Posted on 06/21/2007 1:05:59 PM PDT by TChris
A new study says that on average, more than half of the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. Why is that interesting? According to the study, users are tossing the cartridges when their printers are telling them they're out of ink, not when they necessarily are out of ink.
The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon's printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak's EasyShare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.
That's the first problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they aren't, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth of ink left.
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
I’ve got an HP 9800. It’s a real workhouse and does larger paper.
LOL - Yes, and a new cabinet-level department too since we are in desperate need of National Printer Care.
No way the printer “knows”. Some print heads just don’t last. Running the ink too low lets the head overheat, and that leads to early failure. I refill at about the halfway mark. The HP printers remember the cartridge ID number, but can’t remember back past 2 changes. All it takes to reset is a little bit of hacking. I’m on a very limited budget, I’ve got to get all I can out of everything. The photo quality from my HP 7260 is excellent, and the Stratitec ink is as good as OEM.
A couple years ago, I had a similar problem with an old Epson 800 that hadn’t been used for a long time. I Googled and found instructions online for how to resurrect a clogged Epson print head.
As I recall, it involved soaking the pads with Windex. It may have been isopropyl alcohol but, I’m pretty sure it was Windex. Whatever it was, after two or three attempts, it worked great and has continued to work perfectly (on nothing but third party inks) ever since.
I had the old cartridge out for a couple weeks until I got new ones. Now it don’t work at all.
I think it must have dried ink on the feeder thingy?
I live in BFE and there is no place to take it in to have it cleaned or looked at.
They're so cheap, it isn't worth much time or cost to get it un-clogged. Just replace it with a new Stylus C88 Plus ($74)
You'll be glad you did. :-)
Third Party is all I use also.
This story is why Epson is giving me a $45 credit in the Epson store. I plan on buying paper with it and keep buying the third pary ink.
This one wasn’t that cheap, about $285 seven years ago.
Okay, it doesn't actually "know" but these Brother printers are EXTREMELY finicky about the inks they get. The correllation between non-OEM ink and print head failures is quite strong. In my case, the original print head worked fine for hundreds of pages over the first 6 months. Not long after I started refilling, the head died very quickly. The service guy—who by the way had no reason to lie to me, as there's no way I was going to buy any ink from him because he's 90 minutes away—said that was always the case. My second failure was also soon after switching to non-OEM ink.
It's probably something more along the lines of the OEM ink having a lower viscosity than the off-brands and refills. At any rate, I don't care to pay $90 for a replacement print head.
(Unlike most HPs, these Brothers have permanent print heads; they're not built into the carts.)
Hey! The technology is new... give it some time!
Color laser for $200, that’s nuts. They cleaned out the closets here at work recently and told us to take what we wanted, there were dozens of old crapped-out monitors, old Pentiums and Pentium IIs, stuff like that.
One of my cow-orkers went home with a HP Color Laserjet 5. This thing is IMMENSE. Probably double the size of a typical old black-and-white LJ5 or LJ6, and close on 100 pounds. It retailed for about $10,000 new years ago. And not only did he get the printer, he got a stack of stuff to go with it that was as big as the printer itself—spare fuser, spare drum, bottles of toner, all sorts of stuff.
And now they’re selling home color lasers for $192. Unreal. I feel old.
}:-)4
I have a similar problem with premature ‘low battery’ warnings with regards to my wireless mouse and keyboard.
I know they weren't, but the C88 is a better, faster printer, and it's less than $80 (or about the cost of 3 ink cartridges). I used to have an 850, and I think the C88 is easily twice the printer the 850 was.
I’ve had Epsons, Canons and Lexmarks—and within the last 5 years, IMO, HP has left them all behind.
I agree with the assessment on the Epson C88 — terrific value for the money. I almost went with an HP all-in-one...but then read the consumer reports and decided it was overpriced, and consumers weren’t overly thrilled with performance. (I do have an HP pavilion, which I’m delighted with, so I’m not HP phobic.) I hadn’t even bought it for the photo printing facilities per se, having intended to use it mostly for printing out the occasional bits and pieces of documents, letters I need to...but was pleasantly surprised by its photo capabilities. If I have to print a LOT of pictures, I just transfer my photos to disk and take it down to the drugstore to get printed, rather than use tons of ink. I added a high end scanner to my set up and it was worth every penny...so I can scan in old photos, etc. with excellent quality. The epson C88+ the scanner was a cheaper set up with better performance with what I need to do. and no, I don’t work for Epson or any of its competitors either.
Had a color printer that used “crayons” like that more than 8 years ago. Nicest color printer I ever saw at the time, also expensive as hell. The Xerox system looks identical, they must have bought the company.
So far, I haven't been impressed with HP's photo printing compared to others in the same price range. HP's text printing quality has always been the best. For photos though, AFAIK, nobody makes anything to compete with the $74 Stylus C88 Plus.
Just wait until the printheads clog up on your Epson. I have had a C82 and a C86, and they both clogged up after only a few months of use. If they sit idle for even a couple of days you start to have problems. I have an old HP Photosmart 1215 that sits idle for months at a time, but prints perfectly on the first try.
I have used up an entire set of new cartridges on the C86 trying to clean the heads, and not even a SINGLE DROP of ink has made it to paper. Epson is junk as far as I’m concerned.
Thanks, I’ll have to see if I can find one around here.
Some printers (e.g. my aforementioned Brother) eliminate that problem by having the printer run through an automatic head-cleaning cycle three or more times every day.
Not only does it consume ink faster than you otherwise would (cha-CHING! again), it can be a annoying when you're trying to catch a few Z's in the same room.
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