[PLUG-TALK] HP4050 printer turns 21 this year

[tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com]

On Sat, 2020-02-22 at 14:03 -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Feb 2020, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
> 
> > Case in point - I've been on the market for small, low volume color laser
> > for years. Three basic things stopped me from purchasing:
> > 1. Non-standard, extraordinarily expensive toner cartridge locked to single
> > supplier. This guarantee that I will not be happy with the printer for the
> > next 20 years to print my 10k pages. I need to be able to buy toner in US,
> > EU, everywhere for reasonable price. Non standard, single vendor products
> > do not provide this value at all.
> 
> The Dell C1760NW color laser printer is a rebranded Xerox and uses the
> Xerox_Phaser_6000_6010 driver. Commenters on amazon say that non-OEM
> cartridges work well and sell (on amazon) for $22 and $26.50 for a set of
> four. I'm still working with the toner shipped with the printer.
> 

I was curious, because I have never considered Dell as printer source. So, I
checked their web site - and they only sell Lexmark printers. Lexmark is known
to be the worst when it comes to cartridge lock in. Color printer typically
needs 4 cartridges and Dell/Lexmark sells them at $555 per one. Wow $1600 to put
cartridges to a printer costing $1000-ish. That is definitely not what I had in
mind for about 300 pages printed per year.

I appreciate the thoughtful suggestion, but I had to come back and admit that
this kind of deal is completely outside what I would consider home printer. I
guess that I will probably never own a printer again.

> > 2. It needs to be powered be both 110V and 240V. There are no laser
> > printers like that, so I'd have to trash them every time I move. So far at
> > least once a decade.
> 
> I don't think it's dual voltage.
> 
> > 3. Standard PostScript/pdf format support, so that I know it will work on
> > Linux for the next 20 years.
> 
> Yep. It does this well.
> 
> Don't forget that Walter Gillett set the example by giving away razors and
> selling the blades. Companies soon learned that the cash cow revenue stream
> was in selling consumables, not the devices that consumed them.
> 
> Rich
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