In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
So it is actually cheaper to fill the car with fuel, than it is to
buy the ink to refill the printer.

You need a laser printer.
£60 of new drum and toner on my 5MP will last about 4-6 reams of
paper.
And the paper is cheaper too.

is it? I just buy the cheapest anyway. 80gm I think

Plain paper doesn't work with an inkjet.

Doesn't it? seems to on my plotter..

I suppose it depends on your standards...

--
*It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

wrote:
Fed up with the reliability of HPs printers (Talking about the sub
£300 market here.) which seem to have gone down the tubes recently.
We've had 2 DOAs and at least 3 die within 6 months. Dealing with
their "Customer Support" is enough to give you severly raised blood
pressure. It's a pity, as i've been buying their kit and finding it
very reliable for years prior to this.

What brands are people having success with these days, or has the
downward trend in prices meant that they are all going the same way?


HP customer support stinks nowadays. It used to be very good. I've
bought HP computers and printers for many years and prior to my last
purchase contacted their customer support with a minor technical
question and after a week they finally emailed back, not answering my
question but giving the impression they had to say something to meet
some customer response time target. Basically they didn't give a damn -
that came through loud and clear in their email. So I did not buy the HP
computer I had originally planned to and have not bought any HP products
since.

HP customer support seems designed to lose existing customers.

--
David in Normandy.
To e-mail you must include the password FROG on the
subject line, or it will be automatically deleted
by a filter and not reach my inbox.

David in Normandy wrote:
wrote:
Fed up with the reliability of HPs printers (Talking about the sub
£300 market here.) which seem to have gone down the tubes recently.
We've had 2 DOAs and at least 3 die within 6 months. Dealing with
their "Customer Support" is enough to give you severly raised blood
pressure. It's a pity, as i've been buying their kit and finding it
very reliable for years prior to this.

What brands are people having success with these days, or has the
downward trend in prices meant that they are all going the same way?


HP customer support stinks nowadays. It used to be very good. I've
bought HP computers and printers for many years and prior to my last
purchase contacted their customer support with a minor technical
question and after a week they finally emailed back, not answering my
question but giving the impression they had to say something to meet
some customer response time target. Basically they didn't give a damn -
that came through loud and clear in their email. So I did not buy the HP
computer I had originally planned to and have not bought any HP products
since.

HP customer support seems designed to lose existing customers.


My relatively recent experience was that you get better support from HP
on, for example, an average laptop than on an expensive server. E.g.
Friday appointment missed - so special Saturday appointment made. I turn
up (special journey) - and they don't. Perhaps the oddest bit is that
the laptop support was provided by BT...

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:28:12 UTC, "dennis@home"
wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
BigWallop wrote:
"Bruce" wrote in message
...
"BigWallop" wrote:
"Bruce" wrote in message
...
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
I've got a Cannon i865 printer and the cost of the inks is
ridiculous.

That's true of just about all printer brands and models

It getting cheaper to fill the car up with fuel, than it is to buy ink
for
our printer. No Joke.

You're right.

My last bill for ink for a basic Dell printer was just north of £60.
The printer (an "all in one" Lexmark clone) came free with a PC, but
would normally have cost only about £40.

A warning came up within a week that new cartridges were needed, but I
kept them going until the ink ran out two months later, and only then
replaced them.


It was £58 to fill the car up and £62 (colour and black) to buy ink
cartridges for our HP all-in-one. The fifty eight pounds for fuel will
normally last me about 2 weeks, back and forward to work. The sixty two
pounds for ink will also last for about two weeks because we use the
machine
to fax, copy and print all our work stuff.

So it is actually cheaper to fill the car with fuel, than it is to buy
the
ink to refill the printer.

You need a laser printer.

£60 of new drum and toner on my 5MP will last about 4-6 reams of paper.

You need an old LJ4, they will run to 6 reams on a £20 cartridge.
And they never break (well not for 200000 pages anyway).

I've had ones with a much higher page count here! The rated life is, I
believe, 1Mpage.

I have two LJ4+ machines, and a few more for spares! Both have duplexers
and large paper trays. Last fault was a broken microswitch on the paper
tray - easily fixed.

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Plain paper doesn't work with an inkjet.


Depends on the inkjet and how much precious ink it splatters the paper
with. And also on the ink itself (Manufacturers own vs. third party)

I've mainly no problems here with a Canon Pixma ip4300 and normal paper,
unless I've landed a solid block of color - then that needs a little
time drying but rarely crinkles.

However, I do use a laser printer for most of my printing. It's a
Panasonic network printer (KX-P7510) that has NT4.0 drivers that just
about work on Windows 2003 Server, but no support in Vista unless I
pretend it's a PCL HP something.

Incidently, I find mentioning the words "get a Laser printer" to the
non-technical makes them rather scared of the idea. "Ink Jet" sounds
somewhat safe and "less expensive" ....

--
Adrian C

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:
You need an old LJ4, they will run to 6 reams on a £20 cartridge.
And they never break (well not for 200000 pages anyway).

I've had ones with a much higher page count here! The rated life is, I
believe, 1Mpage.

I have two LJ4+ machines, and a few more for spares! Both have duplexers
and large paper trays. Last fault was a broken microswitch on the paper
tray - easily fixed.

Trouble is most of these cheap old machines are rather big for domestic
use. The Samsung I bought for under 50 quid takes up less space than the
inkjet it replaces.

--
*Save a tree, eat a beaver*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Adrian C wrote:
Plain paper doesn't work with an inkjet.


Depends on the inkjet and how much precious ink it splatters the paper
with. And also on the ink itself (Manufacturers own vs. third party)

Right. Any time I've tried copier paper on a variety of inkjets the
results are poor.

I've mainly no problems here with a Canon Pixma ip4300 and normal paper,
unless I've landed a solid block of color - then that needs a little
time drying but rarely crinkles.

However, I do use a laser printer for most of my printing. It's a
Panasonic network printer (KX-P7510) that has NT4.0 drivers that just
about work on Windows 2003 Server, but no support in Vista unless I
pretend it's a PCL HP something.

Incidently, I find mentioning the words "get a Laser printer" to the
non-technical makes them rather scared of the idea. "Ink Jet" sounds
somewhat safe and "less expensive" ....

If I got fed up with the running costs of an inkjet with my light use I'd
have thought an office environment would have found the same only more so.

--
*What was the best thing before sliced bread? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Trouble is most of these cheap old machines are rather big for domestic
use. The Samsung I bought for under 50 quid takes up less space than the
inkjet it replaces.


The HP LaserJet 4P is a good choice. It is quite compact, has 600 x
600 dpi resolution, is very economical with toner and is extremely
reliable.

You need a parallel port but Windows XP drivers are available.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

If I got fed up with the running costs of an inkjet with my light use I'd
have thought an office environment would have found the same only more so.

You'd think so. But ink jet printers are so popular... it's the cheap
up-front cost of the printer, especially the all-in-one variety and the
ability to do colour that suckers some people in - when they should
maybe have looked at laser (colour if must) and separate scanners.

And small office IT buying decisions are run by technophobes as I have
come across. Whole office with 5 Dell 720 all-in-one printers running as
they were "free" with the systems, and the drivers wouldn't easily allow
shared network use.

Cartridge World is _so_ popular :-(

--
Adrian C

Adrian C wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

If I got fed up with the running costs of an inkjet with my light use I'd
have thought an office environment would have found the same only more
so.

You'd think so. But ink jet printers are so popular... it's the cheap
up-front cost of the printer, especially the all-in-one variety and the
ability to do colour that suckers some people in - when they should
maybe have looked at laser (colour if must) and separate scanners.

And small office IT buying decisions are run by technophobes as I have
come across. Whole office with 5 Dell 720 all-in-one printers running as
they were "free" with the systems, and the drivers wouldn't easily allow
shared network use.

Cartridge World is _so_ popular :-(

Indeed. As the IT techie in charge of such, I had people complaining
about the fact they had to get up and walk a mere 10 feet to the
'shared' printer.

Getting them to learn how to select the letterhead tray from the normal
one proved almost impossible.

They all wanted 'their own' printer.

One that they cold stick in whatever bit of paper they wanted.

"Its only 50 quid"

Multiply that by 50 people though..


Sigh.

Marketing 'had to have postcript' despite the fact it was dog slow and
useless for everything else.

Accounts wanted a dot matrix for labele stock, and another one for fan
fold pre - printed..

The techies wanted something that would spit out a complete manual in
udner 24 hours..duplex preferably..

I think printers were the most controversial part of trying to keep IT
costs annd user satisfaction under some sort of balance.

Plus the sales people insisting on keeping all their data private to
their own machines, and then complaining they had lost it.

Fortunately I sold the business about the time that laptops were just
coming in.

I cant believe the stupidity f people who take laptops WITH DATA on them
on trains and leave them in cars.

Should use VPN instead. No laptop should be allowed to enter or leave an
organisations with any sensitive data in it.

wrote:

Fed up with the reliability of HPs printers (Talking about the sub
£300 market here.) which seem to have gone down the tubes recently.
We've had 2 DOAs and at least 3 die within 6 months. Dealing with
their "Customer Support" is enough to give you severly raised blood
pressure. It's a pity, as i've been buying their kit and finding it
very reliable for years prior to this.

I must say my experience with HP has been very good.
My Photosmart C4280 all-in-one developed a paper-feed problem.
I rang the HP service number mentioned in their documentation,
and got put through to a tech guy in South Africa
who took me through quite a lengthy operation -
basically re-booting the printer
(not the same as switching off and on) -
and to my surprise the problem disappeared.

I was so pleased I got a 2-year extended warranty for £19.

Incidentally, I got extended life cartridges from HP,
and didn't think they were exorbitantly expensive.

One advantage for me is that my Linux system
recognised the printer when I attached it,
and set it up under CUPS.

Like the other posters, I also have an ancient LaserJet 5L,
which just keeps working.
I did have a problem with a broken spring a year or so ago,
but I got a mending kit on eBay (with video to explain what to do)
and it was relatively easy to take the printer apart and mend it.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

In article , Bruce
writes

The "cheap" colour laser printer is just a mirage. All they have done
is loaded the price of the toner cartridges and subsidised the initial
cost of the printer, knowing you will have to spend far more on toner
than you could have believed.

It's called razor-blade marketing - give away the razor but charge a
fortune for the blades.

--
(\__/) Bunny says NO to Windows Vista!
(='.'=) http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...ista_cost.html
(")_(") http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf

In article , Richard Perkin
writes

The best part is - it only cost £10...

And your electricity bill is?

The 4500 uses a lot of power when on, and takes too long to come ready
on power up to be of any use in a domestic environment.

Have a couple at work, they're good printers if slow.

--
(\__/) Bunny says NO to Windows Vista!
(='.'=) http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...ista_cost.html
(")_(") http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/vista.pdf

On 30 Oct, 20:57, "BigWallop" wrote:
"Bruce" wrote in message

...



"BigWallop" wrote:
"Bruce" wrote in message
.. .
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

I've got a Cannon i865 printer and the cost of the inks is ridiculous.

That's true of just about all printer brands and models

It getting cheaper to fill the car up with fuel, than it is to buy ink
for
our printer. *No Joke.

You're right.

My last bill for ink for a basic Dell printer was just north of £60.
The printer (an "all in one" Lexmark clone) came free with a PC, but
would normally have cost only about £40.

A warning came up within a week that new cartridges were needed, but I
kept them going until the ink ran out two months later, and only then
replaced them.

It was £58 to fill the car up and £62 (colour and black) to buy ink
cartridges for our HP all-in-one. *The fifty eight pounds for fuel will
normally last me about 2 weeks, back and forward to work. *The sixty two
pounds for ink will also last for about two weeks because we use the machine
to fax, copy and print all our work stuff.

So it is actually cheaper to fill the car with fuel, than it is to buy the
ink to refill the printer.

s'pose a lot of peolpe are using the online photo printer places
which are cheaper and better arn't they ?

I am still using my 6yr old epson 750 for general stuff, ink costs £3
from 7dayshop. It still works pretty much the same as ever
( which means I need to spend 30 mins cleaning/ testing each time I
come to use it !)

Simon

Mike Tomlinson wrote:

In article , Bruce
writes

The "cheap" colour laser printer is just a mirage. All they have done
is loaded the price of the toner cartridges and subsidised the initial
cost of the printer, knowing you will have to spend far more on toner
than you could have believed.

It's called razor-blade marketing - give away the razor but charge a
fortune for the blades.


Thanks, Mike. A very apt phrase.

"PeterMcC" wrote in message
...
"Rod" wrote in message
...
PeterMcC wrote:
snip
And, whilst on the subject, I have no association with them other than
as customer but I can heartily recommend ink.co.uk

http://tinyurl.com/56qgpf
snip


I got a nasty 'attacked detected' message when I tried to use that tiny
URL - or ink.co.uk.


Attack detected!

This attack has been detected and access has been denied:
83.170.115.5 - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB;
rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666

snip

I've emailed them to see what ink.co.uk say - and I'll report back once I
get a reply.

To follow up, they replied:

"Thank you for your enquiry!

Our internet site has always been freely available and still is. We
guarantee our website free from viruses or similar technical problems.
Please check your own software or the system administration of your
computer, whether it works safely and properly, and delete your internet
cookies, etc. before visiting our site."

So I don't know where that leaves it. I will certainly carry on using them
but, in the light of Rod's attack detection, others may want to think twice.

--
PeterMcC

If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

PeterMcC wrote:
"PeterMcC" wrote in message
...
"Rod" wrote in message
...
PeterMcC wrote:
snip
And, whilst on the subject, I have no association with them other
than as customer but I can heartily recommend ink.co.uk

http://tinyurl.com/56qgpf
snip


I got a nasty 'attacked detected' message when I tried to use that
tiny URL - or ink.co.uk.


Attack detected!

This attack has been detected and access has been denied:
83.170.115.5 - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB;
rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666

snip

I've emailed them to see what ink.co.uk say - and I'll report back
once I get a reply.

To follow up, they replied:

"Thank you for your enquiry!

Our internet site has always been freely available and still is. We
guarantee our website free from viruses or similar technical problems.
Please check your own software or the system administration of your
computer, whether it works safely and properly, and delete your internet
cookies, etc. before visiting our site."

So I don't know where that leaves it. I will certainly carry on using
them but, in the light of Rod's attack detection, others may want to
think twice.

I have just tried it again:

In Mozilla - still as I described;
In Safari - no problem;
in IE7 - no problem.

Odd - but, for me, not worth worrying about. I shall see what happens
when I need some inks!

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

"Rod" wrote in message
...
PeterMcC wrote:
snip

So I don't know where that leaves it. I will certainly carry on using
them but, in the light of Rod's attack detection, others may want to
think twice.

I have just tried it again:

In Mozilla - still as I described;
In Safari - no problem;
in IE7 - no problem.

Odd - but, for me, not worth worrying about. I shall see what happens when
I need some inks!

And I shall see what happens next time I need a trojan


--
PeterMcC

If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

Mike Tomlinson wrote in
:

In article , Richard Perkin
writes

The best part is - it only cost £10...

And your electricity bill is?
Acceptable

The 4500 uses a lot of power when on...
From the specs in the Service Manual:
During printing: 480W
During standby: 320W
During PowerSave: 32W

...and takes too long to come
ready on power up to be of any use in a domestic environment.
It does take a minute or two to warm up fully and run its startup
tests when coming out of PowerSave. But 'no use' is a bit strong - it
really is a fine bit of kit. The biggest argument against it for a
'domestic' printer is its size and weight - at 57kg (or 75kg with the
duplexer etc fitted) it's a beast of a printer. As I said, it doesn't
really have the Wife Acceptance Factor!

Have a couple at work, they're good printers if slow.
The duty cycle is stated to be 35,000 pages per month, so a heavy (!)
duty picce of office kit. The speed is specced at 18ppm mono, 4ppm
colour. A few years ago when I used to author and print 200+ page
docs with reasonably complex content my rule of thumb was 3ppm for
colour printing.

But you're right, they're not for the average home user. But they are
a good example of what kind of heavy duty, quality printers can be
picked up for modest prices - if you know what you're looking for and
can live with obsolete kit.

As I write this there are two on eBay UK: one at £150, the other at
99p but needing an imaging drum which should cost about £20. There's
even a drum kit currently listed at 99p...

[Aside: If anyone wants a copy of the Service Manual for the 4500 /
4500 Color LaserJet, email me. I guess that's another advantage of
this kind of kit - it has 'proper' documentation, and spare parts are
available]

Kind regards

--
Richard Perkin
To email me, change the AT in the address below
richard.perkinATmyrealbox.com

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's.
It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press, Edpress News

In message , "dennis@home"
writes

You need an old LJ4, they will run to 6 reams on a £20 cartridge.
And they never break (well not for 200000 pages anyway).
Or a LJ4000, maintenance kit every 100,000 pages, couple of pickup
rollers in between and dirt cheap (35 quid for the last one I bought)
--
Clint Sharp

In message , Rod
writes
Perhaps the oddest bit is that the laptop support was provided by BT...

For which region and which range of laptops?
--
Clint Sharp

Clint Sharp wrote:
In message , Rod
writes
Perhaps the oddest bit is that the laptop support was provided by BT...

For which region and which range of laptops?

UK and it was a business one - can't remember the model - probably now
around two years old.

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org