make them honor their warranties...

A few years back I purchased a Samsung laser printer for $100.

The cartridge lasted about a year and when I went to purchase a replacement , Samsung wanted $100!

I purchased a refilled unit for $30 and I am now on my 2nd year with it! A few weeks back, it started to streak just a bit. I removed it and re-inserted it and all is fine.

You might be surprised at the NOS you can find on eBay from legitimate sellers. I replaced the streaking cartridge with an unopened OEM cartridge for $35, including shipping. It works perfectly.

I just purchased spare power supplies for my HP notebook, both OEM, and dirt-cheap.

Indeed. Our company was going to throw away unused inkjet cartridges that they had on hand for a printer that had otherwise bit the dust. I volunteered to take them off the company's hands and put them on Ebay. I didn't make a whole lot of money, but I did bump up my seller feedback a bit.

I'm willing to bet this happens a lot. I do still have some Kodak slide projector bulbs around here somewhere from when the bank I worked for was acquired by a bigger bank and they were clearing out (throwing out is more like it) the supply room. That was 15 years ago.

Of course, there's probably plenty of stuff that is plain old stolen from employers out there too. Hard to tell from afar.

Regards,

DAve

I enjoy trawling thru second-hand shops. (A cheap passtime...) Every so often I'll find New, Un-opened HP LJ III and HP LJ 4P toner cartridges at the Goodwill, ARC, The Salvation Army stores.

The HP LJ III I bought for $1,872 23 years ago and is still going strong. The HP LJ 4P I bought for $10 at a second-hand store 12 years ago, and is primarily a backup for the HP LJ III, so it spends a lot of its time under a dust cover.

Jonesy

If you find the bulbs and want to sell one (or more) post back

Really? The last job I was at still used a 5si up until about a year ago... the thing was slow but literally never went down, unlike pretty much all the new fancy printer/copier/scanners. Obviously I had to use the new fancy stuff for copying and scanning but I still kept the 5si mapped on my PC for print jobs. I don't know how old they are but my job before that also had one when I started there... something like 14 years ago.

nate

It's a bit confusing. HP says it stopped supplying parts and support in 2005, which (assuming it applies to the 4 models) is rather a long time. (Most companies drop support within a year after a product is discontinued, even though it's illegal.)

The 4- and 5-series printers were made by Canon, so it's not surprising they've held up. You can buy a refurbished unit for $100 or so. The /only/ thing wrong with them is that they're a bit slow on complex graphics.

I was told cartridges had been or were about to be discontinued. I was also told HP had trouble finding a new cartridge for me, and the one they sent was about the only one they could dig up. (It's dated 12/20/2012.)

I get conflicting reports on how long cartridges will last. I'd read that the toner eventually starts clumping, but HP's warranty was (at one time) "until the toner runs out". The NOS cartridge I bought is two years /older/ than the cartridge it replaced, yet it works fine.

I've placed the HP-warranty cartridge in a cool place in the garage. When I need it in four or five years, it should be okay.