Dr. Mercola September 11 2008 119,609 views
If you’re anything like me, you hate wasting money. Personally, I can’t stand waste of any kind, so when I found this article, I simply had to share it. These handy tips and tricks can save you lots of money by not having to replace your ink cartridges before they’re completely empty.
Both laser and inkjet printers are notorious for requiring expensive replacement cartridges long before you really need to. It's actually epidemic in the industry, to the point where class action lawsuits have been filed against Epson and Hewlett-Packard.
Enter Slate Magazine writer Farhad Manjoo. When his printer abruptly stopped printing, he began to wonder if the printer wasn't simply lying that it was out of toner in order to trick him into buying more. The prints hadn't been fading at all, but the printer simply refused to go on.
But with a bit of research, Manjoo saved his 60 dollars and instead covered up a sensor on the side of the toner cartridge with a piece of electrical tape. This tricked the printer into thinking the cartridge was full -- and the printer's been going strong ever since, eight months and hundreds of pages down the road.
If you want to find out what you can do to convince your printer to continue printing, FixYourOwnPrinter is a good place to start.
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! >:(
I'd gladly help anyone find out whatever they need to know about Linux and how to replace Windows on their desktop.
alfalfa31 at gmail dot com
My daughter bought a Gateway for her first computer and within the first 2 years it was really a piece of work. It was super slow and it gave her alot of problems. She didn't have much on it as far as programs and games. I was really shocked at the performance and thought that Gateway was a much better brand than the others.
ID has a good point, "Just goes to show you that there is NO honor in the industry anymore!"
No offense if I'm stating the obvious, but maybe, Scorpion and WellnessMom, those computers failed because you didn't have good firewall, antivirus and antispyware programs in place and regularly updated? Just a thought. Again, no offense if you did have the computer well secured.
BTW, I have a 4-year-old Gateway laptop and it's doing fine.
In respect to engineered obsolescence, everyone knows that has half a brain that it exists and is the norm in the consumer market. Over-engineering is left to bridges and buildings (not all of them, though).
The problem with using Windows for the average user is that Windows needs babysitting. If the user doesn't stay on top of malware scanning, virus definitions and updates, Windows XP will inevitably turn into a dog slow horrible to use OS.
As far as WellnessMom's comment about Gateway being manufactured to a lower standard, it is possible that she had a lemon. It happens, but is not the norm, as most manufacturers use the same parts. It usually boils down to users failing to live up to their end of the bargain.
Putting it in perspective, failing to maintain your computer (from the above mentioned to blowing out the cooling fans from time to time) is the same as failing to change the oil (and other fluids), air filter, tires, timing belt, etc. on a car. You have the option of not doing so, but if you don't, you don't really have any right to blame the manufacturer.
Most of the people I know don't maintain their computers properly, not for lack of a desire to keep them running, but for lack of a knowledge of how to do it. If people generally treated their car like their computer, we'd see a lot more cars dead at the age of two, irrespective of their manufacturer.
Our 1st pc was a gateway 4DX-33 bought in 1992!! We replaced only the keyboard, a defective unit from the co. and harddrives due to a defective electrician !! and power surges. Since we learnt and connected it to a UPS we have had no problems. For our business, the older wordperfect for letters and Lotus 123 for spreadsheets still does the job for the taxman. We have upgraded twice to other pc's but I call our dinosaur gateway , mr.Dependable, would not get rid of it at all. We neither use internet nor updated games on it. The PC world is designed to make you spend. Did you ever think that viruses could be created by anti-virus sellers ??? Just a thought. How much of this updated technology do we need ?
Quite interesting and certainly not too surprising.
I have an ink jet printer. I always get a pop-up display window indicating the level of my ink cartridge whenever I print something. Guess what... it always tells me that the ink is lower than it actually is. I am able to disable this window and ignore the message and continue to print until I decide that it is time to replace the cartridge.
It seems that now in the bigger laser printers, the manufacturers actually install a program to prevent their printers from functioning even though there is still sufficient ink left for many more copies. This sounds typical of big corporations. Really, as if people can't observe for themselves when it is time to replace the toner or ink cartridge. This is yet another way in which people are given less choices because of increasing technology. We need to be careful that we don't become too dependent on these devices. We need to send the message to these big manufacturers by utterly refusing to purchase any of their products that inhibits a persons direct control and interaction with their machines.
It's always about the money....corporate GREED. They want us coming back for more and more and they succeed in this by designing the printers to fail... first by scamming us on ink repeatedly until finally the whole machine fails.... built to fail. Then it becomes garbage and we start all over again buying a new unit and the cycle continues. It's not just tech companies, but all mega corporations! This is their mantra. We pay top dollar for their junk!
I know this to be true because I used to work in a computer room (mainframe systems) years ago, before pc printers came on the market for the public, and learned that rigging the machines to fail was a common practice. This required a technician to come out and find and fix the problem. This happened on a regular basis ensuring continued service. It was usually costly to do this on a mainframe printer. I'm not surprised to hear that they can now do it to personal print cartridges.
I read in the Wall Street Journal back in the '80's that printer mfgrs could afford to give away printers just to sell ink because they make so much money on it. Wish I'd got a Canon instead of an Epson.
One reason for gizmos like Pictbridge and card readers is to get people to print pics without looking at them. Printing pictures uses huge quantities of ink and in all colors. My Epson said I was low on yellow and magenta although I only print documents and labels. It's also hard to get Word to change blue links to black.
I grew up hearing of Communist plots. What about Capitalist plots?
Actually, it's very easy to change blue to black - just highlight the text (you can highlight the whole document all at once by hitting CTRL/Shift/End with your cursor at the start of the text), click the icon on the toolbar with the "A" and a color bar beneath it and choose black.
...or were you being sarcastic?