Most do, so the smart ones use their local library - even 50c/page is cheaper than $50 for a printer that you'll only use for 20 pages before it stops working. Sadly the world is full of the functionally innumerate or hopelessly optimistic, so those printers sell like hotcakes."
Because obviously my local library is open at 6 in the morning and 8 at night when I want to print things. Or open at all for that matter. At least I've still got one, on the days the volunteers turn up, unlike people in all the neighbouring villages.
Hint: before you start throwing terms like "functionally innumerate" around just consider, for one tiny moment, that not everybody lives in exactly the same set of circumstances (geographical, national, family, political, social) that you do.
]]>The previous one lasted several years and I have no idea how many pages before developing a problem that, while almost certainly repairable, is not economically so: it is cheaper to replace the printer with a newer, more capable model (that includes a scanner!).
I've already run considerably more than 20 pages through the replacement, with no issues. I've already had to refill the ink in it.
]]>Second: at work, I'm in charge of all our network printers. I don't put in requests (I can't actually order, but I can set up the PO for my mgr), but I always order compatibles, rather than OEM ink or toner.
A non-paid ad:five or so years ago, I found a place online called tonerprice.com (don't know about UK shipping), but they have very good prices, they actually know what their job is, and are competent at it. In '12, I think, I ordered what turned out to be more than one pallet of toner. I was so impressed by the prices and service that when my HP LJ1018 needed toner, I ordered from them... and got exactly the same service.
From them, OEM toner for my little printer is about $82. Including shipping, the "compatible" was about $32. Neither at work nor at home have we had any issues with the compatible toner.
mark
]]>Epson printers used to (and the better ones may still) have separate print heads from the ink carts. This allowed for much better quality of output but meant that if you only occasionally printed your heads might clog up and you get to waste 1/3 of an ink refill on cleaning cycles to unclog all the heads.
HP printers had the head as a part of the cartridge which meant you got a new print head with each cartridge. Harder to maintain alignment and so IN GENERAL print quality was less than Epson.
Other brands did one or both of these.
My point is that it's hard to generalize about the effective life of ink jet printers or cartridges without discussion how the are built and the intended market.
Now this is old knowledge on my part as I long ago moved to toner based color and B&W printing. IMNERHO ink jet printing for most people (in business and at home) is a scam to sell ink for years after practically giving away the printer.
]]>If you regularly have urgent printing needs then you're not in the "print very little" category, I would have thought.
I freely admit to not having any experience of life in the UK or US, so I take your word that there's no way to pay someone to print a page or two for you in your area. It does make me think that where you live sounds awful in the Thatcherite sense of "there is no community".
Down here most small local businesses are more likely to say "you want to give me money? Excellent". At least in my experience, having needed a bank form printed overnight last year and I also vaguely recall wandering round one suburb looking to get a page printed and finding a real estate agent to do it for us (no charge, even, IIRC).
]]>Anyone who knows military technology but not science fiction awards is likely to see the business part of a sabot round, which is really handy for removing unwanted armored vehicles but not something anybody needs in their carry-on luggage.
Having gotten to fondle both a Hugo Award and an anti-tank kinetic penetrator, I can tell you they're surprisingly similar for things of such different purposes.
]]>Having had a use pattern of printing nothing for months on end and then printing lots and lots of high-res full-colour full-coverage A3 images, I have had a fair bit of experience of that, and also of the similarly large amount of waste involved in purging airlocks after refilling or replacing cartridges (and it is infuriating when you think you've got it and then 7/8 of the way down the page the colour goes up the creek...).
So I derived a couple of fixes:
For clogged heads, the thing is to make a thick, uniform pad of absorbent material, like some old underpants. This is then soaked to dripping soddenness with meths, the head lifted up and the pad placed underneath. The thickness of the pad needs to be such that the head presses uniformly and reasonably firmly on it when let down again. The next day it is all black and gacky with ink and it's time to take it out and run a few cleaning cycles and test pages. It still requires a lot of repetition of the cleaning cycle before everything is fully back to normal, but not as much as it does just relying on the cleaning cycle alone, and the result is more dependable.
For ink use, the answer was a continuous ink supply system. This has a set of transparent 100ml ink tanks that sit next to the printer and are connected by silicone rubber tubes to a dummy cartridge. The tanks can be topped up at any time so once it's set up there should be no need to actually run out of ink at all. And I found one for under 20 quid including a full charge of ink.
]]>I bought a HP Color LaserJet Pro 3600 8 years ago or more on closeout. It came with full toner carts. 6000 pages for black. 4000 pages for each of the others. These lasted for about 4 years then I spend a reasonable amount for some higher quality re-manufactured carts and it is still going strong on those. (Since my kids are gone my need for color has gone way down.)
The original cost of the printer was $250 on closeout. I spent about that on the replacement carts. So that means I've spent about $65 per year for quality color. Assuming I never print on it again.
Biggest drawback is the space required.
]]>Definitely not a typical user.
Which should be done at work, yes. Except we only got a colour printer for the peons this year, and printing on it means sending a print job, sprinting down the hall and hoping no one else sent a job before I get there to put in my paper, and repeat for every copy (as the colour printer is set to only print one copy at a time). It's registration sucks, which means I can't double-side even manually without leaving lots of slack for drift.
**There's a reason our Prime Minister put in a tax deduction for teachers and classroom supplies. Being a teacher himself, he knows that schools don't have enough supplies for actual use, or the board supplied ones are so poor quality that we end up buying our own.
*If I'm printing on cardstock, which I usually am for manipulatives.
]]>Yes, I could do it when, once every few weeks, I go into town for something the supermarkets or the open-late corner shops don't sell. But that's not suitable not just for "urgent" but for anything other than "totally laid back".
I don't have to put any significant cash value on my time or on hassle-removal before having my own basic printer makes economic sense*.
This is not being "functionally innumerate". It's making sensible cost/benefit assessments.
Indeed, especially that last one, because they won't be able to do the actual operation any quicker than you can, and they won't start doing it the instant you get out of the car.
And also the time spent doing it yourself is actually less than the time the operation takes to complete - the explanation of this paradox being that since you're at home, you can go and do something else while the oil is draining. Whereas if you wait at the garage you spend the entire time getting bored, and if you try and go to do something while the car is at the garage it'll still take you longer to walk to wherever you need to be than to perform the operation yourself.
]]>First A3 colour inkjet I had was an HP forgetthemodel for 20 quid off ebay. Built like a tank, obviously designed for heavy office use, print quality left something to be desired. The one I was talking about above is an Epson 1290, cost zilch off freecycle, and print quality is excellent.
I do have a B&W laser for ordinary printing - in fact I have 4, the newest being an HP LJ6MP, the best an Epson EPL5200 which is the dog's bollocks for printing PCB transfers and which I reserve for that use because its toner is nearly out and genuine Epson original replacements which can be trusted to be what they say they are are like hen's teeth (that application being extremely fussy about the toner).
That printer also provided a remarkable demonstration of the self-mobile and anti-gravity properties of pigeon shit. Lacking space to store it I put it in with the pigeons, upside-down so the blank baseplate was the exposed surface and all the holes and gaps were pointing downwards. When I came to recommission it a few years later, I found that all the interior space was packed with pigeon shit and it was even adhering to what had been the downward-facing sides of surfaces. Instead of simply wiping down the outer surfaces as I had expected, I had to take it completely apart down to the last tiny screw and scrub every single component (including the circuit boards) in hot soapy water. And it still worked beautifully when reassembled.
]]>Actually I do live very close to the garage. Close enough that if I ask them nicely they'll pick up the car when I'm away on business. Even if not, I can drop it off in the morning, they lend me a car to take to work and I repeat on the way home. All the time the oil is draining, I'm earning.
And, anyway, I tend to combine this sort of thing with other work (we have annual car tests that it has to go into the garage anyway) - so I'm paying those time overheads for things I can't do myself.
I do change the oil on the canal boat because the nearest boatyard is several hours and locks away from where we moor. The calculations work out differently in that case.
]]>(Time driving to the garage? Right by a grocers where I can buy food, so no extra time used there.)
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