HP explains why printer ink is so expensive | Hacker News Reader

HP explains why printer ink is so expensive

blogs.computerworld.com

17 pointsilamont28 comments

Nothing a printer has ever done has pissed me off more than the time an HP "all in one" printer 'expired' $180 worth of unopened ink cartridges we had on the shelf as spares so that we'd have no downtime.

Apparently for "quality reasons" a smart chip in the ink made the printer refuse to use it after an arbitrary expiration date set at the factory. It was only 6 months.

I don't even mind being robbed of the $180. The surprise downtime, however, landed the printer in the dumpster and a Xerox laser took its place.

Edit: I actually tore the scanner portion of the device open and harvested the 2 12-volt cold cathode lights in their beautiful extruded aluminum holders from the scanner bed before chucking it. I mounted them under the desk just over my keyboard drawer to light my keyboard and serve as a warning to other printers that might get any ideas about mishandling their ink...

In the same vein, Brother laser cartridges will work reliably for months after they are "empty" according to the printer.

In fact, I never managed to actually get it to show any signs of low toner. I just got sick of taking the cartridge out and putting it back in to reset the "out of ink" setting.

+1, I have been printing for months with an "empty" Brother cartridge. Just stick on a little tape on the side of the cartridge to block the laserbeam that "measures" the ink, that way you can leave it in.

Crooks!

Exactly, and while you're at it, don't ask your barber if you need a haircut.

I'm sure the low ink warning is justified somewhere on the grounds of ensuring consistent quality, but as long as the prints come out good enough, print away.

There is no reason to keep using a (visibly) empty toner cartridge, in fact, it can cause 2 issues:

a) When the cartridge has no toner, there is still a 'buffer' of toner that is in the developer roller that transfers the toner to the drum.

Now, it will last for quite a few copies, until it becomes completely depleted, and then developer itself starts transfering to the drum; Best case it causes premature wear, worst case it does serious damage and you end up with a costly repair bill.

b) When a laser detects low toner density, it ups the voltage bias to compensate, this too is bad for the drum, but more importantly, when you finally add that new toner cartridge, the printer will be suddenly 'overtoned' and has to get rid of the excess toner from the developer roll somehow. The way it does this is to print black copies (which get cleaned off the drum, straight into the waste toner container).

I'm not saying don't use the toner cartridge until it's completely empty, since sometimes the sensors do misdetect the toner level and report it empty when there is a small amount left - just don't over do it.

Yeah, I found that tip on the Amazon product page for the replacement cartridge. Which really amuses me.

Got my HP Laserjet (CP1518) cartridges to last literally 2x as long by setting the manual override. The printer will complain for months that it's out of ink, all the while printing beautifully.

Of course HP and other printing companies are trying to make money by any means necessary, that is how companies stay alive. But what I find interesting is that by making printing prohibitively expensive, they are rewarding paperless information consumption. This ironically aligns their profit motive with other motives for saving paper like reducing deforestation.

...by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

Actually, it turns out that trees for paper come from tree farms. They're domesticated. Hence, reducing deforestation by using less paper is like saving the bald eagle by eating less chicken.

Also, if you were to see the trees that are cut from these farms for the purpose of making paper products, you'd be much more inclined to call them "brush" than trees.

When people say "recycle to save the trees" they have redwoods pictured in their minds, they should probably be thinking more along the lines of the stuff you clear away to have an earth-day sing and a tree planting.

I don't know about "brush". Where I live (in the pacific northwest), when I pass tree farms on the highway, they look like aspens to me. Very tall and pole-like, with white bark. Tons of trees planted in very neat rows -- fun to watch them form lines as you drive by.

A bit of googling gets me this:

http://oregonwild.blogspot.com/2007/12/tree-farm-color.html

That's what they look like.

I've seen primarily poplar and birch.

"He backed up those assertions with an HP-sponsored Qualitylogic study showing that its cartridges last longer than refilled ink cartridges (no study of cost per page, however) and an HP focus group of 17 people, half of whom Brown says were unhappy with "bargain ink.""

Not a statistician. But it seems that if half the participants were unhappy with the bargain ink (and in such a small sample, no less), people were just as likely to like the bargain ink better? In which case, given that these were likely joe schmoes off the street (instead of, say, doing a highly technical analysis of the quality and durability of the final print - the other study only says the cartridges last longer), the study was essentially meaningless, and they're adding spin?

Regarding ink, I find that I get equally good results on my Epson Stylus Photo when using OEM ink vs. el cheapo -- in conjunction with the right paper. The el cheapo ink does not work well with all paper. Through experimentation I've found a combination that does work well. The conclusion to this may be that print quality is at least as dependent on paper as on ink.

On my Brother color laser, output quality has been highly dependent on toner quality. The one time I tried to use el cheapo toner, the results weren't simply "less good" but so bad as to be unusable.

Statistically, of course, my two anecdotes do not constitute data. But it may be so some interest.

(And as another poster said, Brother can be outsmarted with the "tape on the toner cartridge" trick)

I object to my HP printer using color ink to print black text. Its a "load leveling" maneuver that conveniently uses up the expensive ink faster. It doesn't do it all the time, just when the printer thinks it can get away with it.

Your printer became self-aware?

My old Canon does the same thing. I select 'gray scale' in the print settings to force the printer to stick to the black ink only.

There is no way to defeat this HP feature that I have found.

Oh, so that's why it's so expensive. I'd always presumed we were being charged for the ground-up unicorn horn.

I haven't bought OEM ink in like a decade.

Started off by buying one of those refill kits....but then after one of those exploded...I just get prefilled ones.

If you go on ebay you can get a pack of 10 for like 10-15 bucks. Is the quality worse? I don't know, looks the same to me, doesn't run...maybe it dries out faster. I mean it's just ink, who cares really?

And if the crappy ink ends up clogging up the printer faster, so what, printers are the cheap part...it's the ink that's expensive.

HP ink is expensive to pay for studies showing why HP ink is so expensive?

"Twelve of 17 people [in the focus group] didn't think Kodak lowered cost,"

The opinion of a focus group on what something costs is meaningless. It's not hard to measure the cost-per-page and determine whether Kodak printers cost less to operate than HP.

We have a Canon IP4600 - now fitted with a continuous ink system - 500ml of ink for GBP 30. Opposable thumbs and a bit of patience will save you a fortune.

Caveat - We don't archive the output (it may be fine, but ..).

If you care /at all/ about cost per page, a laser printer (used, if you don't use it much) is nearly always a better deal.

My CIS costs 1/10 of cartridges.

CIS?

Edit: thanks, handy to know.

Continuous Ink System such as:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cis.shtml

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