[PLUG-TALK] HP4050 printer turns 21 this year

Tomas Kuchta tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com
Sun Feb 23 06:44:46 UTC 2020


I regret that my post came across so negative and wrong way.

I did not mean it like that - at all - nor I solicited advice on a printer
recommendation.

I was simply lamenting the lack of focus on customer value in the printer
market. I had no desire to upset anyone. I find it shocking when 20+ year
product looks better value.

Seeing suggestion for Dell printer -
I simply went to dell.com, looked up color printers on offer - all were
Lexmark and their prices. I then realized that - cca. $1k for printer + $2k
for toner is wildly out of what I had in mind for home printer.

So, I just wanted to put it out there - so that people do not send more of
similar suggestions.

Hope this clears it up,
Tomas

On Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 00:57 wes <plug at the-wes.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 8:18 PM <tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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 could not find in your list of requirements that the desired printer
> needs to be purchasable at dell.com.
>
> You imply that Dell will only ever sell Lexmark printers in the future.
> Maybe they have some exclusive contract with Lexmark, surely it will not
> last forever.
>
> Lexmark is a (slowly) dying brand. It stands to reason that a high-dollar
> investment in Dell for exclusive rights to their brand on some printers is
> a desperate attempt to remain competitive. Dell's complicity in this kind
> of lock-in is not great, but not that unusual among its peers. Everybody
> has their price.
>
> -wes
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG-talk mailing list
> PLUG-talk at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-talk/attachments/20200223/91609a93/attachment.html>


More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list