[PLUG-TALK] HP4050 printer turns 21 this year

[wes]

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-talk/attachments/20200222/dee5adeb/attachment.html>