[PLUG-TALK] HP4050 printer turns 21 this year

[Tomas Kuchta]

These news/sentiments, together with mine, are clear sign of general
product progress. If people like me, you, find 20+ year old printers more
functional, better value than today's tech - no wonder nobody really wants
to buy printers.

This is clear sign of market failure broken for decades.

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.
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.
3. Standard PostScript/pdf format support, so that I know it will work on
Linux for the next 20 years.

Judging by various posts here and other forums - people are looking and not
finding the same (minus the voltage maybe).

Sad, sad - that this is the competitive environment we live in - favouring
feature/value/market reduction over expansion and universal availability.

-T

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 21:57 Galen Seitz <galens at seitzassoc.com> wrote:

> On 2/21/20 5:37 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> > While replacing the toner access cover on my venerable
> > HP4050DN laser printer, I learned it was manufactured
> > in 1999, and will turn 21 years old this year.
>
> OK, so you made me look.
>
> HP Laserjet 4M Plus, manufactured in October of 1994.  I replaced the
> feed rollers back in December, so I should be good for another decade or
> two.
>
> galen
> --
> Galen Seitz
> galens at seitzassoc.com
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