I have many more printer rants than time allows, being right there in the beginning of the printer revolution (1998 -1999), when digital cameras were 1MP (and still took better pictures than the 50MP or today) and you had about 4 companies that made those big cameras. I had a Nikon, it took about 30 seconds to put the image on the screen and most times there was some girl who would erase them cuz they looked stupid. So the process was slow and you haf to have a special printer that could read directly from that huge 8 to 16MB smart media card and print.
My choice was basically 1 of 3 choices available since I had no computer, I had the Kodak photo pro!
1 big multicolor cartridge with printheads on the cart. To print you first had to fo a thumbnail sheet to see what you had to work with. No fancy lcd or led screens, no real fixing of prints unless you use the camera and have lots of time.
After 3 or 4 full thumbnail pages were printed you were looking at running out of red quickly. At $40+ a cartridge it adds up. But everyone was happy and no more waiting for those embarrassing naked shots to get developed and you have to go pick them up with all walgreens employees laughing and giggling. Yup we had it made!
Then computers were common place and printers were cheap and had big ink carts with separate black and color. Now ink lasted a while but still red ran out first so multi colored carts were not the answer. Viola, all separate ink carts! Wow, now we have the cats ass! Nope, photo colors! Now we have 7 ink carts in a huge expensive printer but look at those prints?!? Hmmm, cost a fortune and not much better quality? New camera! Yup, now we got it! Go to get more ink and WTF! Ink doubled in prics over night!
New printers offered for the same price as an ink change for my old faithful printer, of course get a new "better" printer! Have you noticed how so I have yet to complain about my printers? Thats because my old printers allowed me to refill my carts. Over and over, no chips, but they raised the price of ink to be the most expensive liquid on earth thats sold to the public without a licence.
The next batch of printers had tiny chips on them so you couldnt refill them, at least not without the chip resetting tools! Bingo, back in business again!
Ink was still costing a fortune just a refill kit alone was $30 and it was always a mess to do.
Next step was replacing your old printer thats covered in ink and smears ink everywhere, you find out that printers are now claiming to be super perfect professional devices that require you to use only their super high $ inks or you void the warranty.
Ok so what? Ive never had a printer stop working or need repairs in my life, ill just refill it and forget about them. WRONG, once you do that the printer would go into shut down mode after those carts run down. It would show a message saying you need to have it serviced! Could be 4 months old but you broke your warranty by refilling! So you go to their website and they give you some file to on your computer that would allow you to print 2 more pages before it stops forever. After it stops you see the message to call them. They would then offer you a discount on a new printer but you have to send your old one in to them to first.
They would get your old printer and simply reset the IC chip that blocked you from using it and theyed resell them as refurbished! This didnt sit well with most people who have been taken for a ride over the last 10 years, constantly being gouged and stuck paying way too much for colored water.
The printer companies thought they hadbthe world by the ass and thought they could do anything without recourse.
Now lets think about what they were doing and put it in the context of a car. You buy a new car, they tell you you have to buy there special gas and only their gas or you will void your warranty. You know the car will run on any gas so you go ahead and void your warranty, that should be enough already, you would think?!? But what the failed to tell you was your car would be rendered unusable after that tankfull of gas runs out. So your car shows another warning saying you need to have it serviced and gives you a phone number. You call and they give you a code to enter to get your car back home but after that it wont start and youll need to contact them to discuss what youll be doing with that car.
They tell you that youll get another code that allows you to bring it in so you can get a discount on a new car with that trade in of your old car! You have no choice since the car is unsellable like it is now.
Then they clear the codes from your old car and resell it as recertified. Do you think that theyed be able to stay in business without any problems or any lawsuits? I doubt it, so how did printer companies get away with this type of underhanded business and never faced a single lawsuit!
This was price fixing, it wsd tampering with yout property after a dale without any warning, nothing was said about turning off your printers for not using their ink! Bit theyre still doing this and now every single company except car makers are making their products fail on purpose like its ok to do this. There should be a law against companies that make disposable products and fine them for every item that ends up in a landfill and make those fines into refunds to buyers. Then take away there chances to get new resources to make stuff unless they recycle a certain percent of their failed products. If they dont then they cannot buy raw materials to make new pieces of junk! Put them out of business. Samsung, every vacuum maker, surround sound receiver makers, ect. They need to stop using up natural resources to make crap on purpose just to make a profit faster! They all do it. Very few companies are trying to make products that will last forever like it used to be just 30 years ago. Youll never see anyone repairing anything once the last stuff made in the 70s and 80s has been forgotten.
Printers have started the degradation of our world!
So yea, im not a printer fan, they never work and they charge too much for colored water! I once had 85 printers and after a year without using them only 5 worked when I went to sell them. Mostly HP with a few canons. Not 1 Epson out of 30 worked! I have a huge bin full of ink carts maybe 200 or more easily that couldnt be used.