[PLUG] Printer Recommendations

Roderick A. Anderson raanders at acm.org
Sun Jul 7 12:03:00 UTC 2002


On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Geoff Burling wrote:

> I think I have boasted about the rock-solid nature of my HP IIp+ at
> least once here. I'll have owned it for 10 years this December, it's
> burned thru about about 8 to 10 toner cartridges in it's life (two a
> year for the first few years, gradually down to one lasting two years)
> & is currently on it's second computer.

If you can find a good toner re-charge service you can get your cartridges 
much cheaper and when they need rebuilding you get a good drum.  I happen 
to know the local toner re-charge company and have watched as they rebuilt 
a cartridge.  I've had pretty long discussions with the owner who talked 
me out of a Lexmark (which I've had nothing but good experiences with) 
into an HP 1200 which I love about how printers are built and maintained.  
I also know the local computer shop folks that repairs printers.

> (The self-test I just ran reports it has printed 38,931 pages.) And I
> second Paul's advice about adding as much memory as possible for one
> of these.

Is this a roll over.  Typically duty cycle it 40K a year but probably a 
little lower for the II series.  I'm at 4,000 on my lightly used HP 1200 
after 6 months.

> And it's worth the cost of fixing it. (Which has been only twice; the
> first time after it had been running on a broken part for about 3 years.)
> I only wish printers were built to last like this one was.

The old HPs are like that.  As I mentioned above I know the printer repair 
folks.  They deal with a company that does a pretty large amount of 
re-furbished printers with the old HPs being a pretty fair mover given the 
shipping costs are killer.
   The issue of "why they don't build them like the used to" is mass 
market economics.  Rumor has it HP did a study a few years ago and notice 
users were buy new printers about every three years.  So they decided to 
build their printers to last about 3 years.  They are also less 
re-repairable.  Parts are not available or after labor it costs almost 
as much as a new printer on the low cost end.  You will also notice that 
the toner cartridge changes with almost every model.  This is to make it 
difficult for the 'other' recharging and recharging component companies.  
I seem to remember that HP doesn't even recharge the cartridges you send 
back to them.  They recycle them - disassembled and into the bins.

On another note when Tektronics (now owned by Xerox) was doing their 
freecolorprinter.com offer the company I worked for did a cost per page 
analysis between the crayon/color stick printer and ink jet systems.  
Pretty rough one since it was obvious right off there was a considerable 
difference.  Typically $0.30+/page ink jet and < $0.10/page crayon even 
buying them from Tektronics.  Quality-wise there was no comparison - the 
crayon won hands down.  Speed was pretty much in the crayon favor also.

Well enough rambling.


Cheers,
Rod
-- 
  "Open Source Software - Sometimes you get more than you paid for..."





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