Brother International is a bunch of asshats

Shoot, i have a Canon BJC4100 and refilled the black BC-20 cartridge (only one i use) at least a dozen times; still going strong.

Oh yes I've had something similar happen, a lot of the "genuine" stock is indeed old. It's not too much trouble to swap out the guilty consumable.

Thanks!

OK, understood.

The 4500DN was pretty "high end" when we bought it, ~$7000 in USian! last time I looked they were basically free here now, as long as you don't need it shipped... I guess we'll keep using it.

I have an HP Officejet 6700 All-in-one that stopped working because it reported the cartridges were out of ink. They were the original "starter" cartridges and are good for only about 50 copies. I mostly print B&W so I bought a genuine HP replacement black cartridge for about $30. But it still would not print, because one or more of the color cartridges were depleted. Apparently even printing B&W uses a little bit of each color cartridge to keep them from clogging. And every once in a while the printer will exercise itself by squirting ink from each of the cartridges into a reservoir, again to keep them from drying up and clogging. But mostly to waste ink and force you to buy a new set at least once a year, for about $100 for a full set. I only paid about $80 for the printer...

I was very frustrated, and bought a Canon laser printer LBP6200 for about $40, and used it to print the forms I needed. It also has a "starter" cartridge but it's good for about 100 pages, and it's still working fine after about 3 years. The replacement cartridge is probably about $80 but it's good for a couple thousand pages. And aftermarket cartridges are about $30.

For the HP Deskjet, I bought a set of four "XL" cartridges from a eBay source for about $20 total, with shipping. One of them was reported as "protected", and could not be made to work. I contacted the seller and a few days later I got another cartridge that worked. Those cartridges worked for about a year, with limited use, and when they "went bad" I bought another set on eBay that was only about $15 and after about a year they are still going strong, although I had to replace the black cartridge with another I had. Sometimes I get a "nag screen" informing me that I might have "counterfeit" cartridges that might damage my printer, but so far I've been able to print when needed.

The HP printer often gets paper jams or false "out of paper" warnings, and it has a hard time printing on glossy photo paper.

I'm happy with the Canon, but it's probably a "crap shoot" when you buy a new printer. They're all made in China for cheap and, like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.

Paul

FYI, I had a Pixma i6000D for some years -- though I didn't print much, it always seemed to be ready to go, and was /made/ to use ink refills. DRM-free. Big visible compartments in the cartridges, tell at-a-glance how much ink is really left.

Best of all, even if you were low on ink (any color), or completely out of some... you could still make it print. At your own risk, of course...

Great print quality too (including photos, obviously), except for the water-solubility (which is pretty typical for inkjets regardless), and the slow printing speed on high-res images. Also, it did full duplex, but the duplex cycle was ungodly slow -- literally, waiting for ink to dry before printing the other side. So, well, what can you do.

The software/drivers were kind of on the bulky- or sloppy-feeling side, I think. I can see how it might be the case, with newer models, that they're downright bloated (which someone else suggested about Canon, earlier). Dunno.

Trivia: Speaking of Canon, and LBP's... damn... That brought 1994 back to mind...

We had just got a family PC, with a printer, multimedia package, all that good stuff. Canon 486SX-33 something or other. 325MB Quantum HDD, which had a very distinctive POST rhythm, that I'd love to hear a recording of... And guess the printer, a LBP...340? 430? Yeayeayea, 430, that was the one:

In later years, as those original parts expired from age and obsoleteness, we (us kids) took them apart...

...To this day, the "jewel" (six sided laser-scanning mirror) from that printer is still in my parents' Christmas decoration box! :-D

Tim

Brother MFC-J6520DW