink clogging the head. People don’t easily forget technology letting them down when they needed it.

Does this still happen with current printers or is it one of those ancient memes about printers which don't disappear? When I turn the Epson one off, it audibly parks the head. I would suppose it is parked onto a gasket which would prevent it from drying out. Personally, I don't buy laser printers because I cannot imagine that toner dust isn't unhealthy, and I would be scared of it leaking into the air I breathe. Fee…

I expect it doesn’t matter if you only print occasionally, but toner exposure from operating printers seems to be a significant health risk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29233006/

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#39

Post by tengwar2 »

gduchgdjv wrote: post #7
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #6

Get an Epson EcoTank printer. Ink for those is available in *bottles* from Epson, it's dirt cheap. No more cartridges! Make sure to get one which has a user-replaceable "maintenance box", the cheaper ones have a fixed one. You can find that out by e.g. looking at the supplies list on the Epson website, see if the maintenance box is listed alongside the ink. The box contains the sponge where ink goes to during the cle…

both hp and epson offset the expendable costs on those. even if you avoid the fixed box trap, you cannot avoid the "replace printer head nozzle" trap that the driver will use to lock you out of your printer in a year or so.

I've had an Ecotank (ET4500) for at least 5 years and 17,000 pages. The printer head nozzle is fine.

Re: HP printers should have EPEAT ecolabels revoked, trade group demands

#40

Post by tengwar2 »

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #14
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have printed over 5000 pages with mine, the head is fine (head test printout looks good), I don't know what you're referring to? To me it rather looks like consumers have been so thoroughly conditioned to distrust printers that they aren't even capable of trusting the good ones anymore maybe - and thus unfortunately keep buying the garbage ones, thinking it doesn't make a difference. I.e. whenever one of the actual…

Inkjet as a technology doesn’t stand up well to intermittent use due to ink drying out. I think a lot of consumers buy a printer and use it rarely (idle for weeks at a time). In my experience using an inkjet this way leads to dry ink clogging the head. People don’t easily forget technology letting them down when they needed it.

Ecotank ink is water-based and more dilute than the normal stuff, apparently to reduce the liklihood of clogging. It needs a cleaning cycle every few months - that's it.
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