OT: Penny per page?

My understanding is that the printers are sold as loss leaders, to get you to buy ink.

So if someone did make an inkjet that was cheap to operate, they'd have to price the actual printer higher, then figure out a way to get people to buy into a higher-cost, unknown-brand printer just for the sake of inexpensive ink.

The last load of ink that we bought for our HP Inkjet was from some 3rd- party ink manufacturer. We're just on the first set of cartridges, but so far it's looking great, at much lower cost.

other B/W laser, but our IT guy had trouble setting it up on the network so it's still stitting on the shelf.

For most office requirements , black and white is just as good as color and a monochrome laser is way less expensive to operate. Tell your IT guy to get with it and get the brother printer on line. If he can not get it to work, buy another monochrome laser printer. It will save you money.

Dan

I sympathize with your plight: End of sympathy.

I fix laser printers. They work better than ink sprayers, last longer, cost less to operate, and some of the older HP printer carts can be refilled. If you want color prints, there are web sites that will make color prints for you that look better and last longer than anything you can do with a home printer. If you're economically challenged and don't want to spend the up front cash, this should work for everything (except color) for $100:

On a sunny day (Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:39:20 -0800 (PST)) it happened mpm wrote in :

I have had the Epson R200 now for ?? years (more than 5, perhaps 8). I used ink from

Cannot beat the price, colors are not as good as the original, used it mainly for DVD printing (the R200 will do that too, from gimp). Those are big ink tanks, and I can buy refills at that link. Not much printing going on these days, paperless office :-) The Epsons use a piezo printhead, sometimes it clogges up. Counters in those cartridges from above link are automatically reset somehow :-)

:-)

Hey Jan, Quit reading newsgroups and get busy on our cheap spectrum analyzer! :-) Mikek

If it were me I'd stop complaining about $38.00 ink and start complaining about a much more expensive IT guy that can't get a printer to work on a network.

Brother B/W laser, but our IT guy had trouble setting it up on the network so it's still stitting on the shelf.

All of the printers at work are color laser. It takes a positive action, each time, to print in black so I don't bother. It took a while to get over the guilt of "wasting" money but I find that color does add a lot. I mark up PDFs as I would paper copies and my notes are available for others I give the information to (usually datasheets). I find color for schematics to be extremely useful, however our schematic capture program refuses to print in color (no surprise, it's crap).

I know of few offices that rely on an inkjet for printing.

I would get the laser sorted for one. It really shouldn't be difficult to set up.

For the future I would also suggest that rather than purchase the cheapest printer, you find cheap consumables and buy the corresponding printer!!

Brother 5340DN, replacement $80 Drum is good for 5K pages. Toner ~$80. Printer itself is good for 50k pages.

FYI, new printers come with half full toner or ink cartridges.

Cheers

Get a laserprinter. I had similar problems with the inkjet my wife got for the kids. I literally kicked it out when the ink dried out *again* and installed a network laserprinter.

All of the large format printers I've seen are inkjets. I haven't seen laser printers larger than "Ledger" (11"x17"), anyway.

You can do a lot better than that with aftermarket toner and drums. I save about 80% on toner for my HP.

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The "IT Guy" is actually my business partner in this little venture...

But you're absolutely right - how difficult can it be to get the printer on the network? It's a newer Brother, we have all new PC's (Windows 7), and a pretty standa rd brand-name network. He futzed with it for hours, but got everything els e up just fine. (He's an accomplished programmer, BTW). I figured it must have something to do with the vendor-supplied driver.(?)

The venture isn't strapped. My partner fell in love with this printer (who knows why??) and he got it without asking my input. I don't really care - I mean this really doesn't rise to the level where it requires my direct i nvolvement.. I just can't believe replacement ink retails for $40.

I guess it just burns my ass to have bend over and pay that. Consumer should revolt over abuses like this. Just my opinion. For all I know, the ink really does cost $40, but I don't see how. And then, throw in those "counters" whose only purpose must be to put after market re-inkers out of business under the guise of "quality images". Scre w HP and all the rest!

I could hire a Tibetan monk to inscribe all our documents on a few grains o f rice for that kind of money! OK, well maybe not (with apologies to hermi t people out there).

All that said, (and what actually prompted my original post aside from the possibility of saving a few bucks..) if one could make a printer with lower operating costs, I do think it would be the proverbial mousetrap, with the world beating a path to your door.!!

Incidentally, I have a Brother HL-4040 color laser, that I mostly print B/W . Household use - but way cheaper than this HP 8600.

-mpm

knows why??) and he got it without asking my input. I don't really care - I mean this really doesn't rise to the level where it requires my direct involvement.. I just can't believe replacement ink retails for $40.

aftermarket re-inkers out of business under the guise of "quality images". Screw HP and all the rest!

Buy aftermarket ink! $12 per:

rice for that kind of money! OK, well maybe not (with apologies to hermit people out there).

possibility of saving a few bucks..) if one could make a printer with lower operating costs, I do think it would be the proverbial mousetrap, with the world beating a path to your door.!!

It's been done. It's your fault if you're married to inkjet printers and OEM ink.

Well, duh!

Don't worry. At the rate you are consuming inkjet carts, you will soon be out of funds.

Probably the Darth Vader color scheme. Black is cool.

You can get aftermarket ink for much less, but the counterfeit refill protection chips are problematic. I think HP should get publicly burned at the stake for intentionally preventing users from refilling and recycling cartridges.

There have been attempts at legislation, which went nowhere. This is from 2003: Not much has changed.

The way I fight it is to only recommend and buy printers (laser and inkjet) that offer refillable cartridges. Favorites are the older HP LaserJet 2200, 2300, 4200/4250/4300. For color prints, I have an old HP Color LaserJet 2500 and a 2600. If I want durable quality, I use one of several online color printing services. For large format, we have two architects in the building both of which have large format laser printers and (inkjet) plotters.

The HL-4040CN is probably one of Brother's better color printers. However, I don't like the 2400x600 dot printing, which sometimes looks weird and the 20 watt standby power consumption.

On eBay, $70 for a set of 4 new TN-115 color cartridges, that will allegedly do about 4,000 pages = 1.75 cents per page. Cheap for color.

The first Windows 7 computer that got hooked up to my network screwed up everything for a while. None of the other computers could find each other for a while until I changed some of the defaults in its network settings. Since then I've added a few more, and there haven't been any other problems like that first one caused.

Have you ever invoked "net use" on any Windows machine?

Kodak had the same idea...if you can find anybody that used to work there, ask them how it is going...not that it's a bad idea, just a problem with market timing and the incredible front end cost of getting into the ink jet business.