How to get your lying printer to use up all its ink

If only they came with a free sample dvd.

Yea thats true, but if buying a polaroid camera and getting say 10 pictures with it included was cheaper than buying 10 of the media seperately it would be a bit crazy, and thats exactly what I've seen with some printers recently.

And, of course, razor blades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_business_model

Epson, at least, uses a formulation that leads to most generic inks causing irreparable clogs. I dunno how they do it, but I've seen it happen in two Epson printers--worked fine for a few months, switch off to a non-Epson ink (of different brands in each case) and within a week the printer doesn't work. No printing, at all, just makes noise and moves its little bastard head around doing nothing. When researching the topic, I found that design professionals (who print a lot, and use the big non-cartridge ink systems) recommend never using Epson inks to start with, and always using the generic brand you plan to use for the life of the printer...which apparently makes this problem go away.

Of course, after five dead inkjet printers (HP, Epson, Lexmark, HP, Epson) I finally got pissed off enough to refuse to buy another one. Ever. I bought a networked Konica Minolta color laser for about $800 six years ago, or so, and it's served me well ever since, and cost less than another five inkjet printers and their outlandish ink prices. I've only had to replace one toner cartridge (black) in that time, and I expect to get another few years out of the printer. It also has Postscript support, so I don't have to think about drivers (which is irrelevant to some folks, but I never want to spend an afternoon fighting with printers again...and a networked Postscript printer is the only way to guarantee that I don't have to).

When my dad started talking about buying a new inkjet after his third HP started banding badly (and new cartridges, and cleaning, didn't fix it) I bought him a $200 laser printer. Best $200 ever. I buy him a new toner cartridge every year for Christmas...it's held up great for three or four years now.

Don't like 'em? Don't buy their products.

The ink is not the expensive part. Brother could probably cut the price of toners in half and still make a profit. But by doing so, they'd get fewer recurring revenues, which means that the price of the printer itself would have to go up.

Either that, or they lose out on profits.

You wouldn't be angry if the toner contained less fuel. If you could print only 2000 pages instead of 3000, you would think you got a great deal. But if you can print 2000 pages, and the printer then refuses to print the last 1000, you're suddenly upset? Makes no sense. You're still getting essentially the same deal: 2000 pages for $60.

> It absolutely is infuriating to have a printer that is fully capable of printing a sheet of paper, except that it has been programmed not to.

No, that is exactly the deal you agreed to when you bought the printer. That's the whole point of inexpensive printers. Buy high-end printers if you want lower per-page costs.

You, the customer, make the choice. There's no lying involved by anybody. The terms were perfectly clear up front.

A company needs to increase its profits or it will die. This is self-evident. Your italics seem to imply that increasing profits by itself is unethical? Didn't expect to read that on HN.

You're claiming Brother isn't innovating. As far as I know printers have gotten cheaper, faster, more accurate, lighter and produce less curly paper. Sounds like innovation to me. Did you just make that no innovation claim up - or do you have supporting evidence? [%]

Your misconception is that when you buy a toner you somehow pay for an amount of ink. You don't. The guarantee, when you buy a toner, is that you can pay 3000 or so pages of text before it runs out. If you get your 3000 pages you should be happy. If Brother uses a page counter to brick the toner as soon as I hit 3000 pages I wouldn't be outraged. After all, that's what I paid for.

You're not buying milk here. Milk you buy by the gallon. If you get less than the advertised weight you feel cheated. But here they don't even advertise the amount of powder in the toner. It's not relevant. It's pages you get. [^]

If brother would improve the efficiency of the printer by 2 then they could halve the fuel in the toner (without lowering the price) and you'd get the same amount of pages per toner. You'd be OKAY with that - because you're NOT PAYING FOR THE AMOUNT OF INK. You're paying for a (lower boundary on) pages you can print with a single toner.

If you want to buy ink in the same way you buy milk (which makes sense in a way, because some pages use more ink than others) then you'd be right. If you buy a 10 ounce toner you deserve 10 ounces of fuel. But that's very clearly not the case here.

The waste argument is valid, but it's simply an unavoidable result of our economy. Appliances are simply getting cheap, so waste becomes the rational attitude. Dishes dirty? Buy new ones. Dropped the coffee pot? Buy a new machine. Washer broken? Guess what? New one. Fan in computer rattles? Oh yes. Dell.com to the rescue. I agree that waste is bad, but toners are insignificant compared to waste in the general sense.

[%] Aside (and may not apply to you): people tend to make up arguments to support their position if they have made up their mind "intuitively". Rationalizing if you will. If you felt intuitive outrage on this toner issue, step back and re-evaluate. You might still come to the same conclusion, but you would definitely use different arguments.

[^] They do say "assuming 5% coverage", which is a bit of a slippery slope

What about ozone emissions? Somehow I would feel uneasy around dinosaur printers.