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Never buy Epson printers

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Re: Never buy Epson printers

#131

Post by unclebucknasty »

jschwartzi wrote: post #102
unclebucknasty wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I'm having a brain fart and missing something obvious, but why are inkjets cheaper than laser only at lower monthly page volumes? Seems that your savings would just continue to increase the more you print. Or is there something else that affects the inkjet price per page at higher volumes?

It's the per-page cost. A toner cartridge will print several-thousand pages before it runs out, but most people don't print that often. The base cost on a color laser might be $300, while for an inkjet it might be $50. If you never burn through the sample cartridge that comes with the inkjet then you're ahead of laser because of amortization. However, if you manage to run out of ink more than once then laser will end…

Ah OK. I was thinking strictly operational costs, while this comparison includes the price of the printer and assumes other constraints. Got it. Thanks.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#132

Post by takeda »

chrischen wrote: post #98
kaonashi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's so infuriating though that laser printers seem like much cheaper alternative.

In reality inkjet are cheap, many companies (from top of my head I see BofA) use them to print bills, because it saves them cost.

It sucks that prices are so artificially manipulated.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#133

Post by washadjeffmad »

tdicola wrote: post #88
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?

It's a race to bottom of costs, not some market teeming with innovation. Sure you could build the most amazing printer in the world but no consumer is going to spend $1000 for it vs. the $50 special at the big box store. Think of them like razors and razor blades--they'll throw an extra blade on to amp up the marketing but in the end it's all about selling some plastic and electrical bits for a few pennies less than…

I didn't get your razor analogy at first because you can have inexpensive and high quality with safety razors (eg - Feather blades).

The ones you reference are aptly called disposable razors and electric razors. Disposables are sham products through and through, but a large portion of the electrics market is high utility, fairly inexpensive basic function devices, like trimmers.

A Fill-ups(tm) that pre-warms the lotion it squirts on your face and starts your car for you on cold days for an extra $150 over the previous model is a bit of a gimmick, but there are plenty of standard models that are low cost, long lasting, and well priced if you know what you're shopping for, which was part of your point about cheap vs quality printers.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#134

Post by takeda »

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?

IMO it's mostly inkjet printers. The whole market was made so they can make tons of money on ink.

To make this work, the printer needs to be cheaper than alternatives (I even had situation when I was buying a computer that came with printer, when I told them I don't want the printer the price was higher!)

Those printers are made as cheap as they can make them, they don't bother about their quality, because it cost to you as much as one or two cartridges.

Also the issues the author of the article has are simply are to force you to buy more ink (the printer doesn't need color cartridges to print black, but still requires them, and once you put color cartridges in and don't use they'll dry out)

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#135

Post by awqrre »

walrus01 wrote: 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'm very happy with my inkjet HP PSC1410 printer/scanner that I bought 9 years ago... I don't print very much and probably use one B&W cartridge per year (cheap on ebay) and the cartridge doesn't dry out..

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#136

Post by abrowne »

tdicola wrote: post #22

Get a cheap consumer black and white laser printer and never look back. I can't think of any time I've needed or wanted to print color. For photos and such send them off to be printed with real photo printers.

I print my occasional shipping label et al. at work (shh!), but did the same for my parents. I don't like Samsung with anything creative, but their simple black and white laser printers seem great and even have official Linux support.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#137

Post by bbcbasic »

mbell wrote: post #101
bbcbasic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few. Tickets. Boarding Passes. Government forms that cannot be filed electronically. Carrying information you need where you don't want to reply on a phone whose battery could run out. To read something in a focused way, with no internet to distract you. I printed out a plane ticket today to fly in a country where waving your phone with the same ticket is apparently not satisfactory.

It doesn't surprise me that there are edge cases where you need paper. It surprises me that those edge cases are numerous enough that you would own a printer and deal with it. All of my boarding passes are covered via phone but on the occasion that I need a pass for an airline that doesn't have that option I would just spend 5 minutes at a kiosk to get it. On the occasion I have to file a gov form that isn't availabl…

True

Given most of us have a printer at work, it may be environmentally more efficient if we just print stuff at work.

That said I am disorganized enough that being able to print at the very last minute is kind of handy!

Printer makers must hate people who buy a $50 and use it once in a blue moon and hardly ever buy a cartridge.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#138

Post by Grishnakh »

pjc50 wrote: post #91
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.

You should get rid of that old thing, and upgrade to a early/mid-2000s HP LaserJet 2300d. It's about the same size, but it's far faster at printing (especially graphics), has a USB interface, you can add a JetDirect 10/100 ethernet card, and is a true Postscript printer. It's also extremely reliable, and the ink cartridges are cheap on Ebay.

The 2400 series (which replaced the 2300 series) looks pretty good too, and has built-in ethernet (no extra card needed), but that's when they switched manufacturing to China, so I don't know how reliable it is.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#139

Post by Grishnakh »

jafingi wrote: post #93

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 pa…

>Printers (for consumers) need development.

I don't see why. If you want a better printer, you just have to pay more money and get one aimed at the SOHO (small office) market, which isn't subsidized by ink cartridge prices as the guy above notes.

The home printer market is like this because it's highly profitable. What you're probably thinking is that these printers need to be more like SOHO printers: cartridges that last a long time, ability to print tens of thousands of pages without any reliability problems, etc. They already have these printers: they're sold to people who have small offices and small businesses or workgroups.

The problem is people who seem to think that they should be able to get a business-class printer for $39.99. There's a reason they're that cheap. This is one of those cases where you really get what you pay for.

>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.

We've had those for a long, long time now. My HP LaserJet 2300 is mostly like that, except maybe the silent bit (you're never going to get a printer that's totally silent; mechanical contraptions that move things around with motors are going to make noise), and I think it's about 13 years old now. But that printer probably cost around $600 when it was new. You're not going to get the "iPhone of printers" at feature-phone prices.

Re: Never buy Epson printers

#140

Post by Grishnakh »

8jef wrote: post #17

How hard would that be to hack together some printer harware and make it a Kickstarter?

It's not worth it; you'll never be able to make it cheaper than a good small-office printer.

If you want a nice printer that is reliable, has ultra-cheap cost-per-page, is rated for 50,000 pages per month, uses Postscript, etc., they're out there, but you're not going to find one for less than $50. But you can find one for $300-1000 (depending on if you want color or B&W). Your kickstarter project isn't going to be able to beat that.

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