Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

vikingstork — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:29:21 GMT

a warining to the few of shrewd ones who re-fill their ink themselves. New printer carteidges are figged up so when they get empty, the heat wires in them burn and they don't work anymore. So for do-it-yourselvers, the rule is opposite. Re-ink as soon as it gets low, or you loose your cartridge fo good.

As for the wires burning, it could be on account of extremely high resolution these days, so the heat wires must be very thin, so without the cooling effect of ink they burn.

It may not be rigged up on purpose. Altho insiders claim that manufacturers spend a lot of money trying to develop non-refillable, self-destructive cartridges, as they make huge profit on ink replacements. (they loose money on sale of printers)

FYI, when i was involved in printing, a 5gall bucket of very high quality ink was 200 bucks. I am sure it's a lot more now, but even if it's 500 bucks, that's a lot of cartriges @ 1/5 -- 1/3 ounce, less than 10ml fill in each.

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

healingdance — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:14:03 GMT

I also have a Brother multi-function machine that I've been using with my Mac and PowerPrint for more than 10 years. Brother is fantastic.

And, also have a newer Brother machine that got hung up thinking it needed a new drum, after I had just changed the drum (lines on the paper, it was not Brother, but some "compatible" which I returned as faulty), and customer support helped me reset the printer to tell it that the drum was new. Now it's starting at 1 again and counting. I haven't had any trouble with my toner cartridges either. I think if you have Brother laser, vs inkjet (the entire inkjet idea is stupid for a personal printer, since the ink jets get clogged when it's not used for a day), the laser is economical and efficient and I like the black tape concept you describe. I'll try that next year when my printer asks for a new toner cartridge, and see if I can go forward skimping. However, the replacement toner only cost me $25, I keep one on hand.

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

ClareMary — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:59:07 GMT

I have a HP PSC 1410 all in one printer and continue to print after the cartridge registers low on ink. When the cartridge is truly dry, I head to Walgreens and for about $10 have them fill the empty cartridge. I never throw these out as Walgreens has specials and every few mos. will do this for free. You just have to check their weekly coupon mailer. I've had empty cartridges filled and if they run 'empty' before their time, I take them back to Walgreens and tell them they didn't pack the ink very tightly. They have always worked w/me on this issue and they usually fill them at no cost. I think it depends on the operator in charge of the machine as to how well they do their job as I've had some cartridges last several mos. and some just a few weeks. I know appx. how many sheets I've printed so I can figure it out.

I like the idea of using electrical tape to cover up the holes on the sides so as to fool the cartridge. Always felt this was a ripoff and now, based on the above article and following comments, know it to be true. As consumers, we must speak up and write letters and complain. If enough of us do so, and vote w/our pocketbook, then we'll have clout in the marketplace. Believe me, it works.

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

monetfan — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:47:19 GMT

Great information! I was recently angered when a (refilled) cartridge costing approx $24 ran out of ink AFTER ONLY PRINTING ABOUT 25 PAGES!!!!!!! Took it to store and they refused to refund or replace it, saying "that's what you can expect from refills"! That was their answer, and quite cynical, as well.

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

Healthychick — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:36:42 GMT

I have a Dell AIO 948. Anyone have any suggestions on that one? it costs me almost 100.00 to replace the ink. I'm sorry I ever got the thing!

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

Newportian — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 04:56:53 GMT

I can still remember the exhilarating joy and freedom i felt, when after trying to make my printer work without success and after much suffering, i decided to end it's life by tossing it over the 2nd story landing of my apartment onto the ground below! Pure joy....

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

buffalo44 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:12:43 GMT

I have an all in one HP Officejet printer. When it says "Ink is low, replace", I just keep on printing until the ink runs out, which is about another 20 pages later. What's annoying is although I can print "fast, draft copy" to try and save ink, it won't allow me to select both "print in grayscale" and "fast draft" at the same time. So if I don't want to use any colored ink it makes me use the "normal" setting, using up more black ink. So frustrating!

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

Krissisno — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:13:02 GMT

Bought a Lexmark 2500 from Walmart,(shame on me!) the inkset (color & black cartridges) costs as much as the $34.95 printer! 3 years ago bought a hp all in one. It started clicking, and wouldn't stop. Repair man told me to toss it. Searched & searched for remedies on the world wide web without success. Now I'm stuck with this hp that won't print! I'm determined to fix it myself.

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

Carol Morrisey — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:16:36 GMT

As a low-tech person whose son the computer major has left home, I found the perfect solution. I do all my printing at the Christian university library nearby. It has several computers reserved for the public and the printing is free! If something is wrong with the printer, the help desk will fix it. For people like me who don't have huge volumes to print, even a public library that charges per page might be a bargain compared with buying and maintaining a printer and keeping it in ink.

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

Mr. Rph — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:46:17 GMT

I had an Epson inkjet printer for years and I had nothing but trouble with it. Every time I wanted to print something I had to go through endless cycles of head cleaning to get it to work properly (print head got blocked very quickly if you didn't print constantly).

The trouble is that I refused to pay for new cartridges and I was refilling them, and then I bought some "permanent" see through ones, but that was almost even more trouble, ... so to cut to the chase, I now have a Canon MP510 printer/scanner and it has separate cartridges for each colour and even when it says that ink is low/empty it lets me continue printing/scanning until I decide to change the cartridge, which was coincidentally today. I only changed black and magenta cartridges in well more than one year and I print/copy a few pages every few days. NO problems so far! It's not the cheapest in terms of ink cost, but it has relatively good value and large cartridges so I'm more than happy with it, especially compared to Epson which was a nightmare. I'd recommend Canon printers to anyone, especially if you don't print every day, since print heads don't dry up and get blocked if you don't print even for extended periods of time (many weeks, tested by me personally and a friend of mine as well - prints very seldom, but the printer is still printing like new) unlike Epson! Canon printers truly come very highly recommended from me!!!

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

cidal — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:34:26 GMT

I have HP printer,scaner and copier in one. I have printed very few pages before my PC was telling me, that I am out of ink,,,,,a friend has told me, that it is a common practice for the printer manufacturers to put very little ink into a cartridge of the new printer and that is why I am so quickly without ink.Is that true?

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

chieromancer — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:06:04 GMT

I've used ink jet refilling gizmos with varying degrees of sucess. One thing I'd want to warn everyone about, that ink does NOT wash out of clothing! So wear an apron or take your clothes off.

And as an office professional I've learned that when laser printer cartridges run low, just take them out and shake them. You can continue using them for weeks.

And don't throw out your carts, when so may places recycle them. Check your favorite charity to see if they have a program.

And do you remember wehn computers where supposed to make offices paperless? Instead, we are using more paper than ever!

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

impramp252v — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:41:05 GMT

I also have a Brother MFC printer. (I can think of something else besides Multi Function Center that MFC could stand for, but it's not very nice so I won't share it!) The last time I updated the firmware of this machine, one of the changes claimed was "improved ink management". I would say it's improved in Brother's favor, certainly not the consumers'! I don't use it a lot so I keep it unplugged most of the time. Otherwise, it constantly comes on just to clean itself. It cleans itself when you turn it on and has to clean itself AGAIN before you print, even if it just went through the power-on cleaning! Plus, it was telling me I was out of ink even sooner than it had before the new firmware. Colored tape over the ends of the cartridges solved that problem. Also, I refill the Brother cartridges with cheaper ink and have no problems in that regard.

One more thing--once this unit locked up and would not do anything at all. It is a printer, copier, scanner, fax all in one and none of those functions could be used. This website, www.fixmyprinter.com, helped me fix something that otherwise would have meant sending it to a repair center and being ripped off who knows how much. Turns out that this thing keeps track of how many times it has cleaned itself and when it reaches a certain number, the machine freezes up. A printer technician provided the simple steps to clear that count and get the machine working again.

Capitalist plots, indeed! >:(

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

missylou420 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:06:01 GMT

I think everyone should switch to a Linux-based operating system on computers. Its free unlike Mac's or PC's, and it doesn't have the limits or copyrights like them either. I switched after I was tired of viruses, expensive software, and companies that have a monopoly-like hold over the general population...

Check out ubuntu, its free and they will even ship you an install disk!

re: Your Printer is Lying to You and Wasting Your Money

CrowSnake — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:57:23 GMT

My Brother got a lazer printer because he uses a printer so sparsly that every time he went to use it the ink would be dried up. (Ok not litterely every time but too much) Seemed like they were always dried up. So he got a lazer printer which uses a powder and now he does not have to worry about that.

I like him, use my HP printer only a few times a year, I have been considering going this way, because I have to take my carteriges out and use a glasses cleaning wipe to clean the dried ink off and I can usually get it going. Perhaps there is something i should be doing when I finish printing to keep this from happening, but I do not know what. I can not just "Print" something it is an event.. I guess that is why I never print anything. LOL.