Because the entire color printing industry is a con. There is no such thing as cheap, quality color printing.

To explain further: good color printing costs 1-2 pounds a page, whatever the technology used, but this is never mentioned by the manufacturers or sellers of the printers.

Many years ago, when color inkjets first became available as consumer items, my father and I bought a Canon unit (i forget the exact model). This produced, for the time, very good results, and the cartridges were reasonably cheap. However, after about 80-90 prints, the print head died. it turned out that a new one cost 50% more than the entire printer, and wasn't available anyway. Working out the cost of having produced those 90 prints, it came to about £1.50 per page. My father swore at that point he would never buy another Canon printer, and never has.

A few years back, I bought a small (A6) dyesub printer, the Colorgraph Pixprint 150. It was cheap (about £75), and produced very nice results, for about £1.50 a page. Unfortunately, there are no drivers I can find for Windows 2000, which means I can no longer use it, and the consumables are getting difficult to get hold of anyway.

A few months ago, despite my bitter experience, I was seduced into pruchasing an Epson Stylus 810 photoprinter. This cost £87, and produces fantastic results. I printed off about 20 A4 colour prints of digital photos, using 80% of the cartridges it came with, and was very pleased. I haven't used it for about 2 months, but today wanted to print some more pictures.

It printed the first image with no cyan at all, which looks pretty crap By the time I had run enough cleaning cycles to unclog the cyan lines, it had emptied the remaining 20% of the color cartridge. I had obtained some third-party cartridges, from a reputable source, which were guaranteed to work with the thing despite Epson's monopolistic efforts to ensure that only their cartridges could be used.

Inserting one, however, made the printer simply sit there flashing an error code which the manual says means 'unknown error, contact dealer'. Replacing the original cartridge (something you can now do, although on older epsons removing a cartridge killed it instantly), makes it say it has an empty cartrige installed, which is in fact correct.

Several attempts proved that the third-party cartridge doesn't actually work in the printer, despite the guarantee. I'll call them on Monday, but I don't hold out much hope of success. So, all in all, it will cost me £38 (nearly 50% of the cost of the printer) to get some epson genuine cartridges, which I now know are good for about 25 A4 pages. Total cost per page, £1.52, not including the paper. Does anyone see a trend here?

Not only is it damned expensive to run an inkjet, but the bloody things are very unreliable to boot. It looks like I'd have to run the 810 at least once a week, just to make it work when I wanted it too. Not something I'm impressed by.

I am now pretty much of the opinion that I should just bin the 810 (you can't even use it as a mono printer, since it won't work without a color cartridge installed), and just go and buy a cheapish dyesub and be done with it. It will still cost about £1-2 per page, but at least with dye subs this is made known fairly obviously, and my experience is that they're a hell of a lot more reliable than inkjets anyway.

I have been looking at the Olympus P-400, which seems to be one of the lower-cost dyesubs on the market. Alps used to make a range of low-cost dyesubs as well, but they seem to have vanished unfortunately. I had a demo of one a couple of years ago, and it was pretty impressive.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? I want print sizes up to A4 (which cuts out the Fuji NX series, which is a pity as they're cheap to run and give very nice results, but only A6), high quality, reliability, and reasonable cost both of purchase and running.

pca

The problems with the Epson Stylus print heads clogging up after periods of disuse is well known. Happened to my daughter's printer. They are a bitch to clean out and get working again, but it can be done. I had to do some net-searches and locate discussion forums where they described how to unclog the print heads.

Hope my new Canon printer doesn't give out as quickly as yours did.

It is a well documented fact that all printers and photocopiers were in fact designed by the devil !

I am sure there has been a lot of thought, from the marketing department put into this. Sell the printer cheap, or even give it away, and we will make the profit from the ink. The cost of every printer I have ever owned, has been less, and sometimes a lot less, than what I have spent in ink. Even my Tektronix color laser printer that I paid $1900 for has now been eclipsed by the cost of the toner.

On a more sensible thought i find those ink refill kits work quite well not the cleanest thing but they are good for me

ya color inkjets are a joke, ive gone thru 4 of them they all break within a year. even thou the manufacture covers them, with there long distance numbers and wait on hold. I dunno i ussually get to about the second cartrage before the printer just takes a drve and dosnt something weird.

I've had my HP Deskjet 890C for about 5 years now without any problems and I print almost daily. Yeah the refill cartridges aren't cheap but they last me a long time.

Yeah, my main sentiment with printers (and scanners) is to always buy HP. You won't save money, but the reliability has always been far better. I grew up always having an HP laserjet II, and took it for granted... They print, they tell you when you've got a paper jam, and by god, when they say they've got a paper jam there's actualy a paper burried in there where it might take you two days to find, but it's there. We've since moved on to the new $1000 model ("business" expense, luckily) and all I've ever had to do with it is install the drivers and add paper.

At college I use an HP ink jet, and it's been a great printer. The ink cartriges are expensive, but I don't print enough to go through them. It goes months without being used but always works... At $225 or so, it cost doubble what a generic ink jet costs, but it was worth it...

I've had cannon and epsom ink jets, and neither worked half as well... Now if only I could justify a nice color laser jet...

Matthew

But that's the point, though. If you don't use them every day, something goes wrong with them. Which means you'll either waste time, money, or both to either get them working again or get another. I am starting to see a trend.

The laserjet II was based on the Canon LPB8 engine, which in my opinion is the most reliable laser printer ever designed. As you say, they go virtually forever, and if and when they DO break, they are actually repairable. The thing is, though, that they were designed to a specification, rather than a price. As such, originally they were VERY expensive, but by god they LAST.

Nowadays, even in the business sector, much fewer devices are designed this way. (I can think of a particular car audio system, but I digress) The vast majority of products are designed to be cheaper than the competition, rather than better. Sure, there are exceptions, and if you're in the business that requires this sort of thing you happily pay the price, but in the consumer market everything is designed to be as cheap to make as possible.

Inkjet printers are a very good example of this, as are razors. Both rely on a consumable, both have the obvious main bit (the printer itself, or in the case of a razor, a stick) practically given to you, and both make you pay through the nose for the running costs. In the case of printers, I have seen some, such as an apollo one, which really did cost noticeably less than a set of genuine replacement cartridges.

one guy I know spent a couple of years doing a lot of printing, and simply bought a new printer every time the ink ran out, and threw the used-up ones away. It saved him about 30% over the cost of buying new ink, and he dumped about one a week. As an engineer I object strongly to this design philosophy, but the market seems to require it.

The epson printers are perhaps the worst of the offenders. They are cheap, yes, and also produce what may be the best output of any of the lowcost printers I've seen, but they are also the most expensive to run and the most unreliable. What really irks me is that I knew this, and still bought one

The HPs are better in many ways, since the cartridges are cheaper, don't have a little chip which locks the cartridge to the printer and disallows third-party suppliers, and have the head incorporated into the cartridge which gets around much of the blocking problems, but they just don't have the same output quality. For real photorealistic quality, I haven't seen any inkjets that beat the epsons. At least for a week or so, until the printer dies!

Colour laser printers aren't really an option. I do in fact have one, a Xerox Docuprint C55MP, with network card, loads of supplies, spare drum in addition to the new one in it, all for £200. And no, it wasn't nicked. It came, 'dead', from the company of a friend's wife, and I fixed it. As it turned out, the problem was that it had been used by an idiot, who had somehow managed to fill most of the mechanism with bright blue toner, bend several important bits inside when vacuuming the toner out again, and bugger the drum. The drum was replaced, but due to the bent bits it still didn't work. They bought yet another drum, then decided it wasn't worth the effort, and binned it along with all the supplies. The thing has only done about 5000 prints, which is less than a third of it's rated monthly output!

It took about half an hour to get it working perfectly, and for a lot of things it's damned good. Quite fast, very sharp output, and actually very cheap to run. Even though I have loads of toner, etc, the cost of replacements vs the number of prints on those replacements makes it quite economical. The problem is that it's no good for photo-quality output, since the dot size is too big. It's also built like a tank, and weighs more than you would believe possible from it's size. I keep wondering whether the chassis is made of depleted uranium

I still think, unfortunately, that the only viable solution is a dyesub.

pca

I know that many Epson printers, and probably other brands as well, include "reduced capacity" cartridges in the retail box. These are labelled as "full capacity" in every way, except they only contain about 2/3 or 1/2 the ink. Plus, the first cartridge ever used on an Epson has to fill up all the gaps and whatnot between the cartridge and the print head.

So.. one should expect subsequent cartridges to print noticeably more stuff before needing replacement.

My Epson 1270 (which I LOVE, as opposed to my Epson 850, which I LOATH), only printed around 19 8.5x11" photographs with the factory colour cartridge. But subsequent cartridges have typically yielded around 40-50 8.5x11" photographs.

And the lousy thing about Epsons is, they pretty much rule the photographic inkjet industry. The new Canon S900 is the first/only competition they've had in a LONG while. HP's don't compare (for photographs, but much better for other purposes).

Knowing that the heads will clog over time with non-use, I make a point of cycling the power (and thus the cleaning cycle) once every couple of weeks, just to keep it alive.

Cheers

one guy I know spent a couple of years doing a lot of printing, and simply bought a new printer every time the ink ran out, and threw the used-up ones away

I can't name names here here but my co. bulk buys badged low-end inkjets by the thousand. The purchase price is £23 and we sell them for £62, they ship with black & colour cartridges which retail at about £55 in total.

It's easy to see why people would buy a replacement printer just to get new cartridges.

What I would love to know is:
1. The manufacture cost of a typical inkjet
2. The manufacture cost of an ink cartridge/printhead

Also, be careful about 3rd party cartridges that are "100% compatible" with Epson's. My company was using them for our Epson Stylus Photo EX. They worked for a little while, but we had problems with many of them not "breathing" (for lack of the correct term) properly. There would be too much of a vacuum and the ink would not come out of the cartridge, and we ended up throwing away defective cartridges full of ink. Then we noticed that they were leaking and gumming up the works in the printer. We ended up having so much damage done, the printer had to be sent in for repair. After getting the fixed printer back, we have used Epson cartriges only and have never had a problem. Also, the color quality was quite visibly worse using the ink in the generic cartriges. At any rate, I'm now convinced that it's worth the extra few bucks for the Epson cartridges, although I don't like the fact that they sell the hardware at a loss and bleed you dry on cartridges for the entire life of the printer.

This very topic was discussed on slashdot about a month ago... link. The original story was about how HP is taking the "bleed the customer to death" strategy even further by selling "economy" ink cartridges that are less than half full.

The same comparison to razors was made a few times, and the general concensus is that yeah, they're screwing us, but as long as ALL of the printer manufacturers hold the line with obscene prices for refills, what choice do we have? What we need is some "little guys" who sell the ink for a lower price, thus forcing the market to compete. So far I don't think this has happened, and if it has, the quality of the printer and its output has kept those little guys from being wise choices.

Personally I will NEVER buy another color printer as long as this condition exists. My next printer is going to be a good quality black-and-white laser printer. Toner for B&W lasers isn't that expensive, and I really never need color printing at home. If I want to print something in color, I'll do it at work and make my company pay for it.. hehe.

Yip, The other problem with the color Lasers (I have the HP CLJ 4550TN) is that you cannot put anything other than plain ol' stock paper in them. The fuser will melt any type of glossy you throw in there. The Semi-gloss paper for lasers is only marginally better than stock because its a couple of microns thicker. For pictures I use the HP Deskjet 1220. Prints good enough for me, very fast, and my only complaint is that on rare occasion if you're using photo paper, it'll grab 2-3 sheets at a time, staggered 2 inches apart, so as it ruins all 2-3 sheets. Oh well. You know, you'd think that with all the advancements made in computers, some would trickle to the printing sector, but then again, My 3.5" floppy is still just as slow as it was in my 486/33. ;8^)

The EU are to investigate inkjet cartridge prices here in Europe. Here's a link. Take a look at the survey results. This has also been coverd by most of the computer press over here too.

Exactly why I bought the Tektronix. It prints on 20# paper up to card stock, glossy and even transparent. However, photo quality it is not. I am still looking for that one printer that does it all, oh yea, and dosen't cost very much.

If they could make a color laser that printed actual photo quality prints, I'd get one. I don't even really care about how much it costs, I just want it to do it's damn job.

Yup, I agree - my main printers I use at home are a Laserjet 5P for day to day letters and stuff, and an ancient Laserjet 2 for higher quantities.

The 5P is temperamental, but almost everything in it is user repairable as everything is done on the PC. The 2 is rock solid, and is coming up for 10 years old (or thereabouts) It has had the fuser unit replaced once, and up until a while ago it had regular ozone filter changes (I can't find them any more)

The best bit - the LJ2 only cost me some skin off my elbow as I dragged it out of a skip. Amazing what you find dumped - I found my Osbourne luggable in a ditch, and after I cleaned out the water, mud and weeds it worked perfectly.

The LaserJet 2 and 3 are still great printers. I still use them. I have a 2 and a couple of 3's. They average about 80,000 pages printed each. Got them all for free, too. Parts are still available for these through HP. But this is off of the orginal topic which was about color printers and these certainly are not color.

My dad bought a LJ IIp when they came out (about 10-12 years ago?), and since then he's had to replace the cartridge twice. That's incredible. Unfortunately, it just crapped out this year, and we went with the reliable HP again.

pca, does HP make color printers? Why not go with them? They've made nothing but reliable products from my experience.

Why not go with them? They've made nothing but reliable products from my experience

Here's one reason not to get involved with HP's inkjets... I already posted this link in this thread but it speaks to your comments about the "reliable" HP. I agree they're reliable, but obviously they're greedy, too.

If one wants to print photographs, HP isn't in the running.

The only choices are Epson-Photo printers, or the newish Canon S900.
Nothing else really even comes close at present.

Cheers

Sorry Mark, I'd have to disagree with you about HP printers not being in the running for Photo printing. I consider myself a very critical person, if something falls short of perfection I'll be the first to comment on it. I use a HP Deskjet 1220C and the output from it is exceptional on photos. I've no doubt there's probably better, but to say they're not in the running just isn't true. I've recommended HPs to my sister and girlfriend and they are both exceptionally happy with theirs. My sister bought one of the 93*C (* - can't remember exactly which model) series and she uses it almost solely for printing photographs.

Like I said there's probably better but to discount them for photo printing is wrong (IMNSHO).

I actually saw a new Lexmark at the store the other day that claimed to do 4800x1200 DPI (it's the Z65, I believe) and the samples looked phenomenal. Not that I have any particular interest in all of this. I've just always liked Lexmark, as they tended to produce the only not-outrageously-expensive PostScript compliant printers on the market. That's not as true as it once was, though.

And how long before they fade..

At $225 or so, it cost doubble what a generic ink jet costs, but it was worth it...

And there is the root of the problems/complaints that people have about ink jet printers.

Since the cost of the consumables over a period of time is enormously greater than the cost of the printer itself, then the original purchase price should not be a significant consideration.

When you buy that $149 "generic" ink jet, or the $225 low-end name-brand printer, you are just throwing your money away. Spend the $600 or $800 or whatever it costs and buy the top of the line printer, and you will get excellent reliability and print quality for a long time.

Just remember -- when you are printing ink-jet color on special paper, regardless of what you paid for the printer originally, you are spending a buck or so every time you click the "Print" icon on your computer, and that's where the expense comes in.

On the topic of black and white printers -- here is one of the best-kept secrets in the industry: Kyocera.

[unabashed proselytizing]
A typical HP or Lexmark or other name-brand laser printer operates at a cost of about 2.3 cents per page for consumables (toner, developer, drum-life and fuser-life) excluding paper. The Kyocera operates at about 4/10 of a cent per page, maybe a bit less than that for the high-end (28 ppm or higher) models.

Big deal -- you save something over a penney a page, right? Well, my Kyocera here at work (purchased used on ebay for under $400) cranks out about 25,000 pages a month. That translates into savings approaching $6,000 per year over the life of the printer. The printer is about as reliable as your typical anvil, by the way -- maybe one paper jam every 20,000 pages or so due to improper loading of paper into the paper trays which have a total capacity of 2,000 sheets. On the down side, Kyocera was optimistic about the print speed -- they claim 28 ppm, but the best I ever get out of it is maybe 27 ppm.
[/unabashed proselytizing]

tanstaafl.

Well, I can't comment on that as I haven't had mine long enough. Do HP use inks that fade worse than others?

Yup. Epson Photo printers, and now the new Canon S900, have been THE choice for professional photographers (and us serious amateurs) for a couple of years now because they (1) print photographs (not "photograph-like", but REAL photographs), and (2) have inks/papers that are fade resistent for 10-100 years (depending on which printer/paper/ink combo).

I use Epson Matte Heavyweight for most stuff, and it is supposedly good for 20-25 years minimum when displayed behind glass, much longer when just kept in an album. Prints I made from an earlier epson before they paid attention to such have faded badly within 2 years.

Cheers

Actually, now I think about it I was under the impression that HP used pigmented inks which were more resistant to fading than most. Is this not true?

A Tektronix phaser. I got a SCSI one second hand for 20 quid, it's great.