Posted on 08/17/2023 6:45:12 PM PDT by Carl Vehse
I have owned HP printers for a long time. Don’t use non HP cartridges so I can’t speak on that. But mine is old enough that it does not stop working when it runs out of ink. It will still print in black and white when the color ink is gone. In fact it will still pretend to print with no ink at all. The scanner keeps working too.
I have had two HP printers that have got me through 20 years. The first still worked but it became outdated and the ink became very hard to find and very expensive. It also had no scanner.
I don’t do a massive amount of printing so that does help.
Brother MFPs have stood up well.
On a second one after 5 or 6 years of spouse’s steady use.
We bought a new one of a similar type because of worn drums. A few months later I found a set of OEM drums, swapped in and gave it to a relative who really couldn’t afford a decent color laser printer.
I had an HP printer that was always out of ink. 50 dollars a whack every few months. Most of my printing was done in black but for some reason the printer didn’t use just black ink but the magenta too. What really ticked me off was that it wouldn’t print at all when one ink got low.
Trashed that baby and bought a Brother with just the toner. Still expensive but I can get a year out of one cartridge.
That's sort of my strategy, except that it's Samsung, and it's past tense. I bought 3 cheap Samsung printers a dozen, or so years ago, and Samsung still provides up to date drivers for Win10. Toner costs about 12 bucks apiece, and lasts for several thousand pages. The only maintenance has been cleaning the paper feed roller. However, I still have 2 HP boat anchors that I kept for scanning, but they don't work for that. This is the first I have learned that was intentional. My wife has a working HP printer that I use for the few times I need scanning. I also keep 2 @indows XP PCs working for 20 year old AutoCad software that I need to use, but rarely. I just bought two even older used Samsung laser printers that work only with XP. They cost 5 bucks for both at a yard sale.
I’m in 100% agreement, after being a large retail Garden Center & Nursery/ Landscape Contracting business leader in the Horticultural Industry, for the past 23yrs, until I retired.
My business carried rare, unusual and hard-to-find plant material, so the prices were high for entry into that realm of material. But prices were always fair, based upon the market.
“based upon the market.”
I never used that. I always used my cost plus a low margin no matter what the overall market did. I undercut the market substantially. Because of this my customers stayed loyal while competitors went out of business around me.
Helped me survive through Carter, Clinton, Obama, and now Biden so far. :)
I also used cost-plus to price my plant material, and drew people from 7 states to my 20ac site in PA, with unique regional advertising — due to my marketing/advertising/public relations background in NYC for many years.
Excellent!
Yes, my HP 8610 failed and I suspect a firmware update did it. And did not know how to successfully downgrade the firrmware. Hints for HP Printer Firmware Downgrade https://borncity.com/win/2021/02/02/firmware-downgrade-for-hp-printer/
Thus I turned off all communication with HP for my 8210 replacement and MS driver updates. See Turn off the Dynamic Security feature on HP printers to protect your ability to use aftermarket cartridges. https://www.printerrefillers.com/turn-off-the-dynamic-security-feature-on-hp-printers-to-protect-your-ability-to-use-aftermarket-cartridges/
I use a Brother L2395 Lasers for just black, and I would compare the page yields and refill costs for cartridges for each which cost about $100 when i bought it, and though it has been told me it needed toner for about a year it still kept doing my occasional printing, though I finally replaced the cart, though you can shake the old one to get more mile out if it.
My past history. After many years of messy refilling cheap Lexmark inkjet cart, I prayed and researched the largest cap. injects. Which I found HP inkjets (not that I think they are necessarily the best company), to be, and looking at cartridge capacities and replacement costs, then the prices for printers that take them, I found that the large capacity (High Yield) HP 950XL black and 951XL cartridges, (Black up to 2300 pages, Color up to 1500 pages, 5 percent coverage at A4 paper) at about $10 for a set of 4 remanufactured ones on Ebay (just press OK when HP protests) were the most economical.
These carts (cartridges) fit HP Office Pro 8100 8600 8610 8620 8630 8640 8660 8615 8625 M251dw 276dw printers. However, now these are discontinued and expensive (see at end for what I presently recommend) They used to be cheaper used (I bought a little used 8100 for $65 at Amazon warehouse and later a new 8610 for about $135, praise God).
Runner ups among lowest cost high cap. carts would be the HP 952XL High Yield carts (1450 to to 2k) , and a lower (about 825) HP 933XL. The lower the numbers then the older the printers that they belong to and lower the est. page yields. Which page yields are of course inflated, since you normally do not want to be printing at 5% coverage.
You can see the HP cart page here https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mlp/ink—toner-—paper/ink-cartridges for more info, though they usually do not tell you how many milliliters each cart holds.
And usually the lower the printer cost then the higher the replacement costs per page are. But Renewed means less, and so I bought a HP OfficeJet Pro 8210 (presently about$115 Renewed on Amazon) which takes 952 carts (presently about $22 for a 4 pack of reman carts on Ebay) But for now I have refilled the original carts, since HP sent me two sets due to problems with my first HP OfficeJet Pro 8210 which carriage locked up. https://support.hp.com/us-en
But printers will not last forever (my printer status report says my page count is close to 2500) and life and Eternity awaits us humans . Thus may all presently turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinners, trust Him to save and be baptized and follow Him!
It’s a shame, because HP used to be so good for so long. They are too big for their britches.
At work we have a HP LaserJet 4050 b/w printer. Dated 1999. The only thing it needed one time was a cleaning and the rubber paper feed on the drum replaced. I was there 18 years in that office and it kept working.
Like I said, HP used to be pretty reliable. These new fangled versions become obsolete by design.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.