8 ms·

Never buy Epson printers

209 points by e-nouri 11y ago

soyiuz 11y ago
My HP LaserJet 1020 has been chugging away for 10+ years on $11 refilled cartridges that yield around 2k monochrome pages. It just might last ten more!
- LyndsySimon 11y ago
  I pulled a LaserJet 1160 out of storage today because my wife's inkjet stopped working. It printed ~75 pages without a hiccup, and I don't even know how old the cartridge in it is.
e-nouri 11y ago
Epson printers still require you to have the 4 cartridge even if you want to just print in black !
- jayrox 11y ago
  this is not unique to epson. hp and xerox printers do the same thing.
  - e-nouri 11y ago
    I had Lexmark before, it was never a problem! unbelievable, the thing is that I never used the colors, they dried out! You have to buy all of them just to print in black!
- bsilvereagle 11y ago
  I believe this is because the tracking dots[1] require yellow ink. [1] https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/index.php https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/index.php
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, why can I print with just black ink on my canon and HP multifunction printers then? (they also allow me to do high-res (4800dpi) scans of money without any issue, in hilarious contrast to photoshop, which refuses to open them)
- derFunk 11y ago
  Maybe you got to have them inserted, yes, but they can be empty. (My HP OfficeJet 6500A Plus also prints with empty color cartridges. I just replaced them today after weeks of emptyness).
walrus01 11y ago
Never buy any inkjet printer. I threw in the garbage a Canon multifunction that refused ton work as a SCANNER when its ink was empty. If you have the space and print a lot of black and white, buy an eight year old used HP LaserJet with an Ethernet interface.
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  I don't know why people still bother with inkjets. It's like the companies are actively punishing you for buying these models of printers. If they are necessary for work, then MAYBE. But even then, if you're buying commercial hardware you're not dealing with this junk either. It also used to be that laser was incredibly expensive in comparison, now they're about the same price if you compare color inkjet to black and white laser. I bought a Brother black and white laser MFC 7 years ago. I've changed the toner three times and it is just ready to print when I am. I've never had it not print, my old inkjet required a prayer before every print job. No nozzle jams, no problems with a color being used up, preventing a b+w print. It just works. I paid maybe $180 for the printer 7 years ago and I'm not going to replace this printer until it fully dies. It has fax and multi page scanning capabilities- the only thing that sucks is that it isn't networked by default and the Linux drivers are touchy. I plugged it in to my TP-Link Archer C7 and their printer sharing drivers work fantastic on OS X. I will never buy another inkjet printer again.
  - creshal 11y ago
    Lasers do have disadvantages – mainly their excessively high power consumption and their air pollution. Modern gel inks don't dry out in my experience, and make for very efficient printers that are much less maintenance intensive than lasers. And ink is cheaper than toner unless you print several hundreds of pages a month.
    - unclebucknasty 11y ago
      I'm sure I'm having a brain fart and missing something obvious, but why are inkjets cheaper than laser only at lower monthly page volumes? Seems that your savings would just continue to increase the more you print. Or is there something else that affects the inkjet price per page at higher volumes?
zanny 11y ago
I pretty much exclusively buy Epson XP-420's nowadays. What other all-in-one option is there that meets the following criteria? 1. Complete and free Linux support 2. Wireless 3. Affordable - remember, we are competing with a printer that regularly retails for $40 and whose cartridges cost around $10 per set. "Just buy the $200 Brother with $40 a set toner" isn't satisfactory to the people I recommend printers to. HP printers are known to be draconian with their cartridge DRM, and their Linux support is kind of a PITA with how they use their own protocol and suite of tools and every HP printer I have tried has never played nice with Cups management.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  Since most folks only print black and white for occasional stuff (forms, taxes, resumes, etc), something like the Brother HL-L2320D mono laser printer is a good bet. Works with Linux (rpm and deb available from their site), wireless, affordable. It's under $90 and toner is $30 for 1200 pages (2.5 cents per page) or $49 for 2600 pages (1.9 cents per page). Compare that to $13 for 175 pages (7.4 cents per page) with the Epson. If you don't need wireless, bump down to $68 for the HL-L2320D. For both printers, good 3rd party toner is about $10 for 1000+ pages to save even more. I listed only first-party numbers above. If you really want to print pictures at home, you can on a "cheap" inkjet. But it'll cost you overall more per print (due to ink drying out, etc) and be worse quality than you can get from a local pharmacy, office store, or printer. A good quality inkjet for photos is another story, but quite a bit pricier.
  - zanny 11y ago
    This is not just for me though, I consult and regularly recommend printers to clients. If they are business scale we always go laser, but home users do not want to hear they should buy multiple printers for b/w + color printing, and they don't want to buy a scanner separately (the 2340D is perfect except it lacks a scanner). In many cases, it is hard enough to get them even remember what the print icon looks like, how to use ctrl-p, or that the word "Print" is in the file menu. Trying to get the tech illiterate to not only manage two printers, but also replace ink and toner for both of them, is crazy. And the thing is nobody in this is printing often. Frequent printers should always buy laser, we know that, that is established. But we are talking about the once a week printers who just want everything for cheap. What better alternatives are there for that use case than an Epson 420?
tambourine_man 11y ago
Can't this be hacked in the drivers? I remember loving Gutenprint (née Gimp-Print) back when I printed
- creshal 11y ago
  Usually it's implemented on the firmware level.
KiDD 11y ago
I purchased a Xerox Phaser 6100 Color Laser Printer for $30 on Craigslist. Only problem is there are no drivers for OS X... Course it had %70 toner still and I don't look forward to having to replace the toner but at least are all separate colors and can be replaced separately!
- strictfp 11y ago
  Just register it as a standard postscript printer and it will most likely work.
  - yrro 11y ago
    I used to have one of these. It didn't understand Postscript, but after installing Splix it appeared in Cups printer model list and worked absolutely fine.
- strictfp 11y ago
  Just register it as a standard postscript printer and it will most likely work.
mchahn 11y ago
Not too long ago I bought a cheap printer (don't remember the brand), took it home, and returned it after seeing the horrible quality of the print. Then I brought home another cheap printer of a different brand, had the same experience, and returned that. The reason I was buying cheap printers is that they were the only ones locally available, other than one very expensive model, the epson XP800. Apparently the market has been shrunk to only people that don't care about quality. They give the printer away and make a killing on the ink. In the end I bought the expensive Epson and have been very happy with it. I'm not happy about the state of the market though.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  Is there a name for the scenario where market forces push new products to be objectively inferior to older ones?
  - mchahn 11y ago
    Maybe planned retrogression instead of planned obsolescence?
    - gherkin0 11y ago
      I don't think there's usually a plan to "retrogress" on product quality, though. It just sort of works out that way.
chops 11y ago
I have one major use-case for (very cheap) inkjet printers: on the beach. I run a non-trivial number of beach volleyball tournaments[1], and the beach is not a terribly hospitable place for electronics. So I carry with me a cheap printer that's light to carry. If it takes a fast-moving ball that breaks off a part, or it gets overloaded with sand, dust, destroyed by rain, whatever, it's no skin off my back, since it was just $30. So far the same crappy printer has been serving me for about 4 years in this capacity. Toting around a laser printer would be a huge pain in the ass. Otherwise, I'm completely onboard with the overarching sentiment: there's not a lot of reason to own an inkjet printer. [1] My flagship product (http://bracketpal.com http://bracketpal.com) is a tournament management system, and beach volleyball is the niche I focus primarily on.
- collyw 11y ago
  How do you power it? Are there battery powered printers these days?
th0br0 11y ago
The same goes for HP OfficeJets (or at least mine ... 8600 Pro)
- DavidNielsen 11y ago
  Considering my wife just bought a 8620 this bodes well for my future.. oh joy.
8jef 11y ago
How hard would it be to hack an open source printer hardware, say using some standard black toner cartriges (any brand), and make a Kickstarter out of it?
- tdicola 11y ago
  What are you going to offer that the big printer manufacturers don't offer today? Cheaper prices? I doubt it, you're not going to be at the same scale as the big players and will pay a ton more for parts. Not to mention you're going to have major upfront costs for tooling, molds, etc. unless this thing is going to look like an erector set. Higher quality? Again doubtful, unless you've been researching inkjet technology for years and have some incredible breakthough. If you're asking how hard it is to make a printer I doubt you have some special tech ready to revolutionize the industry (no offense). Cheaper ink? If you want to cheap out you can already refill ink cartridges or even buy recycled / dirt cheap ink for most printers. There are plenty of knockoff cartridges and even brick and mortar stores (look at any mall) that sell those cheap cartridges. Or just go laser and never worry about stupid cartridges again. Better support? Not on a Kickstarter project budget. Have fun dealing with crazy customers freaking out that their 15 year old Windows 2000 box won't use your printer.
marijn 11y ago
Hahah, you think the other vendors are better? At least the Epson stuff I've owned is easy to install with Linux and doesn't break after a few months of use (contrary to various Canon and HP devices). If there exists a non-terrible printer manufacturer (in a consumer budget range) do tell me.
- ssmoot 11y ago
  I bought an HP M252dw Color Laserjet supporting WiFi and AirPrint off Amazon for $230 last year. It replaced a Konica Minolta color laser I'd had for several years that ran out of toner (that one was $120 IIRC). I didn't have to replace it, but I really wanted an AirPrint printer. I also had to be a be choosy since I wanted something that would fit in the IKEA printer stand I've had for about 10 years. Sure toner costs about double what ink does, but with the very occasional printing I do it's actually much cheaper since I don't have to replace the ink or print heads from disuse whenever I need to print something. The laser printer is always ready and will go years on the same toner cartridges. Forget black & white. Having a color laser at home is one of the best computer purchases I've made. I had a cheap Canon USB Scanner in the closet for the once or twice a year I need that function.
vardump 11y ago
I don't currently have a printer. I think I'd want an economic laser printer. Probably going to print less than 50 pages per month. Needs to work fine under Linux. Any suggestions?
- creshal 11y ago
  Anything Ricoh. Unlike Brother, they don't rip you off with eyewateringly expensive toners, and their Linux drivers work better.
- jhaand 11y ago
  Brother HL-L2340D. Laser B/W, Duplex, Wifi, Linux support and only 80 EUR.
  - jschulenklopper 11y ago
    I just checked that type number online, to see whether that was possible (or a typo on your end): two-sided printing for that price. But you're right. I'm (almost unfortunately) not in the market for a new laser printer. My current Brother HL-2150N still works like a (one-sided) charm.
- tdicola 11y ago
  My Brother HL-2380DW black and white laser with flatbed scanner works great in Linux (Ubuntu 15.04 at least). The scanner I actually have setup to scan straight to Dropbox so I don't even have to screw around with scanning software on a computer. It does cloud print and apple print too so all your mobile devices will work. Supports auto duplexing of printing so you just check a box to print on both sides. Great printer if you just need an occasional use scanner. They make a version without any scanner too that's a bit cheaper, and a version with a fancier auto duplexing document scanner if you do a lot of document scanning.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Not colour? Happy to refill yourself? Have a look on the Open Printing site to see if there's a driver that can be used with CUPS. Then have a look on toner seller sites to see if the carts can be refilled cheaply. The Open Printing site tends to list any problems some printers / mutli-function devices have. http://www.openprinting.org/printers http://www.openprinting.org/printers Check the wider www too, because OpenPrinting is user generated and might not be up to date. http://www.cups.org/ http://www.cups.org/ The Arch wiki has some nice documentation for CUPS: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS So does FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/ http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/
8jef 11y ago
How hard would that be to hack together some printer harware and make it a Kickstarter?
- bbcbasic 11y ago
  It's the business model that is the problem no the tech. This dude spent 5 hours trying to hack his printer. He is the problem! Just value your time and go out and buy a decent printer ffs. To get a printer this bad you have to spend next to nothing on it :-)
  - ersii 11y ago
    There are plenty of horrible printers though. A decent printer? Sure, I'd like one. Just.. where do I find one? And how would I be sure it's not one of bad ones?
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  It's not worth it; you'll never be able to make it cheaper than a good small-office printer. If you want a nice printer that is reliable, has ultra-cheap cost-per-page, is rated for 50,000 pages per month, uses Postscript, etc., they're out there, but you're not going to find one for less than $50. But you can find one for $300-1000 (depending on if you want color or B&W). Your kickstarter project isn't going to be able to beat that.
wfunction 11y ago
This isn't really a new thing, it's been like this for over a decade. It's why Epson printers are so cheap; they make their money on the cartridges. I've had better luck with HP in general (Officejet), though I don't know how good each particular model is so some may be worse.
tdicola 11y ago
Get a cheap consumer black and white laser printer and never look back. I can't think of any time I've needed or wanted to print color. For photos and such send them off to be printed with real photo printers.
- johnminter 11y ago
  We came to the same conclusion. My wife is a teacher and we often print her notes, tests, homework assignments, and worksheets to be copied at school. The B&W laser "just works" and is both fast and economical.
- abrowne 11y ago
  I print my occasional shipping label et al. at work (shh!), but did the same for my parents. I don't like Samsung with anything creative, but their simple black and white laser printers seem great and even have official Linux support.
largelargefirm 11y ago
Well, the printer manual probably says, like mine does: "Install all ink cartridges; otherwise, you cannot print". But in my Epson XP-200, if my black cartidge runs out, it tells me that I can use a 'composite black' mode where it blends the ink from the colour cartridges to form black. And vice versa - when the colour ink runs out and black ink still remains, you can continue printing temporarily with black ink only. So there are always those options if you need to get something printed.
danbolt 11y ago
I don't own a printer, and I feel like when I have to print something I usually employ one of the following strategies: 1) Going to an office supply store, library, or university with the PDF of what I need to print on a USB drive. 2) My workplace providing a printer for work-related printing. I can imagine good reasons why someone would need to own a printer, but it seems almost like a car these days. If you don't want to deal with one, and you can live your life effectively without, it might be better to rely on services to print for you.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  That's a good strategy. I own a printer, because I need to print shipping labels. I didn't own one until I started doing a lot of shipping. Even in college the CS lab let us print for free (the library charged) so I used that to print out assignments. I bought the cheapest black and white only laser printer in existence - $25.
JensRex 11y ago
I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time. During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box. I've talked more than a few people out of buying inkjets.
- whatnotests 11y ago
  I'm a big fan of the Brother cartridges because they include a drum + toner in one, so each time you replace the toner you also get a new drum.
- colanderman 11y ago
  Second Brother lasers. My HL-3170CDW color laser is still going strong after four years. Works flawlessly with Linux, OS X, and Windows; toner lasts forever; and print quality is fantastic.
  - ChristianGeek 11y ago
    My Brother 1650 is over 10 years old and still printing as well as the day I bought it.
    - brightsize 11y ago
      Yep, my Brother MFC-something-or-other laser went about 10yrs I estimate before something went south with its brains. Never had a problem with the cartridges or any of the mechanicals, but I didn't use it often either. A brand new Brother MFC-L2740DW laser sits on my desk now and if it lasts 5 years I'll have gotten my $170 out of it.
- jschulenklopper 11y ago
  I'm equally happy with our Brother HL-2150N. Already using the third cartridge in its fifth (?) year, but a very basic and cheap and capable laser printer.
m0llusk 11y ago
Epson recently found through customer research that anxiety about ink cartridges was one of their biggest problems and so they are launching printers with refillable ink tanks, currently available in the form of the Epson EcoTank L355. Given that the company has understood this problem and released products to address it it seems that never buying Epson printers might be an incorrect response.
- lstamour 11y ago
  The concept is nice but the EcoTank printers themselves look like junk, in the store at least. Given how expensive they are, you'd have thought they'd make the design more durable-looking or used better materials. That said, I haven't seen the ET14000 or two-tray workforce in person, and maybe they work better than they look :)
csomar 11y ago
Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious. 1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon). 2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only. 3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge. 4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black and colours). 5. They are buggy and noisy as hell.
- kaonashi 11y ago
  The purpose behind the engineering of the printers is to drive the sales of as many ink cartridges as possible while being as cheap as possible to produce. From this perspective, offering many additional features which turn off when the ink rent hasn't been paid makes much more sense.
  - chrischen 11y ago
    Makes sense until people stop buying them for laser printers.
    - takeda 11y ago
      It's so infuriating though that laser printers seem like much cheaper alternative. In reality inkjet are cheap, many companies (from top of my head I see BofA) use them to print bills, because it saves them cost. It sucks that prices are so artificially manipulated.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      There's a problem with that theory: they're simply not going to stop buying them and switch to lasers. We've had this dynamic for at least 15 years now, and people still are buying cheap-o inkjets and getting ripped off on ink cartridges. If people haven't learned after a decade and a half, they're never going to learn. Just look at the other comments on this discussion (including the blog posting that started it all): even on "hacker news", which is full of technologists rather than regular people, tons of people here have fallen for the inkjet scam. If a bunch of nerds don't know any better, than you certainly can't expect the regular public to figure it out.
roflchoppa 11y ago
Hardware startup - non-shity printers, use any cartridge you want. PRO-FEATURE use a balled point pen.
dpcan 11y ago
This is not unique to Epson, so if you go out an buy an HP thinking you'll be safe... do your research first. I have an HP Officejet 6700 Premium right behind me that works the exact same way. If I run out of Magenta, it won't even print in black. I've been thinking of trying to find a way to inject some water or something into the empty cartridges to trick it. The strange thing is - I almost never print in color, yet somehow, I run out of color ink. I don't get it. And it's costing me way more than I want to spend to print.
- eosrei 11y ago
  The simpler option is to buy a high quality laser printer. I'm on the same cartridge in my HP4200N for almost 10 years since it's good for 12,000+ pages.
Sir_Substance 11y ago
I use printers so infrequently, it's usually easier to use the work or public library printer when I need to rather than maintain ink cartridges. They usually go dry before I use them, I typically print less than 10 pages a year. For the record, it's always government paperwork. Always. If you work for government, I have this super-neat thing called Flask to tell you about, you're gonna lose your shit when you find out!
alanfranzoni 11y ago
1) That's not just Epson. Many manufacturers do that. 2) That's a cheap consumer all-in-one. You're buying a subsidized product which pays for itself via expensive ink cartridges. Requiring all of them in order to print is called "leverage". It's at least ten years that such products exist - if you didn't know, it may be your fault as well. 3) Want a reliable printer with a decent cost per page? Aim at the SOHO market, at least. There you won't get a subsidized price, and printers would actually need to print more than 10 pages per month - hence the higher price tag. Just an example: I've got an Epson Workforce Pro 5620. It's an inkjet, color all-in-one printer with double sided printing and scanning. It works great, the price-per-page using original Epson cartridges is on par with most non-heavy duty color laser printers (i.e. those in the $400-$600 range) but it's much cheaper ($280 on Amazon right now). Don't cry for something we all know about.
mbell 11y ago
I haven't owned a printer in probably 10 years and I'm not particularly young (32). I get their usefulness in some aspects of business operations but I'm a bit at a loss as to why an individual would purchase one. What are the use cases now? The only two I can think of are printing photos, which I get but it seems better handled either through a photo printer or an outside service or for printing 'offical' documents to fill out manually, but I've completed many such transactions by digitally filling out and signing a pdf.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  i have a cheap brother b/w laser at home, and use slightly more expensive hp b/w lasers at work because they're faster. at home i print things like movie and event tickets. i don't like fumbling around on my phone for tickets because sometimes there's no reception and the email or whatever isn't cached. occasionally i will have government paperwork or something to print from home also. i will also print out maps and lists when i know reception will be crappy. basically, mandatory paperwork and shitty cell reception are my use cases.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    For online tickets, you can usually download them. If not, I just take a screenshot (both Android and iOS have built-in support). I've traveled on Ryanair just fine using them. For maps, there are plenty with offline support: Google Maps, HERE, OsmAnd, etc. I'm not criticizing your approach, just saying that I've never felt that need. Official paperwork, on the other hand, is still a pain; our local governments seem particularly adverse to digital documents.
    - beachstartup 11y ago
      uh yeah, i understand you can use a phone offline. but i'm just not going to rely on my phone to get into a place that i traveled to get to. screenshot, offline, blah blah, what if the battery dies? what if the damn thing just stops working, like it has done multiple times in my life? what if someone snatches it from me while it's out in my hand like it normally is? what if someone spills a drink on it while it's out on the table at the dinner before the show? how do you think i know of all these terrible scenarios? i'd rather hang on to a piece of paper, and if i lose it, then i have nobody to blame but myself. call me a luddite.
StreamBright 11y ago
Reminds me of: "I am going to spend the rest of my career focusing on the hard problems of computer science: printers, projectors, and screen sharing." https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136 https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136
- veddox 11y ago
  Printers are my biggest IT nightmare. No piece of modern computer hardware fails so consistently, so ununderstandably or so frequently as a printer.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Not true at all. Buy a good management solution (we use PrinterLogic) and buy good printers. By getting rid of crap devices, putting the good, self-service management system in solution in place, and proactively replacing consumables, we took something like 75k annual printing tickets down to around 300. Those support interactions and dispatch cost like $1M/year, so eliminating them paid for 100% printer replacement in about 18 months. Because we bought thousands of printers at once, we made the vendors quarter and were able to extract additional concessions re:reliability guarantees, etc. So if our estimation of the quality of the devices are wrong, we're shipping a lot of printers back.
    - veddox 11y ago
      The problem is that you can only afford to do that if you're a moderately large business. For home users or small schools (where I have worked), that's simply not an option moneywise...
      - Spooky23 11y ago
        Decent 3rd party print management solutions start around $25/printer. They are often free when tied to hardware. Nobody can afford garbage equipment. You're better off doing without.
  - 11y ago
soneca 11y ago
Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market? I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects. Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?
- tdicola 11y ago
  It's a race to bottom of costs, not some market teeming with innovation. Sure you could build the most amazing printer in the world but no consumer is going to spend $1000 for it vs. the $50 special at the big box store. Think of them like razors and razor blades--they'll throw an extra blade on to amp up the marketing but in the end it's all about selling some plastic and electrical bits for a few pennies less than the next guy.
  - washadjeffmad 11y ago
    I didn't get your razor analogy at first because you can have inexpensive and high quality with safety razors (eg - Feather blades). The ones you reference are aptly called disposable razors and electric razors. Disposables are sham products through and through, but a large portion of the electrics market is high utility, fairly inexpensive basic function devices, like trimmers. A Fill-ups(tm) that pre-warms the lotion it squirts on your face and starts your car for you on cold days for an extra $150 over the previous model is a bit of a gimmick, but there are plenty of standard models that are low cost, long lasting, and well priced if you know what you're shopping for, which was part of your point about cheap vs quality printers.
- johnminter 11y ago
  They are quite complex and the consumer versions are commodity items. There are printhead - ink - paper interactions and the electrophotographic process for laser printers requires optimization to print on different media. There are lots of things that can go wrong - and do. I have spent much of my career in an analytical lab analyzing these problems. Such problems raise costs and with commodity items, very high yields are required to be profitable. Years ago we had a professor (I forget the name) from MIT come to our Research Labs and give a talk on his research. He was using game theory to study product research, development, and manufacturing. When all was said and done, he concluded that if you were not first or second to market, you spent significantly more money to enter the market and your probability of being profitable was much lower.
agumonkey 11y ago
I only very lately learned that you could attempt some hackish head cleaning with warm purified water. By pouring it in place of colored ink, it's supposed to melt dried stuck ink clogging the head. I had a Lexmark S605[1], unfortunately the black side of the head got clogged, making it almost useless, unless cheating by printing in blue. [1] the best AIO wireless printer I had. Solid build, not noisy, consistent throughput. My mother had to buy a quick replacement, a HP envy4500, it's a cheap piece of crap. Even the motors sucks. Slow, noisy, random.
atroyn 11y ago
Is there room in the market for a 'prosumer' printer, something like the OnePlus of printers? Along with non-apple laptops and notebooks, printers seem to be one of the things people complain about the most.
LarryMade2 11y ago
Epson - If its not chipped ink cartridges its vacuum tubes on their print-heads. Canon, the print head or logic board dies and unless you replace one and it works or fails you don't know which - sorry. HP - built like a tank - ink priced like mil-spec. Dell/Lexmark shiny logo in place of compatibility. Never buy a network printer without an LCD display to read error messages/input IP addresses. Beware of printers that can't use card stock - at all (Yeah, Canon, you and your latest inkjets). Might try Brother next.
sdenton4 11y ago
With all of the hype and excitement for 3d printers, I always have the many failings of 2d printers itching at the back of my brain...
gerbilly 11y ago
I have an Apple Laserwriter 12/640 PS, bought in 1997 and still going strong. I think the guts of it are actually Lexmark. I have to hack the driver for it on new versions of OS X, but it runs fine without it. It's just to control some of the optional print features.
bbcbasic 11y ago
I wonder if 3d printers will go the same way. You're 24 carat gold reel is a little low so I am not going to let you print plastic. Muwhhaahaa!
elorant 11y ago
Has anyone tried Epson’s Ink Tank series? They have a ridiculously low cost per page, with new inks costing as low as $5/bottle. I’m thinking of buying one to replace my aging Lexmark E-232 which has printed more than 70k pages without a hitch.
t3ra 11y ago
To the author : It's 2016 if you still insist on buying original cartridges you seriously need to start to Google better options. Injects can be refilled at home with a simple injection and syringe! All you need to buy is some good quality ink from eBay (or aliexpress) If not that There are "compatible oem cartridges" at 1/4 the cost available EVERYWHERE! or if you do the slightest bit of printing : Invest in a CISS (Continuous ink supply system).. Even Epson makes original CISS systems.
jafingi 11y ago
Printers (for consumers) need development. They still function like the old days with all the bad stuff comes with that. I personally just have a B&W Dell laserprinter that cost almost nothing. It's fast, prints everytime, and one cartridge lasts very long time. Before my Dell, I had a 3-in-1 HP printer. It was the worst printer I've ever had. Paper jammed all the time. And half of the time it wouldn't pick up the paper, and told that there was no paper in it even though the paper tray was completely full. And those problems started on day one. I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  >Printers (for consumers) need development. I don't see why. If you want a better printer, you just have to pay more money and get one aimed at the SOHO (small office) market, which isn't subsidized by ink cartridge prices as the guy above notes. The home printer market is like this because it's highly profitable. What you're probably thinking is that these printers need to be more like SOHO printers: cartridges that last a long time, ability to print tens of thousands of pages without any reliability problems, etc. They already have these printers: they're sold to people who have small offices and small businesses or workgroups. The problem is people who seem to think that they should be able to get a business-class printer for $39.99. There's a reason they're that cheap. This is one of those cases where you really get what you pay for. >I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers. We've had those for a long, long time now. My HP LaserJet 2300 is mostly like that, except maybe the silent bit (you're never going to get a printer that's totally silent; mechanical contraptions that move things around with motors are going to make noise), and I think it's about 13 years old now. But that printer probably cost around $600 when it was new. You're not going to get the "iPhone of printers" at feature-phone prices.
decasteve 11y ago
I had an Epson 3800 photo printer. It once ran out of ink in the middle of a print and stopped mid-stream. I replaced the cartridge and it started back as if not missing a beat. Paying more upfront for a printer saves you in the long run. Avoid cheap multi-function printers like the plague.
owly 11y ago
Lasers only. It's really the only way to go, especially if you only print occasionally. They last forever compared to ink jets.
innocentoldguy 11y ago
I hate printers in general. After all these years, manufacturers still haven't come up with a standard communication interface that would allow me to just plug in the printer and have my OS detect and use it without issue. Instead, especially with Epson printers, I have to download some awful crap-ware driver, which supports all OS versions up to the one right before the one I'm currently running.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  If you use Linux (with CUPS) and a business-grade printer with Postscript or PDF support, you won't have this problem.
jokoon 11y ago
Well don't buy inkjet printers. Although manufacturers might pick up on that and start doing the same for laser printers...
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  They're not going to do it for business-class printers, because businesses aren't going to put up with it. They do it with consumer-class printers because consumers are dumb and want the cheapest thing they can find and don't print a lot, but businesses need printers that can print a lot of pages without maintenance. There's plenty of competition in the business printer market, so it'd be pretty stupid for mfgrs to pull too many shenanigans there.
xemoka 11y ago
This isn't just consumer grade printers. At work we have a number of large scale plotters and they all stink. Our main is a HP DesignJet T1300 44-inch wide plotter. Even it refuses to print if any of the 6 inks are too low or the heads are 'needing to be replaced'. The software on it is absolutely brutal too, it has a resistive touch screen as it's primary input and it's incredibly slow to page through. On top of that, if you try to speed things along (for example, pre-opening the paper roll cover before manually paging through to the 'replace paper' menu link) it will complain and refuse to do what you ask until you start back at the beginning. I have had nothing but trouble, and these are multi-thousand dollar printers.
capote 11y ago
We're all getting trolled by the printer companies. Look at this thread.
jrapdx3 11y ago
Having owned more printers than I can remember, including Epson, Brother, Ricoh, Tektronix, HP, using laser, inkjet, and even other technologies, I think there are a few conclusions to draw: + For printing documents laser printers are by far the best choice for reliability, economy and quality of output. Color lasers have become quite reasonably priced, so if color printing is needed, no need to get something less. + For photos, nothing beats a high-quality pigment inkjet printer, but they can be expensive, especially large-format models. About 12 years ago I bought an Epson Pro 4000, with 17x22in capability, it was at the time used leading edge tech. It required 8 ink cartridges. I preferred the 220 ml size, but those cost ~$100 each. The main problem with the 4000 was the heads clogging easily, a big annoyance and costly too. But the Pro 4000 made absolutely gorgeous prints. Now it needs to be replaced, though spending >$2000 is not a pleasant prospect. Newer machines no doubt have much better print heads, probably lower TCO. AS many here point out, small desktop inkjets can be expensive to operate and document output quality is often poor vs. laser. + It's been pretty consistent, printers and printer drivers cause 90% of system admin problems. Windows has always been by far the worst on this score. Amazingly, I had tremendous issues with a 6 year old Ricoh under Windows, but absolutely no driver problems with Linux. The customary Postscript-based printing in the Unix world is a predictable standard and usually easy to work with. Many laser printers have built-in Postscript emulation, though a PS option for high-end printers or plotters can cost upward of $1000. Still might be worth it to avoid the Windows printer driver hell.
jgalt212 11y ago
In general, I agree with all the ant-inkjet comments. That being said, I've yet to see a laser printer with grayscale rendering approaching that of a garden variety inkjet.
Tempest1981 11y ago
And you know that some high-paid exec decided it was a good idea to refuse to print when low on ink... "to ensure quality" and uphold the brand name. Haha - it had the opposite effect.

209 points by e-nouri 11y ago

My HP LaserJet 1020 has been chugging away for 10+ years on $11 refilled cartridges that yield around 2k monochrome pages. It just might last ten more!

LyndsySimon 11y ago
I pulled a LaserJet 1160 out of storage today because my wife's inkjet stopped working. It printed ~75 pages without a hiccup, and I don't even know how old the cartridge in it is.

e-nouri 11y ago

Epson printers still require you to have the 4 cartridge even if you want to just print in black !

jayrox 11y ago
this is not unique to epson. hp and xerox printers do the same thing.
- e-nouri 11y ago
  I had Lexmark before, it was never a problem! unbelievable, the thing is that I never used the colors, they dried out! You have to buy all of them just to print in black!
bsilvereagle 11y ago
I believe this is because the tracking dots[1] require yellow ink. [1] https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/index.php https://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/index.php
- kuschku 11y ago
  Well, why can I print with just black ink on my canon and HP multifunction printers then? (they also allow me to do high-res (4800dpi) scans of money without any issue, in hilarious contrast to photoshop, which refuses to open them)
derFunk 11y ago
Maybe you got to have them inserted, yes, but they can be empty. (My HP OfficeJet 6500A Plus also prints with empty color cartridges. I just replaced them today after weeks of emptyness).

walrus01 11y ago

Never buy any inkjet printer. I threw in the garbage a Canon multifunction that refused ton work as a SCANNER when its ink was empty. If you have the space and print a lot of black and white, buy an eight year old used HP LaserJet with an Ethernet interface.

manyxcxi 11y ago
I don't know why people still bother with inkjets. It's like the companies are actively punishing you for buying these models of printers. If they are necessary for work, then MAYBE. But even then, if you're buying commercial hardware you're not dealing with this junk either. It also used to be that laser was incredibly expensive in comparison, now they're about the same price if you compare color inkjet to black and white laser. I bought a Brother black and white laser MFC 7 years ago. I've changed the toner three times and it is just ready to print when I am. I've never had it not print, my old inkjet required a prayer before every print job. No nozzle jams, no problems with a color being used up, preventing a b+w print. It just works. I paid maybe $180 for the printer 7 years ago and I'm not going to replace this printer until it fully dies. It has fax and multi page scanning capabilities- the only thing that sucks is that it isn't networked by default and the Linux drivers are touchy. I plugged it in to my TP-Link Archer C7 and their printer sharing drivers work fantastic on OS X. I will never buy another inkjet printer again.
- creshal 11y ago
  Lasers do have disadvantages – mainly their excessively high power consumption and their air pollution. Modern gel inks don't dry out in my experience, and make for very efficient printers that are much less maintenance intensive than lasers. And ink is cheaper than toner unless you print several hundreds of pages a month.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    I'm sure I'm having a brain fart and missing something obvious, but why are inkjets cheaper than laser only at lower monthly page volumes? Seems that your savings would just continue to increase the more you print. Or is there something else that affects the inkjet price per page at higher volumes?

zanny 11y ago

I pretty much exclusively buy Epson XP-420's nowadays. What other all-in-one option is there that meets the following criteria? 1. Complete and free Linux support 2. Wireless 3. Affordable - remember, we are competing with a printer that regularly retails for $40 and whose cartridges cost around $10 per set. "Just buy the $200 Brother with $40 a set toner" isn't satisfactory to the people I recommend printers to. HP printers are known to be draconian with their cartridge DRM, and their Linux support is kind of a PITA with how they use their own protocol and suite of tools and every HP printer I have tried has never played nice with Cups management.

JohnTHaller 11y ago
Since most folks only print black and white for occasional stuff (forms, taxes, resumes, etc), something like the Brother HL-L2320D mono laser printer is a good bet. Works with Linux (rpm and deb available from their site), wireless, affordable. It's under $90 and toner is $30 for 1200 pages (2.5 cents per page) or $49 for 2600 pages (1.9 cents per page). Compare that to $13 for 175 pages (7.4 cents per page) with the Epson. If you don't need wireless, bump down to $68 for the HL-L2320D. For both printers, good 3rd party toner is about $10 for 1000+ pages to save even more. I listed only first-party numbers above. If you really want to print pictures at home, you can on a "cheap" inkjet. But it'll cost you overall more per print (due to ink drying out, etc) and be worse quality than you can get from a local pharmacy, office store, or printer. A good quality inkjet for photos is another story, but quite a bit pricier.
- zanny 11y ago
  This is not just for me though, I consult and regularly recommend printers to clients. If they are business scale we always go laser, but home users do not want to hear they should buy multiple printers for b/w + color printing, and they don't want to buy a scanner separately (the 2340D is perfect except it lacks a scanner). In many cases, it is hard enough to get them even remember what the print icon looks like, how to use ctrl-p, or that the word "Print" is in the file menu. Trying to get the tech illiterate to not only manage two printers, but also replace ink and toner for both of them, is crazy. And the thing is nobody in this is printing often. Frequent printers should always buy laser, we know that, that is established. But we are talking about the once a week printers who just want everything for cheap. What better alternatives are there for that use case than an Epson 420?

tambourine_man 11y ago

Can't this be hacked in the drivers? I remember loving Gutenprint (née Gimp-Print) back when I printed

creshal 11y ago
Usually it's implemented on the firmware level.

KiDD 11y ago

I purchased a Xerox Phaser 6100 Color Laser Printer for $30 on Craigslist. Only problem is there are no drivers for OS X... Course it had %70 toner still and I don't look forward to having to replace the toner but at least are all separate colors and can be replaced separately!

strictfp 11y ago
Just register it as a standard postscript printer and it will most likely work.
- yrro 11y ago
  I used to have one of these. It didn't understand Postscript, but after installing Splix it appeared in Cups printer model list and worked absolutely fine.
strictfp 11y ago
Just register it as a standard postscript printer and it will most likely work.

mchahn 11y ago

Not too long ago I bought a cheap printer (don't remember the brand), took it home, and returned it after seeing the horrible quality of the print. Then I brought home another cheap printer of a different brand, had the same experience, and returned that. The reason I was buying cheap printers is that they were the only ones locally available, other than one very expensive model, the epson XP800. Apparently the market has been shrunk to only people that don't care about quality. They give the printer away and make a killing on the ink. In the end I bought the expensive Epson and have been very happy with it. I'm not happy about the state of the market though.

gherkin0 11y ago
Is there a name for the scenario where market forces push new products to be objectively inferior to older ones?
- mchahn 11y ago
  Maybe planned retrogression instead of planned obsolescence?
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    I don't think there's usually a plan to "retrogress" on product quality, though. It just sort of works out that way.

chops 11y ago

I have one major use-case for (very cheap) inkjet printers: on the beach. I run a non-trivial number of beach volleyball tournaments[1], and the beach is not a terribly hospitable place for electronics. So I carry with me a cheap printer that's light to carry. If it takes a fast-moving ball that breaks off a part, or it gets overloaded with sand, dust, destroyed by rain, whatever, it's no skin off my back, since it was just $30. So far the same crappy printer has been serving me for about 4 years in this capacity. Toting around a laser printer would be a huge pain in the ass. Otherwise, I'm completely onboard with the overarching sentiment: there's not a lot of reason to own an inkjet printer. [1] My flagship product (http://bracketpal.com http://bracketpal.com) is a tournament management system, and beach volleyball is the niche I focus primarily on.

collyw 11y ago
How do you power it? Are there battery powered printers these days?

th0br0 11y ago

The same goes for HP OfficeJets (or at least mine ... 8600 Pro)

DavidNielsen 11y ago
Considering my wife just bought a 8620 this bodes well for my future.. oh joy.

8jef 11y ago

How hard would it be to hack an open source printer hardware, say using some standard black toner cartriges (any brand), and make a Kickstarter out of it?

tdicola 11y ago
What are you going to offer that the big printer manufacturers don't offer today? Cheaper prices? I doubt it, you're not going to be at the same scale as the big players and will pay a ton more for parts. Not to mention you're going to have major upfront costs for tooling, molds, etc. unless this thing is going to look like an erector set. Higher quality? Again doubtful, unless you've been researching inkjet technology for years and have some incredible breakthough. If you're asking how hard it is to make a printer I doubt you have some special tech ready to revolutionize the industry (no offense). Cheaper ink? If you want to cheap out you can already refill ink cartridges or even buy recycled / dirt cheap ink for most printers. There are plenty of knockoff cartridges and even brick and mortar stores (look at any mall) that sell those cheap cartridges. Or just go laser and never worry about stupid cartridges again. Better support? Not on a Kickstarter project budget. Have fun dealing with crazy customers freaking out that their 15 year old Windows 2000 box won't use your printer.

marijn 11y ago

Hahah, you think the other vendors are better? At least the Epson stuff I've owned is easy to install with Linux and doesn't break after a few months of use (contrary to various Canon and HP devices). If there exists a non-terrible printer manufacturer (in a consumer budget range) do tell me.

ssmoot 11y ago
I bought an HP M252dw Color Laserjet supporting WiFi and AirPrint off Amazon for $230 last year. It replaced a Konica Minolta color laser I'd had for several years that ran out of toner (that one was $120 IIRC). I didn't have to replace it, but I really wanted an AirPrint printer. I also had to be a be choosy since I wanted something that would fit in the IKEA printer stand I've had for about 10 years. Sure toner costs about double what ink does, but with the very occasional printing I do it's actually much cheaper since I don't have to replace the ink or print heads from disuse whenever I need to print something. The laser printer is always ready and will go years on the same toner cartridges. Forget black & white. Having a color laser at home is one of the best computer purchases I've made. I had a cheap Canon USB Scanner in the closet for the once or twice a year I need that function.

vardump 11y ago

I don't currently have a printer. I think I'd want an economic laser printer. Probably going to print less than 50 pages per month. Needs to work fine under Linux. Any suggestions?

creshal 11y ago
Anything Ricoh. Unlike Brother, they don't rip you off with eyewateringly expensive toners, and their Linux drivers work better.
jhaand 11y ago
Brother HL-L2340D. Laser B/W, Duplex, Wifi, Linux support and only 80 EUR.
- jschulenklopper 11y ago
  I just checked that type number online, to see whether that was possible (or a typo on your end): two-sided printing for that price. But you're right. I'm (almost unfortunately) not in the market for a new laser printer. My current Brother HL-2150N still works like a (one-sided) charm.
tdicola 11y ago
My Brother HL-2380DW black and white laser with flatbed scanner works great in Linux (Ubuntu 15.04 at least). The scanner I actually have setup to scan straight to Dropbox so I don't even have to screw around with scanning software on a computer. It does cloud print and apple print too so all your mobile devices will work. Supports auto duplexing of printing so you just check a box to print on both sides. Great printer if you just need an occasional use scanner. They make a version without any scanner too that's a bit cheaper, and a version with a fancier auto duplexing document scanner if you do a lot of document scanning.
DanBC 11y ago
Not colour? Happy to refill yourself? Have a look on the Open Printing site to see if there's a driver that can be used with CUPS. Then have a look on toner seller sites to see if the carts can be refilled cheaply. The Open Printing site tends to list any problems some printers / mutli-function devices have. http://www.openprinting.org/printers http://www.openprinting.org/printers Check the wider www too, because OpenPrinting is user generated and might not be up to date. http://www.cups.org/ http://www.cups.org/ The Arch wiki has some nice documentation for CUPS: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS So does FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/ http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/

8jef 11y ago

How hard would that be to hack together some printer harware and make it a Kickstarter?

bbcbasic 11y ago
It's the business model that is the problem no the tech. This dude spent 5 hours trying to hack his printer. He is the problem! Just value your time and go out and buy a decent printer ffs. To get a printer this bad you have to spend next to nothing on it :-)
- ersii 11y ago
  There are plenty of horrible printers though. A decent printer? Sure, I'd like one. Just.. where do I find one? And how would I be sure it's not one of bad ones?
Grishnakh 11y ago
It's not worth it; you'll never be able to make it cheaper than a good small-office printer. If you want a nice printer that is reliable, has ultra-cheap cost-per-page, is rated for 50,000 pages per month, uses Postscript, etc., they're out there, but you're not going to find one for less than $50. But you can find one for $300-1000 (depending on if you want color or B&W). Your kickstarter project isn't going to be able to beat that.

wfunction 11y ago

This isn't really a new thing, it's been like this for over a decade. It's why Epson printers are so cheap; they make their money on the cartridges. I've had better luck with HP in general (Officejet), though I don't know how good each particular model is so some may be worse.

tdicola 11y ago

Get a cheap consumer black and white laser printer and never look back. I can't think of any time I've needed or wanted to print color. For photos and such send them off to be printed with real photo printers.

johnminter 11y ago
We came to the same conclusion. My wife is a teacher and we often print her notes, tests, homework assignments, and worksheets to be copied at school. The B&W laser "just works" and is both fast and economical.
abrowne 11y ago
I print my occasional shipping label et al. at work (shh!), but did the same for my parents. I don't like Samsung with anything creative, but their simple black and white laser printers seem great and even have official Linux support.

largelargefirm 11y ago

Well, the printer manual probably says, like mine does: "Install all ink cartridges; otherwise, you cannot print". But in my Epson XP-200, if my black cartidge runs out, it tells me that I can use a 'composite black' mode where it blends the ink from the colour cartridges to form black. And vice versa - when the colour ink runs out and black ink still remains, you can continue printing temporarily with black ink only. So there are always those options if you need to get something printed.

danbolt 11y ago

I don't own a printer, and I feel like when I have to print something I usually employ one of the following strategies: 1) Going to an office supply store, library, or university with the PDF of what I need to print on a USB drive. 2) My workplace providing a printer for work-related printing. I can imagine good reasons why someone would need to own a printer, but it seems almost like a car these days. If you don't want to deal with one, and you can live your life effectively without, it might be better to rely on services to print for you.

nommm-nommm 11y ago
That's a good strategy. I own a printer, because I need to print shipping labels. I didn't own one until I started doing a lot of shipping. Even in college the CS lab let us print for free (the library charged) so I used that to print out assignments. I bought the cheapest black and white only laser printer in existence - $25.

JensRex 11y ago

I bought a Brother (HL-2170W) laser printer about 8 years ago, and it's still using its original cartridge. I do very little printing, but I do need it from time to time. During my last move, I accidentally tipped a book shelf on top of it. Cracked a few plastic bits, and bent some metal things inside it. I unbent the metal, and glued the plastic, and the thing still prints like it's new out of the box. I've talked more than a few people out of buying inkjets.

whatnotests 11y ago
I'm a big fan of the Brother cartridges because they include a drum + toner in one, so each time you replace the toner you also get a new drum.
colanderman 11y ago
Second Brother lasers. My HL-3170CDW color laser is still going strong after four years. Works flawlessly with Linux, OS X, and Windows; toner lasts forever; and print quality is fantastic.
- ChristianGeek 11y ago
  My Brother 1650 is over 10 years old and still printing as well as the day I bought it.
  - brightsize 11y ago
    Yep, my Brother MFC-something-or-other laser went about 10yrs I estimate before something went south with its brains. Never had a problem with the cartridges or any of the mechanicals, but I didn't use it often either. A brand new Brother MFC-L2740DW laser sits on my desk now and if it lasts 5 years I'll have gotten my $170 out of it.
jschulenklopper 11y ago
I'm equally happy with our Brother HL-2150N. Already using the third cartridge in its fifth (?) year, but a very basic and cheap and capable laser printer.

m0llusk 11y ago

Epson recently found through customer research that anxiety about ink cartridges was one of their biggest problems and so they are launching printers with refillable ink tanks, currently available in the form of the Epson EcoTank L355. Given that the company has understood this problem and released products to address it it seems that never buying Epson printers might be an incorrect response.

lstamour 11y ago
The concept is nice but the EcoTank printers themselves look like junk, in the store at least. Given how expensive they are, you'd have thought they'd make the design more durable-looking or used better materials. That said, I haven't seen the ET14000 or two-tray workforce in person, and maybe they work better than they look :)

csomar 11y ago

Multi-function inkjet printers are a Scam. No, I'm serious. 1. The printing functionality is flawed. A cartridge will not last for more than 100 pages. (I tried Epson, HP and Canon). 2. The cartridge will dry and not function after a few weeks only. 3. The original cartridge cost almost as much as a new printer with the cartridge. 4. The printer will not function (Scanner or Fax) without the full cartridges (black and colours). 5. They are buggy and noisy as hell.

kaonashi 11y ago
The purpose behind the engineering of the printers is to drive the sales of as many ink cartridges as possible while being as cheap as possible to produce. From this perspective, offering many additional features which turn off when the ink rent hasn't been paid makes much more sense.
- chrischen 11y ago
  Makes sense until people stop buying them for laser printers.
  - takeda 11y ago
    It's so infuriating though that laser printers seem like much cheaper alternative. In reality inkjet are cheap, many companies (from top of my head I see BofA) use them to print bills, because it saves them cost. It sucks that prices are so artificially manipulated.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    There's a problem with that theory: they're simply not going to stop buying them and switch to lasers. We've had this dynamic for at least 15 years now, and people still are buying cheap-o inkjets and getting ripped off on ink cartridges. If people haven't learned after a decade and a half, they're never going to learn. Just look at the other comments on this discussion (including the blog posting that started it all): even on "hacker news", which is full of technologists rather than regular people, tons of people here have fallen for the inkjet scam. If a bunch of nerds don't know any better, than you certainly can't expect the regular public to figure it out.

roflchoppa 11y ago

Hardware startup - non-shity printers, use any cartridge you want. PRO-FEATURE use a balled point pen.

dpcan 11y ago

This is not unique to Epson, so if you go out an buy an HP thinking you'll be safe... do your research first. I have an HP Officejet 6700 Premium right behind me that works the exact same way. If I run out of Magenta, it won't even print in black. I've been thinking of trying to find a way to inject some water or something into the empty cartridges to trick it. The strange thing is - I almost never print in color, yet somehow, I run out of color ink. I don't get it. And it's costing me way more than I want to spend to print.

eosrei 11y ago
The simpler option is to buy a high quality laser printer. I'm on the same cartridge in my HP4200N for almost 10 years since it's good for 12,000+ pages.

Sir_Substance 11y ago

I use printers so infrequently, it's usually easier to use the work or public library printer when I need to rather than maintain ink cartridges. They usually go dry before I use them, I typically print less than 10 pages a year. For the record, it's always government paperwork. Always. If you work for government, I have this super-neat thing called Flask to tell you about, you're gonna lose your shit when you find out!

alanfranzoni 11y ago

1) That's not just Epson. Many manufacturers do that. 2) That's a cheap consumer all-in-one. You're buying a subsidized product which pays for itself via expensive ink cartridges. Requiring all of them in order to print is called "leverage". It's at least ten years that such products exist - if you didn't know, it may be your fault as well. 3) Want a reliable printer with a decent cost per page? Aim at the SOHO market, at least. There you won't get a subsidized price, and printers would actually need to print more than 10 pages per month - hence the higher price tag. Just an example: I've got an Epson Workforce Pro 5620. It's an inkjet, color all-in-one printer with double sided printing and scanning. It works great, the price-per-page using original Epson cartridges is on par with most non-heavy duty color laser printers (i.e. those in the $400-$600 range) but it's much cheaper ($280 on Amazon right now). Don't cry for something we all know about.

mbell 11y ago

I haven't owned a printer in probably 10 years and I'm not particularly young (32). I get their usefulness in some aspects of business operations but I'm a bit at a loss as to why an individual would purchase one. What are the use cases now? The only two I can think of are printing photos, which I get but it seems better handled either through a photo printer or an outside service or for printing 'offical' documents to fill out manually, but I've completed many such transactions by digitally filling out and signing a pdf.

beachstartup 11y ago
i have a cheap brother b/w laser at home, and use slightly more expensive hp b/w lasers at work because they're faster. at home i print things like movie and event tickets. i don't like fumbling around on my phone for tickets because sometimes there's no reception and the email or whatever isn't cached. occasionally i will have government paperwork or something to print from home also. i will also print out maps and lists when i know reception will be crappy. basically, mandatory paperwork and shitty cell reception are my use cases.
- icebraining 11y ago
  For online tickets, you can usually download them. If not, I just take a screenshot (both Android and iOS have built-in support). I've traveled on Ryanair just fine using them. For maps, there are plenty with offline support: Google Maps, HERE, OsmAnd, etc. I'm not criticizing your approach, just saying that I've never felt that need. Official paperwork, on the other hand, is still a pain; our local governments seem particularly adverse to digital documents.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    uh yeah, i understand you can use a phone offline. but i'm just not going to rely on my phone to get into a place that i traveled to get to. screenshot, offline, blah blah, what if the battery dies? what if the damn thing just stops working, like it has done multiple times in my life? what if someone snatches it from me while it's out in my hand like it normally is? what if someone spills a drink on it while it's out on the table at the dinner before the show? how do you think i know of all these terrible scenarios? i'd rather hang on to a piece of paper, and if i lose it, then i have nobody to blame but myself. call me a luddite.

StreamBright 11y ago

Reminds me of: "I am going to spend the rest of my career focusing on the hard problems of computer science: printers, projectors, and screen sharing." https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136 https://twitter.com/britt/status/611996866146779136

veddox 11y ago
Printers are my biggest IT nightmare. No piece of modern computer hardware fails so consistently, so ununderstandably or so frequently as a printer.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Not true at all. Buy a good management solution (we use PrinterLogic) and buy good printers. By getting rid of crap devices, putting the good, self-service management system in solution in place, and proactively replacing consumables, we took something like 75k annual printing tickets down to around 300. Those support interactions and dispatch cost like $1M/year, so eliminating them paid for 100% printer replacement in about 18 months. Because we bought thousands of printers at once, we made the vendors quarter and were able to extract additional concessions re:reliability guarantees, etc. So if our estimation of the quality of the devices are wrong, we're shipping a lot of printers back.
  - veddox 11y ago
    The problem is that you can only afford to do that if you're a moderately large business. For home users or small schools (where I have worked), that's simply not an option moneywise...
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      Decent 3rd party print management solutions start around $25/printer. They are often free when tied to hardware. Nobody can afford garbage equipment. You're better off doing without.
- 11y ago

soneca 11y ago

Honest question: Why printers are so stuck in time? Why no great innovations? Why there is no product out there that "Just work" and won the Market? I never heard of startups making printers, not even those dreamy kickstart projects. Why we have this product that annoy People for ages and no one fix it? Anyone could give me any insight?

tdicola 11y ago
It's a race to bottom of costs, not some market teeming with innovation. Sure you could build the most amazing printer in the world but no consumer is going to spend $1000 for it vs. the $50 special at the big box store. Think of them like razors and razor blades--they'll throw an extra blade on to amp up the marketing but in the end it's all about selling some plastic and electrical bits for a few pennies less than the next guy.
- washadjeffmad 11y ago
  I didn't get your razor analogy at first because you can have inexpensive and high quality with safety razors (eg - Feather blades). The ones you reference are aptly called disposable razors and electric razors. Disposables are sham products through and through, but a large portion of the electrics market is high utility, fairly inexpensive basic function devices, like trimmers. A Fill-ups(tm) that pre-warms the lotion it squirts on your face and starts your car for you on cold days for an extra $150 over the previous model is a bit of a gimmick, but there are plenty of standard models that are low cost, long lasting, and well priced if you know what you're shopping for, which was part of your point about cheap vs quality printers.
johnminter 11y ago
They are quite complex and the consumer versions are commodity items. There are printhead - ink - paper interactions and the electrophotographic process for laser printers requires optimization to print on different media. There are lots of things that can go wrong - and do. I have spent much of my career in an analytical lab analyzing these problems. Such problems raise costs and with commodity items, very high yields are required to be profitable. Years ago we had a professor (I forget the name) from MIT come to our Research Labs and give a talk on his research. He was using game theory to study product research, development, and manufacturing. When all was said and done, he concluded that if you were not first or second to market, you spent significantly more money to enter the market and your probability of being profitable was much lower.

agumonkey 11y ago

I only very lately learned that you could attempt some hackish head cleaning with warm purified water. By pouring it in place of colored ink, it's supposed to melt dried stuck ink clogging the head. I had a Lexmark S605[1], unfortunately the black side of the head got clogged, making it almost useless, unless cheating by printing in blue. [1] the best AIO wireless printer I had. Solid build, not noisy, consistent throughput. My mother had to buy a quick replacement, a HP envy4500, it's a cheap piece of crap. Even the motors sucks. Slow, noisy, random.

atroyn 11y ago

Is there room in the market for a 'prosumer' printer, something like the OnePlus of printers? Along with non-apple laptops and notebooks, printers seem to be one of the things people complain about the most.

LarryMade2 11y ago

Epson - If its not chipped ink cartridges its vacuum tubes on their print-heads. Canon, the print head or logic board dies and unless you replace one and it works or fails you don't know which - sorry. HP - built like a tank - ink priced like mil-spec. Dell/Lexmark shiny logo in place of compatibility. Never buy a network printer without an LCD display to read error messages/input IP addresses. Beware of printers that can't use card stock - at all (Yeah, Canon, you and your latest inkjets). Might try Brother next.

sdenton4 11y ago

With all of the hype and excitement for 3d printers, I always have the many failings of 2d printers itching at the back of my brain...

gerbilly 11y ago

I have an Apple Laserwriter 12/640 PS, bought in 1997 and still going strong. I think the guts of it are actually Lexmark. I have to hack the driver for it on new versions of OS X, but it runs fine without it. It's just to control some of the optional print features.

bbcbasic 11y ago

I wonder if 3d printers will go the same way. You're 24 carat gold reel is a little low so I am not going to let you print plastic. Muwhhaahaa!

elorant 11y ago

Has anyone tried Epson’s Ink Tank series? They have a ridiculously low cost per page, with new inks costing as low as $5/bottle. I’m thinking of buying one to replace my aging Lexmark E-232 which has printed more than 70k pages without a hitch.

t3ra 11y ago

To the author : It's 2016 if you still insist on buying original cartridges you seriously need to start to Google better options. Injects can be refilled at home with a simple injection and syringe! All you need to buy is some good quality ink from eBay (or aliexpress) If not that There are "compatible oem cartridges" at 1/4 the cost available EVERYWHERE! or if you do the slightest bit of printing : Invest in a CISS (Continuous ink supply system).. Even Epson makes original CISS systems.

jafingi 11y ago

Printers (for consumers) need development. They still function like the old days with all the bad stuff comes with that. I personally just have a B&W Dell laserprinter that cost almost nothing. It's fast, prints everytime, and one cartridge lasts very long time. Before my Dell, I had a 3-in-1 HP printer. It was the worst printer I've ever had. Paper jammed all the time. And half of the time it wouldn't pick up the paper, and told that there was no paper in it even though the paper tray was completely full. And those problems started on day one. I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers.

Grishnakh 11y ago
>Printers (for consumers) need development. I don't see why. If you want a better printer, you just have to pay more money and get one aimed at the SOHO (small office) market, which isn't subsidized by ink cartridge prices as the guy above notes. The home printer market is like this because it's highly profitable. What you're probably thinking is that these printers need to be more like SOHO printers: cartridges that last a long time, ability to print tens of thousands of pages without any reliability problems, etc. They already have these printers: they're sold to people who have small offices and small businesses or workgroups. The problem is people who seem to think that they should be able to get a business-class printer for $39.99. There's a reason they're that cheap. This is one of those cases where you really get what you pay for. >I'm still looking forward to seeing a printer that's really useful and user friendly. Silent. Easy to replace cartridges. One that doesn't jam paper every second page. we need the iPhone of printers. We've had those for a long, long time now. My HP LaserJet 2300 is mostly like that, except maybe the silent bit (you're never going to get a printer that's totally silent; mechanical contraptions that move things around with motors are going to make noise), and I think it's about 13 years old now. But that printer probably cost around $600 when it was new. You're not going to get the "iPhone of printers" at feature-phone prices.

decasteve 11y ago

I had an Epson 3800 photo printer. It once ran out of ink in the middle of a print and stopped mid-stream. I replaced the cartridge and it started back as if not missing a beat. Paying more upfront for a printer saves you in the long run. Avoid cheap multi-function printers like the plague.

owly 11y ago

Lasers only. It's really the only way to go, especially if you only print occasionally. They last forever compared to ink jets.

innocentoldguy 11y ago

I hate printers in general. After all these years, manufacturers still haven't come up with a standard communication interface that would allow me to just plug in the printer and have my OS detect and use it without issue. Instead, especially with Epson printers, I have to download some awful crap-ware driver, which supports all OS versions up to the one right before the one I'm currently running.

Grishnakh 11y ago
If you use Linux (with CUPS) and a business-grade printer with Postscript or PDF support, you won't have this problem.

jokoon 11y ago

Well don't buy inkjet printers. Although manufacturers might pick up on that and start doing the same for laser printers...

Grishnakh 11y ago
They're not going to do it for business-class printers, because businesses aren't going to put up with it. They do it with consumer-class printers because consumers are dumb and want the cheapest thing they can find and don't print a lot, but businesses need printers that can print a lot of pages without maintenance. There's plenty of competition in the business printer market, so it'd be pretty stupid for mfgrs to pull too many shenanigans there.

xemoka 11y ago

This isn't just consumer grade printers. At work we have a number of large scale plotters and they all stink. Our main is a HP DesignJet T1300 44-inch wide plotter. Even it refuses to print if any of the 6 inks are too low or the heads are 'needing to be replaced'. The software on it is absolutely brutal too, it has a resistive touch screen as it's primary input and it's incredibly slow to page through. On top of that, if you try to speed things along (for example, pre-opening the paper roll cover before manually paging through to the 'replace paper' menu link) it will complain and refuse to do what you ask until you start back at the beginning. I have had nothing but trouble, and these are multi-thousand dollar printers.

capote 11y ago

We're all getting trolled by the printer companies. Look at this thread.

jrapdx3 11y ago

Having owned more printers than I can remember, including Epson, Brother, Ricoh, Tektronix, HP, using laser, inkjet, and even other technologies, I think there are a few conclusions to draw: + For printing documents laser printers are by far the best choice for reliability, economy and quality of output. Color lasers have become quite reasonably priced, so if color printing is needed, no need to get something less. + For photos, nothing beats a high-quality pigment inkjet printer, but they can be expensive, especially large-format models. About 12 years ago I bought an Epson Pro 4000, with 17x22in capability, it was at the time used leading edge tech. It required 8 ink cartridges. I preferred the 220 ml size, but those cost ~$100 each. The main problem with the 4000 was the heads clogging easily, a big annoyance and costly too. But the Pro 4000 made absolutely gorgeous prints. Now it needs to be replaced, though spending >$2000 is not a pleasant prospect. Newer machines no doubt have much better print heads, probably lower TCO. AS many here point out, small desktop inkjets can be expensive to operate and document output quality is often poor vs. laser. + It's been pretty consistent, printers and printer drivers cause 90% of system admin problems. Windows has always been by far the worst on this score. Amazingly, I had tremendous issues with a 6 year old Ricoh under Windows, but absolutely no driver problems with Linux. The customary Postscript-based printing in the Unix world is a predictable standard and usually easy to work with. Many laser printers have built-in Postscript emulation, though a PS option for high-end printers or plotters can cost upward of $1000. Still might be worth it to avoid the Windows printer driver hell.

jgalt212 11y ago

In general, I agree with all the ant-inkjet comments. That being said, I've yet to see a laser printer with grayscale rendering approaching that of a garden variety inkjet.

Tempest1981 11y ago

And you know that some high-paid exec decided it was a good idea to refuse to print when low on ink... "to ensure quality" and uphold the brand name. Haha - it had the opposite effect.