printer ink

[J_J]

BigE,

My Hp 5160 does about the same as your Epson, and prints on CD/DVD, and has 6 colors. I wished they had a CIS system for my small photo printer, That 110 cartridge runs about $22. They almost give away some of those printers, but make it up on the ink replacement.

 

[tallyho8]

Although my Epson printer can print some very nice looking photos, they don't hold up nearly as well as photos from Kodak or other photo services. When hung on the wall by these photos, the ones I print out fade out long before the others.

Do they make a photo printer that makes photos that are as high a quality as those made by the professional photo services?

 

[J_J]

This is what Inkproducts.com says. Of course every manufacture says their stuff is the best.

Are you using the best photo paper you can find, and selected high print quality?



Our company emphasizes superior, cutting-edge ink chemistry to deliver inks that are perfectly match to the OEM inks. The outcome is a unique blending of ink formulas, as distinct and precise as your needs. Our products consistently deliver sharp and vibrant impressions. We retain samples of every manufactured batch of ink and carefully document its values for future reference. The end result is consistent ink quality, batch after batch, time after time.

 

[tallyho8]

I like your horse , "Happy Trails". On my last day of high school our home room all joined in singing Happy Trails. I seem to remember the first lines: Happy trails to you, untill we meet again. Happy tails to you, keep smiling untill then. Haven't though about that in many years. Funny how a little cartoon can shake out some cob webs and spark an old memory. If I remember right Roy sang the song and the title was Happy Trails To You. Does your happy refer to same song or is it something different?

By the way, I don't remember seeing Epsons in the Best Buys etc. But, I think the old printer I had for invoices might have been one. I think it used an ink ribbon; like a typewriter. Hey, what's a typewriter?

Cheers...Coffeeman

Yes, Roy Rogers on his trusty palomino, Trigger, was one of my heros as he represented all that was good in the old cowboy movies. Now I, on my trusty palomino, do all I can to keep his memory alive.

A typewriter is what I have stored in the corner of my attic, along with a record player and a stack of records, a dial telephone, my cassette player, a couple pair of my bell bottom jeans, a hula hoop, a wind-up wrist watch, some returnable Coke bottles, a Nixon for President poster, a set of encyclopedias, a bunch of old ice trays, a bumper jack, a skate key, a refillable ink pen, a Brownie camera, an AM radio and some bottle and beer can openers.

 

[thatguy]

I have an older HP Laserjet 4, big old laser printer. Toner cartridge runs about $80, and lasts several thousand pages. I bought the printer about 8 years ago on ebay for $50.

I have a 4mPlus that is pretty bullet proof and many, many years old.. For a basic printer you cant beat one.. Then again Im not sure what happens if it breaks

I have sworn that I wont buy another ink jet anything due to the high ink costs.. We had a fax machine with new ink cartridges that was used to make about 3 copies over 6 mths and then ran out of ink.. $50 every 6 mths for just a few copies is not acceptable..

Brian

 

[J_J]

Everyone should know by now that most new printing machines do not come with full cartridges. Only a token ink supply. Those people that sell new printers on Ebay with out ink cartridge, what's up with that.

 

[2manyrocks]

Just go buy a Brother MFC-7220 laser printer, fax, copier and scanner unit. They put them on sale for $100-$129 every so often. Generic toner is about $28 and should print about 2500 pages.

The CIS systems need to be used. If you let them sit up, you may have problems with the system and your printer that you can't fix. I don't think anybody actually fixes color printers because you can buy a new one with a warranty for less than the repairs, if repairs can be made.

You can get a cheap dedicated photo printer for your color photos and then do your bulk printing on the laser printer.

 

[coffeeman]

Just go buy a Brother MFC-7220 laser printer, fax, copier and scanner unit. They put them on sale for $100-$129 every so often. Generic toner is about $28 and should print about 2500 pages.

The CIS systems need to be used. If you let them sit up, you may have problems with the system and your printer that you can't fix. I don't think anybody actually fixes color printers because you can buy a new one with a warranty for less than the repairs, if repairs can be made.

You can get a cheap dedicated photo printer for your color photos and then do your bulk printing on the laser printer.

I had an MFC 490. Out of ink after a few prints and shut machine down. Didn't have insurance, but, Office Max gave me a credit slip and took it back. I was happy with that because I didn't hook up printer for about 4 months. I also have another Brother printer that is a lazer printer. This one prints real nice. Bought extra toner. Used it and got message; replace black cartridge and toner drum. The two together will cost more than the printer. I asked the "Best Buy"??? guy, why drum? Oh, that's normal. Sometime you have to replace drum with each toner. I have an old copy machine for maybe 15 toner changes and no drum replaced yet. It's a sad day when a college student tells me he waits till he gets to school to print his papers. He sites the cost of ink as his big reason to print at school.

We sit around in North America and discuss how crappy the overseas products are made. We say, "They don't know how to make anything right. A year or two or sometime a few months; products are junk." There are some exceptions; sadly cars and small trucks might be exception where North Americans have strong products to compete against. I wonder about the cheap crap, though.... Is it cheap stuff made by folks that can't make better? Or.. is it planned obsolescence??

Cheers...Coffeeman

 

[MossRoad]

Pretty simple, really... printer companies are not in the business of selling printers. They are in the business of selling consumables.

Every year we have a cost analysis on the cost of desktop printing done for us. The results are almost always the same... ink jet printing costs ten to fifteen times the cost of laser printing. That is, a black and white page costs us about two to three cents to print on the laser printers while it costs twenty to thirty cents to print on the ink jet printers. It is to the point that we are eliminating most desktop ink jet printers. We set the users to use community laser printers, or, in the case of managers that need confidential printing, we are getting them small laser printers. As for color printing, they don't need to do it on their desktops. Just no reason. We found most people that want a color printer are just printing out family pictures and non work related items.

At home we have an Epson printer that has individual ink wells. That is nice in that you do not have to replace an entire color cartridge if just one color is empty. Color cartridges are about $12 bucks a poke, however the black is over $30! I saved the last batch of cartridges and am going to try filling them myself with a refill kit.

 

[2manyrocks]

I bought a old Epson color printer at a yard sale a few years ago. Got to the point that I couldn't find cartridges for it, but I was able to refill the black cartridge for quite some time before it tanked. I think the newer Epson printers have some sort of built in detection system to hinder the use of refills. I don't think it's as simple as refilling the empty cartridge anymore because of what they've built in the newer printers. So you might want to do search on your particular model and see what you find about refilling it.

I'm on my 4th or 5th toner cartridge for the Brother laser printer, and haven't gotten the replace drum signal yet. The drum is not cheap. Might well be cheaper to buy another printer than to replace the drum.

Of course, you guys remember that the man who invented the copier thought he was going to save a lot of paper from being wasted because his copier would make carbon paper obsolete. Look at us now.

 

[MossRoad]

As far as I know, all of the HP laserjets that we own have the drum in the toner cartridge. You change it each time. We have maybe 20 HP 4mv, 20 HP4000, a dozen 8150s and a few other models. The laserjet 4s are getting hard to find parts for. Especially the hard plastic case parts that people tend to break off and the little pieces that hold plastic gears in the manual feed trays. Fusers are getting sparse, too.

 

[LMTC]

As far as I know, all of the HP laserjets that we own have the drum in the toner cartridge. You change it each time. We have maybe 20 HP 4mv, 20 HP4000, a dozen 8150s and a few other models. The laserjet 4s are getting hard to find parts for. Especially the hard plastic case parts that people tend to break off and the little pieces that hold plastic gears in the manual feed trays. Fusers are getting sparse, too.

Sorry to hear that, as I know my 4 will eventually need something again. I work it hard. From your experience what is the next tank-like model, coming forward from the 4, that still has decent parts availability and good pricing? My primary attraction to the 4 when I bought it was the price; the two 4Ls I bought were both around $40.

 

[MossRoad]

Sorry to hear that, as I know my 4 will eventually need something again. I work it hard. From your experience what is the next tank-like model, coming forward from the 4, that still has decent parts availability and good pricing? My primary attraction to the 4 when I bought it was the price; the two 4Ls I bought were both around $40.

Stay away from the 4000 models. They have an inaccessible place where paper can jam. If it jams and paper gets caught in there, you have to disassemble the printer to get it out. Even surgical forceps cannot reach into it. I have one on the bench that jammed Friday at 4:30. I get to repair that tomorrow morning. Should take an hour. Less if I don't drop any screws, longer if I lose them.

The 8150 seems to be a pretty good printer. However, it is huge! Approximately twice as tall as the laserjet 4s. The reason we went with the 4MV is that it had a true post-script engine and not a post-script emulator. That was important at the time, but with the increase in processor power it is no longer much of an issue. The 8150 has two internal paper cassettes and a manual feed tray. It also has an internal duplex option for two sided printing. You can find them on the internet fairly cheap. The fuser unit is much easier to replce than the laserjet 4. You don't have to pry the case off.

 

[MossRoad]

A typewriter is what I have stored in the corner of my attic, along with a record player and a stack of records, a dial telephone, my cassette player, a couple pair of my bell bottom jeans, a hula hoop, a wind-up wrist watch, some returnable Coke bottles, a Nixon for President poster, a set of encyclopedias, a bunch of old ice trays, a bumper jack, a skate key, a refillable ink pen, a Brownie camera, an AM radio and some bottle and beer can openers.

I've got the typewriter, record player, records, dial telephone, cassette player (both hand held and underdash for the car), no bell bottoms, but I do have red white and blue suspenders, hula hoop just broke, wind up alarm clock, Coke bottles AND Coke bottle machine, Nixon pocket knife, no encyclopedias but 25 years of National Geographic, plastic ice trays cracked and leaked Cool Aid all over the freezer (I should have kept the aluminum ones with the lever), a couple bumper jacks, no skate key or ink pen, we have the Brownie, am radio and a bunch of bottle openers (I collect them a bit) and serveral bullet molds.

 

[J_J]

Speaking of printers, I have a problem that came up all of a sudden. The old printer hooked up to new computer, is printing out pages that were last printed about a year age. Is there anyway the data is still in printer memory? Years ago, I remember hearing that a lot of copy machines kept data in memory, and the data could be recovered.

 

[dmccarty]

...
Do they make a photo printer that makes photos that are as high a quality as those made by the professional photo services?

Yes. And depending on the printer, the inks it uses and the paper, the photo from a inkjet can be better from a photolab. Using the right printer/ink and paper can produce prints that will last 100-200 years. You can achieve the similar results with photo labs but its expensive. Ilfochrome/Cibachrome process is what I have used on some of my old slides.

Fading is reduced/minimized/prevented by using the correct inks, paper, and print mounting. Usually the best thing to do with a print is to have it in a frame under glass. Mounting and preservation of photos is a subject about which volumes are written.

Inks back in the 90s were very prone to fading. Epson had the first/one of the first inks that was supposed to greatly resist fading and it did. Sorta. But under some environmental conditions the ink would fade. Epson learned quite a bit from that printer and for the better photo printers I have not heard of any problem regarding fading.

I have been looking at the Epson 1900, 2880 and 3800 printers. The 3800 is being heavily discounted and it has been on the market for years so I assume its about to be replaced with a 3880 model. The xx80 models are using an improved ink that adds a splash more color. The "old" ink and the newer ink are very good. But the inks has to be matched with paper.

Canon is supposed to have some good photo printers as well but I just have not looked at them as closely. They did not seem to have what I was looking for in a printer.

The funny thing about photo printers is that for many people its cheaper to go to a lab for prints. This is why I still don't have a photo printer after wanting one for 10 years. I have had good and bad luck with Walmart prints. They are cheap and fast. I can upload the photos to WallyWorld and go pick them up that day if I really need the photos or wait until our next trip to town. Of course they will mail them to us as well. If the prints are bad they are so cheap I don't care. Too much.

Later,
Dan

 

[tallyho8]

You have to admit that Epson holds the patents on their ink cartridges. Therefore, anyone that makes exact duplicates is infringing on their patents. I see nothing wrong with Epson protecting their bread and butter. The market for their printers will decide how much people will be willing to spend on them VS other brands.

At home we have an Epson printer that has individual ink wells. That is nice in that you do not have to replace an entire color cartridge if just one color is empty. Color cartridges are about $12 bucks a poke, however the black is over $30! I saved the last batch of cartridges and am going to try filling them myself with a refill kit.

I fail to see the moral or ethical difference between buying generic cartridges with generic ink or refilling Epson cartridges with generic ink. Epson surely doesn't approve of either option because it deprives them of an income source. However, I will continue buying my $1 generic Epson cartridges as long as they are available.

 

[MossRoad]

You quoted someone else and put my name on that first comment.

 

[tallyho8]

No, I multi-quoted your two posts. The first one was in this thread. https://beta.tractorbynet.net/forums/index.php?posts/1273051/

In that thread, I thought that you were condemning my use of generic ink cartridges while you were promoting the use of generic ink in the other post.

Perhaps I was a little rude in pointing out the disparity. Sorry.

 

[MossRoad]

No, I multi-quoted your two posts. The first one was in this thread. https://beta.tractorbynet.net/forums/index.php?posts/1273051/

In that thread, I thought that you were condemning my use of generic ink cartridges while you were promoting the use of generic ink in the other post.

Perhaps I was a little rude in pointing out the disparity. Sorry.

Ouch! That's a two year old quote. I'll have to go back and read what I as spouting off about.