Posted on 10/27/2004 6:35:55 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
In a closely watched case involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal court has ruled that a small North Carolina company can continue selling a chip that makes it possible to use refilled toner cartridges in Lexmark printers. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
not politics, but NC related.
What is Lexmark fighting for? In my opinion their printers are the worst consumer printers out there!
Stupid me. I bought a printer from Dell with my laptop. I was wondering why it was so cheap till I looked at the prices of their ink. You can't refill them either I don't think. I used to use refills and they do help!
I'd love to go out and buy a couple of Static Control toner cartridges with Smartek chips to celebrate the ruling, but I'd have to own a Lexmark printer first, and that isn't going to happen.
Lexmark is fighting to protect a contrived buisiness model that requires the supression of rights in order to succeed. I could understand if they invented a revolutionary cartridge to work with their printers, charged a lot for them, and then sued third-party manufacturers for patent infringement. But all they did in this case was use an insignificant amount of functional code to try to leverage the DMCA to drive out competition and sustain their business model.
Laser is the way to go - if I need color for photos, etc, I put it on a CD and take it to Walmart - lots cheaper. I bought a Brother Laser printer for $215.00 that prints over 20 PPM, has good quality, and will pay for itself (when compared to the cost of an ink jet) before it gets halfway through the first toner. In fact, it would be more economical to throw it away when the toner runsout and buy a new one than it would be to use an ink jet.
You can refill anything. But I would only suggest that for very cheap printers where a few refills will save you more than the price of the printer. I've had a $14,000 wide-format printer and a $2,500 inkjet die because of cheap third-party cartridges (not my choice to buy them). It cost a few thousand to fix the wide-format, and we had to junk the inkjet.
Always buy the same printer they have at the office. :)
The printer companies make their money from the ink, not the printers themselves. It's their "business model."
I, personally, just throw the printer out when the ink is gone, and buy another cheap one. It's either $50+ for new ink, or $40 for a printer that comes with all the ink.
I prefer Epson, FWIW. (I do hate their high ink cartridge prices....)
Ironically, Lexmark makes one of the best color lasers for under $1000.
This specific case is actually about laser toner cartridges, but it has implications in these inkjet pricing models too.
Nope. Some of the current crop of ink-jet printer cartridges have chips on them that keep track of how many prints have been made with them. Once it reaches a certain number, they just stop working. It's the "chip" that tells the printer to stop printing, not the ink level. You can re-fill that cartridge, but it still won't print anything....
LOL!
I have met the owners of Static Control before, good people. They have a big time business, that provides a lot of jobs to an area that needs them.
I remember reading an article about that issue. I think Lexmark does that. I have an inexpensive Lexmark printer, and I've had to replace ink cartridges when the on-screen indicators shows that there is still plenty of ink in the cartridge. :(
They are onto you! The new printers by Lexmark only come with a half full cartridge.
Thanks for the info! That's great to know.
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