I recently installed a generic driver for my HP all in one printer by accident. suddenly this thing can print even when the cartridges are "empty" and even scan over wireless without needing an account or their software running on my pc. This was indeed the best mistake I ever did.
I recently bought an HP ink jet printer. I print about 5 pages per month - literally. I hardly ever print anything. After two months the printer started telling me it was low in ink. I only print black. So 10 black pages and you're low on ink? Really? It's been about 6 months now and I'm still printing with low ink. Looks fine.
@@bobdinitto The first cartridge is like 1/3 of the capacity of a normal cartridge. So yes it is possible. I think i managed to get like 25 pages from mine
The worst is if the ink uses button cell batteries on their security chips instead of cheaper RFID. Most people will buy two sets of black and color ink and even if you've never opened the package after a few months the battery drains and the ink "expires". Double bonus is that even if the stores don't sell the stock it's purchased they're now forced to buy more stock anyway!!!
@Usman Hassan Probably the one that comes with the operating system? On Apple devices, that would be the generic AirPrint driver, on Windows, it would be the one that comes as part of it. Don’t know about Android or ChromeOS.
@@larrbaII That's when you rip out the cartilage, RAM it back in, slam the lid down with a vengeance and DEMAND it print. Works every time. Make your printer fear you.
Let alone the fact that said printers are usually operated by absolute tech buffoons who think "Hey, let's try to fix it ourselves with blunt force before calling IT!". Apparently you can insert USB-A the wrong way if you really want to and then wonder why your device doesn't work. First level support can be absolutely hilarious.
I work in IT. I have to tell people do not connect your printer over wireless. You will end up losing the connection and you'll have to go through the wizard again. I always tell people connect via ethernet if you can. Then I go in and change the port from the WSD port as this will lose connection, I switch the port to an IP address you will never really have issues. Printers are a pain.
@@benjaminsmith9943 I've had similar experiences with USB even, the only thing that I've ran into that works the best is the Network Port, yes for USB you can unplug it and plug it back in and that usually works but network port by far has less issues.
I’ve been in the exact same boat for networked printers, however using this method when you can’t Ethernet a printer still works pretty well. (Not to say I prefer it)
the HP LaserJet 1012/1015 and 1020 was the pinnacle of printer technology.... cheap printer, cheap ink, never failed, no paper jam. There is one in the family running for almost 20 years now. From there with ethernet/wifi printers, the whole industry went down the hill.
I haven't yet found a model or a family of printers for colored documents or photos (yes I am who still prints them), that I will be happy as with my LaserJet 1012 printing black and white documents.
Epson was a game changer when they introduced those ink tanks that you simply pour ink to the printer and it works. HP and Canon wasn't excited about it at first, but eventually they felt the pressure and produced the ink tanks.
That's right. Epson with their eco tank was a game changer. I used to spend a fortune on ink cartridges. Even HP would make their cartridges to expire. So, the ones you bought on sale would expire and you won't be able to use them after some time. And don't even think of buying generic ones, because they won't work. Or they will work for a while until HP will force an update on the printer, and the generic cartridges would stop working. I bought the Epson 3750 model a couple of years ago and I'm still using the ink that came in the box. As the video said, we are printing less and less these days. Back in the days, you'd have to first print something out, then sign, scan it. These days most legal documents come via Docusign that doesn't require printing.
It was started by users doing the modding, they mod the printer ink cartridge, adding external ink tank, and tubes that connect the two. The practice was so popular that more tech savvy people even offering services to mod the printer in such way, and yes Epson eventually learn about it. Its not that Epson didn't try to stop such practice, but rather they can't do that legally. Can't beat em? Join em! Thus Epson eventually came up with their own version in form of Eco Tank. Epson did however have their clandestine revenge by means of silent firmware updates. Before the updates the cartridge will query the status of ink sensor to check if the cartridge have enough ink to do the printing operation. After the silent updates the cartridge behavior changes instead of sensor status its counts how many ink has been sprayed after the counter exceed certain value the driver will start giving "Low Ink Warning" and eventually "No Ink Warning". This not an issue for non modified cartridge, but looks very BS in modded printer.
How their printheads are performing though? I heard of many units suffering print head failure after a year or two usage. If that's the case it does negate the savings made. Right now I use a cheap HP inkjet with 3rd party cartridges, which are literally 1/3 of the price of the originals and the price per page is around that of a laser printer
The advantage of Epson too, at least where I live, Epson has a factory here so ink bottles are not that expensive. About $6 per 90ml bottle. Each bottle last 1500 pages compare to catridges' 200 pages.
The IBM Selectric typewriter was one of the first digital to analogue printers and often connected to IBM mainframe computers to print code listings, especially APL code listings. So strictly speaking... It was more of a printer than most others.
A (Not so) Fun Fact: my color HP printer runs out of cyan when I only print black and white most of the time. When I email HP about this, they said that the printers are designed in such a way that it also uses color inks while printing in black to form a perfect black. So I need perfect black just to read some words on the document, and the printer just stops printing even when black full but not the other 3 (cyan, magenta, yellow)
Not sure what the problem is. You can change to black only in the settings, and get a worse quality black that is probably fine for your use case. To get a color that looks good as a black, you do actually need to use other colors. Try it yourself.
Also, he skipped dot matrix printers. Granted I have no idea how much of a difference to the story they would've made, but it seems to me that they should've at least gotten a mention.
@@MrLancar Little to no difference to the story, probably, as the time when dot matrix printers were *popular* was relatively short-lived, technologically speaking. They're still manufactured and available though: they're useful as a "permanent log" of transactions, such as for auditing what's going on with a fire alarm system, recording transactions sequentially in a banking system, etc. Great for auditing.
@@drewstemen9597 That they were still made and used even today came as a surprise, I must admit. I did some quick searching and saw that yes, indeed, you're correct. Also, the ink bands are cheap, to boot. Not that I'd get one. As you say, they're a niche product, but it was still cool to see they're still around.
After buying so many ink printers, I gave up and bought a laser printer. Ink printers are a waste if you let it sit around for too long and some printers will waste the ink by "cleaning".
I'd argue that it's not about not affording the textbook, it's knowing it's not worth the money and you'll only be using small sections of it (even if the professor claims otherwise). Some people make college a game of last minute, late night studying. But many of us preferred the game of avoiding being robbed of money we didn't absolutely need to sacrifice just to jump through a hoop.
Printing shops around my college have a photocopy of textbooks already that you just ask for the textbooks and they will make a photocopy of it for you for a fee.
As a former Quality Assurance at a major printer company (primarily Color laser printers), the biggest customers they cared about were banks. Also, laser better than ink, my laser is great and I bought it a decade ago for $100 and I only had to buy toner once.
Wholly agree with that sentiment regarding laser, my private little Dell c1660 may suffer from neglect, but over the past decade and change; whenever she was needed, she was there. I think it's even still rocking the demo cartridges... come to think of it.
We just spent well over $150 on a printer, which has probably been used once or twice. I rarely need a hard copy for anything, it's mostly just a nice to have. And in this day and age where we are all trying to save money, we can always cut out the nice to haves and focus on needs.
If you need to print stuff at home, get a brother black and white printer. They start at $100 at Walmart, they come with toner that lasts a while. You can use 3rd part toner, no problem. Toner doesn’t go bad like ink, as long as you don’t dump it out or get it wet, it’s fine. I have one of the nicer models but the ex kept the cheaper one, both work great.
Seriously. Three years ago, I bought a Brother HL-L2320D, which is their base model b&w laser printer, for $80 on sale. I don't really print that much, roughly 1000 pages per year. Haven't had to replace toner. Zero errors. Zero paper jams. USB connection is always reliable. My previous inkjet printer would go through cartridges twice a year under the same printing frequency.
Ding ding ding we have a winner folks! I have an HL-L2380DW Black/white printer/scanner. Works fine with my Mac over USB without even installing a driver!! Windows has a driver that's easy to find. Cartridges last forever. I don't think it's *ever* jammed. Friends don't let friends inkjet...
The K1ng is Speaking the truth. If you want a printer because you use it a lot, get a laser. If you want a printer because you sometimes want a print, get a laser. If you want a printer so you can print photos, you're mistaken: go to a photo shop instead.
Honestly the printer industry needs a disruption of some sort otherwise it's going out of hand, whenever I am in dire need of printing something, either the printer will not work or the ink has just vanished. I mean is it so hard to make a cartridge that can be locked when not in use to save the ink?
There has been a disruption for years now. Ecotanks last for about 3000 pages of 4 bottles of cheap ink . Bought one about 4 years ago now and only refilled it once for about £30 .
How? You hear the video explained that it will cost $1000 to manufacture a printer. Do you want to buy that, or to "buy" $100 printer and pay in "installment" by buying their expensive inks?
Bought a brother MFC L2712DW and I'm having a really good experience. Everything just works, never had a paper jam in over a year and I can use third party toner cartridges no problem at much lower price than original cartridges. Only gripe I have is with the mobile app, it's pretty slow. Other than that can't be happier with a laser printer, I'd never buy ink.
Brother makes a great printer. Had a Brother ink jet printer that worked great for years. Only upgraded to laser when COVID hit and there were 4 of us in the house printing stuff for work and school, but we stuck with Brother. I can print effortlessly from my computer, phone, or tablet.
I like my Brother DCP 750CW so much that I bought two more from eBay. They accept cheap aftermarket inks and never go wrong! Hardly the fastest printing, though!
We have a little Epson that I predicted would die in about two years, then it went unused for a whole year because of the pandemic... So I rightfully assumed it was done for, since it was blocked as expected, thing is... It started to print better with a little more use, and three years after "recovering" it's still working fine, with barely any use (ink tanks have only been refilled ONCE), i don't get it...
My Epson printer saw a lot of duty, and lasted 10 years. The next printer was another Epson and... It's still working GREAT. 4-ink, but you can get great quality prints in glossy papers and normal ones. Ink isn't that expensive on EcoTank. They're also very dumb devices, you just connect it to your network and you can use it in any device! I can't relate to all that "printers are hard to use" message at the beginning, sounds more like he's talking about a specific brand of crappy printers. Also known as HP.
I once read a meme about the music band „Rage against the machine“. Meme was „They not specified about what the machine was but I reckon that was a printer“
I used to manage Electronics for Walmart. During Black Friday sales it was not uncommon for certain customers to purchase two or three printers, then just throw the printers away and use the free ink that came with them, because that was cheaper than buying ink
for years now i just print my document at printing shops, consumer stuff is just trash, and the good appliences are too expensive in most printer shops in poland one can print 1 page for $0.02-$0.05 its cheaper than just buying ink, let alone the printer :P
I used to hate printers and bleed money on ink as my wife's work requires making a ton of hard copies of paperwork. Then I read about and bought an Epson Ecotank ET-4800. Apart from one gripe - the document feeder for scanning a lot of pages at once can be picky sometimes, other than that it solved every issue I had with printers. I've had it over 3 years and: 1. I *still* haven't ran out of color ink - yes I'm still on the freebie ink that came with the printer and I've replaced the black ink exactly one time and it cost me about $10. We've printed approx ~10,000 pages on this thing. 2. The main printer interface has never once jammed. Ever.
@@UltimatePerfection where I live, Epson imposes software obsocelence, as in the hardware still works but the firmware doesn't allow one to print beyond 10000 pages. Reached that limited once and cost $15 to repair where that is equivalent to 3 day minimum wage.
@@rzpogi That's why I chose Brother. Good thing I have learned about the Epson's spongegate and that firmware limit before I have bought a printer because I was originally going to go with Epson. But after I got that knowledge, I went with Brother InkBenefit. Saved money too as Brother was cheaper (the specific model I went with was DCP-T420W).
@@UltimatePerfection I spent roughly ~$320 on printing hardware and ink in the year prior to buying it and have thus far gotten 3 years out of it for $260 (250 hardware $10 ink) so if it died tomorrow it would still be no contest the best printer I ever owned.
we've had a canon printer for years now. Most of my printing are Amazon return labels, forms and coupons 😅. I now buy generic ink. Eventually it dries out whether it's cheap or the good stuff.
I remember back in time between 2005 to 2007, I had a very regular Canon inkjet printer in my bookshop, that I configured to print as drafts, filling cartridges using 3rd party cheap bottle of black ink, it was spitting about 30ppm (I think it was 28), and quality was good enough that no customer complained about.
The printer makers specifically do the best they can to make it difficult, not just from a technical perspective, but also from a legal perspective in the form of patents etc. They're engineered to such precision, to *require* such precision, that it takes a lot of investment to set up manufacturing of such devices. The ink itself is the easy part, it's deconstructing the barriers that the original manufacturer puts in place to make it difficult. That's why most decent third party inks are remanufactured cartridges that strip parts from used official cartridges, and require a supply of "empty" carts in order to sell their products. Any time you see a bin generously offering to recycle your used carts, it's not out of the goodness of their heart and a love for the environment, it's to get raw materials their business depends on.
Most in jet printers have a sponge that it squirts ink into when you turn it on... eventully after so many purges the printer will brick and insist that you have it serviced by a factory tech.
My problem with printers is the 'new' operating systems from Microsoft. Each of the (forced on me) Operating System will not support my laser printers. I lost the use of my Docuprint, Xerox, and Oki (each at 500USD to 1000USD) because they were each "Not Supported". They work fine. I stopped using Ink Jet printers because of the drying out, striping, colour registration problems.
Why didn't you include ink tank printers? Brands like Brother sell ink tank printers that are reliable and lasts for years, and have ink tanks that can be refilled by third party ink.
Spend the extra money an buy a laser jet printer. Toner doesn't dry up, and majority of cheap desktop inkjet printers sold are being used to print text documents.
"Drop a like if you trust computer more than yourself" Dear Harry, I liked this video because I drop a like on all of your videos. Should have I followed your indication above, I shouldn't have liked your video, because myself (and everybody else) DO NOT trust the computer more than myself! Computers lose data, break down, they develop problems just like printers do. I have a laser printer that I can trust, but that cost some money because it is actually well made. You are right, Inkjet printers are at their sunset unless they abandon the Gillette sale model. Thanks for the video...
My Epson 1800 photo stopped working after 8 years or so working. I decoded the error code. It said that after the micro in the printer reaches a certain number of paper sheets passing, it locks up for a maintenance change of the spittoon. This was not customer accessible. Also the link said that they will sell me the reset disc for a good sum, but they will discontinue the ink line. As a retired electronics tech, this was insulting. Planned obsolescence. The new printer cost just a little more than the reset disc. The inks, still expensive.
@@LogicallyAnswered hi, could you logically answer how ubiquitous is the MVP approach along with it's pros and cons? I suspect many wannabe biz people still take for granted that a MVP is the holy grail. And that the invisible hand exists
Last year I learned the hard way why you should always flick through a ream of paper to make sure nothing is trapped in it before you put it in the printer. Some plastic, an insect, or something else was burned around one edge of the heat roller so now pages come out embossed with the toner not fixed. This is despite my best efforts to access it and clean it.
My first printer was a commodore printer...A Dot Matrix monstrosity that made a horrendous racket but worked very well for what it was. My second printer was a color printer when these things were very new. It cost me 800$ and worked very well but was horrendously slow. My third printer was an 80$ Brother printer/scanner back when these were sort of a novelty. Never got the scanner part to work and it barely printed but it was cheap. We had an HP at work that went around the counter twice meaning it printed two million papers. It was amazing. So, My next printer was an HP I bought for 55$ and it's been amazing. It's had some hiccups but mostly works great. The problem is it's slow to print. It's 15 years old I loath the day when I will have to replace it. My father got a com,puter a few years ago and wanted a printer. I recommended an HP and it worked once when I was there and then no more. So we got a replacement and it worked once. We got another replacement and it worked once...I'm not kidding. Then I bought him a laser printer (no color), got it set up and it worked a few times. The internet guy came and "fixed" his internet when I was not there, now I can only get the printer to work when it's wired up. I can't get it to work wireless anymore. I really am not looking forward to buying a new printer. The problem is that I only print maybe three times a year but when I need to print, I need it to work NOW! It's annoying.
I guess the internet guy put some protection on the wifi router that won't work with the printer firmware. Or he just forgot to connect it to the printer.
heh! I still have a MPS1230 Commodore printer (it's a re-badged Olivetti DM100) and it still works fine with my C64 and it's a dual interface model so it also works on a PC with a parallel port configured as a generic Epson FX80.
printers are terrible, HP seems to be ahead that they last a few years, but ink prices suck, and setting up some models on a network isn't fun, setting your printer in draft mode apparently saves ink, if you don't care about quality, It seems printers haven't really advanced, one can't really add anything new to something that prints, scans and copies. The only thing (correct me if I am wrong) is HP doesn't like it now when one uses generic cartridges or is it the ink refills, as they released a firmware update to prevent it from use.
This is a very interesting video. I've been using computers for nearly 35 years and have bought probably dozens of printers. The last printer I bought was a Dell 7130. This is for my home office and not a cheap one. I bought it in 2010 and I think I paid somewhere around $2,500 for it. It's a monster of a printer and has a monthly duty cycle duty cycle of 50,000 pages. One issue is that cartridges for it are extremely expensive. If I use the Dell branded cartridges it will cost me nearly $1,500 to refill it. I found I can buy knockoffs for about a quarter that. Interesting thing is I haven't bought color toner for It for the last 10 years as I don't print a ton. But luckily being a laser printer the ink doesn't go bad as there is no ink to actually plastic. I gave up years ago trying use inkjet printers and keep them busy enough where the the ink doesn't dry out.
It's funny they even got people saying "counterfeit". They're just third-party cartridges, they're not trying to trick people into thinking they're from the oem. For me it isn't the hardware or the cost of ink, it's the software. Windows still notoriously gets stuck on print jobs with no ability to cancel without doing stupid troubleshooting like opening up services to stop the print spooler, deleting jobs manually from the windows subfolder where they live. They'll also show up as offline suddenly and sometimes you have to change settings in both the windows print dialogue and the software.
Got a second-hand HP LaserJet from 1998, printer says it had printed 60k+ pages, I've printed some 10k pages in that 25 years and had to change the toner just two times. Inkjets are a scam.
Instead of buying a printer, it is much cheaper to go and get it printed out in a local internet cafe shop if you are just a home based user. Documents can be stored online instead of being printed and it is rare to have a huge requirement of printing stuff unless you do it for business.
One of the biggest "designed to fail" "features" of printers of any type that I've found is they are constantly changing the mechanical formfactor of the ink/toner cartridges. Then they eventually stop making the older designs rendering a functioning printer nominally obsolete because the consumables aren't available anymore. Eventually even the 3rd party ink makers stop making the formfactor (either the market gets too small for even them, or the availability of the casings for refilling dry up).
I don't get it. Without a hard copy of the document, how do you know it is legit and not a made up document? That's one of the reason why "paperless office" dream of the 1990s is still .. a dream.
Honestly, today most people don't need printers anyways, they should go back to more expensive quality products and cheap ink. It's good enough if people can print something at library, work or school if they really need to. Consumer printers frankly should become luxury thing it is, or thing for small business, say printing photos, art or something where again it would be would make sense to sell more expensive quality product and cheap ink. Both for consumer and business. Overall, I do think cheap consumer printers are totally unncessary in today's world.
Humm, well, I think you did show a good point regarding the printers being sold without profit as the manufacturers aim to recover that on ink/tonner; it also explains why models that use external ink tanks are usually twice the price of the conventional ones. BUT I don't think the product quality and improvement is frozen on time, no... actually, most manufacturers are selling models that are from marginally to substantially better from each other and this is a strong evidence of very alive R&D departments over such brands. Drivers updating are also, in my opinion, addressing problems much better since the HP 692C, which sold like water (I had one). And the ink cost, in my country at least, is slightly being reduced if we consider the cumulated inflation of decades. The HP692C ink cost was 55, some 20 years ago, and today the Epson XP231 is around 45, even though 55 worth around 350 today. So... no, I don't agree that printers are on top of headaches regarding electronics.
I’ve given up on printers too and haven’t owned one in the last few years. Got frustrated with expensive ink, clogged printheads, flimsy construction and so on. I’m so much happier just taking the trouble to walk to a nearby print shop the rare times I have to, not forgetting as well being able to free up space in my study and getting rid of the bulky eyesore.
I bought a laser for $59 Canadian from Best Buy, came with enough toner to last the rest of my life! Compare that to ink jets that eat their ink cartridges even if you never use it. I had a Brother that would clean itself at 2:00 in the morning so much that it would run out of ink just from cleaning itself...
I have this printer called the brother hl-2270dw and it is very nice, never failed with a jam or network issue and doesn’t complain about toner, very customizable settings as well, made in 2005 or something I love this thing more than any printer other than the hp desk jet from the 1980s
pc or desktop retires,while mobile devices some stays longer, while others run cheap materials.. this trend will continue.. its not the printers output but that documents availability is the only thing that counts.. great content.
I have a cannon Mf240 it is like the best printer I ever used. Idk how cannon make money on it. The printer is fast never jams the ink is cheap even if bought from cannon at least compared to hp. It is like 50 bucks for a black ink cartridge that will last forever over hp which is more expensive for less ink and a much worse printer
Bought a Brother TP720D and it's been printing, scanning and photocopying like crazy for more than 3 years now. Hella beat up for our home office use case.
I've had five printers in my years of computer ownership. An HP 648C (would not recommend, required special expensive cartridge to print better photos and still looked terrible), 940C (far better, but still a wonky design). Then a Canon PIXMA IP3000 that I honest to God found in the trash and resurrected which happened to print extremely well and I only ever had minor issues with. An Epson XP-640 All in one, which prints beautifully but I've noticed has a fixed printhead. And finally my Canon PIXMA Pro-10. It's a beast. Prints well, and prints huge, but the DRM for the ink can go! 10 cartridges, and the printer is constantly cleaning itself. Even pro printers are not immune to being terrible with ink.
My father fixes and rents printers to local business and some small printing centers at schools. He always gets called at least twice a week for a problem with the printers (not that it generates more revenue as the tech service is included with the lease for the printer) like there is always something that just stops working with the printers. Not even here at our own house we are excepted from having troubles with them, being a minor mechanical malfunction or the thing just refusing to connect to the wi-fi for no reason.
I did research before I purchased my current printer, a CANON TS9020. It uses ink tanks instead of cartridges. It even prints just fine on non-branded ink tanks and I only have to replace the tanks that run out, instead of all of them everytime.
I had an ancient inkjet salvaged from a dumpster that was probably from the early 90's. That thing lasted me over a decade and the best part is that it didn't do that thing where it checked for new cartridges so i could just refill the old ones myself. I'm guessing it worked 25 years with basically no maintenance aside from cleaning the jet head with a paper towel dipped in rubbing alcohol a couple of times a year. It didn't even break down, i just eventually stopped using it. I placed it near the dumpster at my apartment and someone snatched it up within an hour. It's probably still being used.
We've known for a while that HP, EPSON and other manufacturers of printers make the majority of their money on ink. What I don't understand is why these companies slap these printers together so dysfunctionally, even if a little quality control may cost them money. I assume they could make money by using $10 worth of parts and labor to sell a printer in store for $100+ that they pocket, assuming we don't return such dysfunctional printer for a refund. However, even though EPSON only got a couple hundred dollars manufacturing the two printers that I used between 1998 through 2021, I spent hundreds more on ink-BECAUSE THOSE PRINTERS PRINTED (therefore using a lot of ink)! When I got my 3rd EPSON last year, they not only forfeited that $200 I paid for it (since I had to return it to the store after it stopped printing), but how much did EPSON make on ink that I never bought refills for, since this printer stopped printing (jamming instead)? It didn't even use the content of the ink tanks it came with before it stopped printing for good. Am I the only one who feels that WiFi set-up only increases the user's vulnerability to cyber attacks? Since I only print from the desk top computer I use which is next to the printer, it seems to me that the WiFi complexity only disables these printers from doing what they are built for-which is printing. Am I the only one who feels that printer manufacturers could sell more ink at profit to make up for selling these printers at a loss?
I've been using Canon Pixma G2010 since 2019. It has an ink tanks that makes the cost of ink very cheap. I only refill the black and magenta ink tanks twice a year. I only refill the cyan and yellow colored inks once a year. Overall, I only spend $44 every year for inks. Yes, sometimes I experience paper jams, but its not because of the printer but because of the paper.
Unfortunately still relying on printing. My main supplier demands every order printed out, signed, scanned in and emailed back to them. They will not accept a signature done with a stylus on my notebooks touchscreen
I've never really had any problems and my brand evolution days are long over. My present printers are a result of that and are pretty old (one is 7 years old and the other is 8) and on the network, one wireless. One upstairs and the other downstairs and you can use either one from any of the computers. Both are upgrades from the same brands. I use both Canon and Epson machines that are top of the line. The canon acts as our photo printer although the Epson is just as good. As long as the network is up, they work. I can even print from my tablet, though rare. As a copier or even a photo printer, they'll both work stand alone and have nice screens. I don't need anymore than that so I'm quite happy with them and yes, ink is expensive. But ink always has been, I'm used to it. Luckily the heads in my machines are permanent and don't dry out, so I've never had to throw away ink/ head cartridges because of it. HP's are bad for that as are any of the the ink/print head combo machines. My cartridges only hold ink, on both the Canon and Epson machines. There are generic cartridges available for them but I won't use them. Been there, done that. I have excellent machines and the only problems I have is running out of paper. And yes, the Inkjet 500's were work horses, I had one back in the day and you couldn't wear them out. Ink consumption was just horrible. They're the reason generic inks were even invented.
I have an Epson pri ter and they have ink bottles that you can fill into the printer and it's lasts upto a year or two and it's amazing. Haven't experienced a lot of problems and overall I'm very happy it's been more than 4 years
Having the inkjets on the cartridge does allow getting a clean set of inkjet nozzles with each new ink cartridge. If the off-brand doesn't work, try a different off-brand. And getting clogs in the ink jets is solved by replacing the cartridge. For me, my printing volume was so low that I had to waste ink on a cleaning cycle most of the time when I went to print. I switched to laser printers a long time ago and haven't looked back. (I'm not interested in the "photo" color quality afforded by inkjet. Laser color quality is good enough for my printing purposes.)
Honestly hate the newer printers. Designed to fail is an understatement. Designed to not use even half the ink and some are microchipped to force on brand ink. We have an older full size office laser printer which works great after at least 15 years. They should just go back to making more expensive functional equipment rather than trying to nickel and dime people. I set up a new printer and within 50 pages it saying it was out of ink already. Replacement ink cost like 77$ and it ran out after 71 pages and refused to print anymore until a new one was installed. The one that came it after that someone else installed it and it won't even accept it. Haven't ordered any more ink and they just print on the office one like the rest of us.
I loved my old HP printers, they just worked. Then they started with cheaper plastic gears, firmware that will just brick the printer if you ever used 3rd party ink. Now HP is a company I avoid like the plague.
i have an old HP printer and without the company drivers, that thing is a work beast, as well as a canon printer that we actually found on the side of the road. i had to fix an issue with a ribbon but printers just works, empty or full cartridges, they just keep going
I have a HP M281FDW color duplex multifunction laser printer with wireless, scanner and fax. It's been reliable for the past five years and it's going strong
I have a xerox printer from 2010. Xerox don't even make it anymore yet they still try and charge $180 for black toner. I buy a refill and chip replacement for less than $40 on eBay. Can't even do that with printers nowadays.
I buy HP Deskjet 500 along with my first PC, a Acer 386DX PC. Yes this printers like a workhorse, I'm still using this printer after upgrading a new PC twice. New printer now like a trash, broken component, have a ink protect, regular component degradation, ROM reset, etc. Now I'm still using a Epson L210 (still working like a workhorse). you can fill with cheap ink, just do a easy printer resetter after 5.000 page print.
Weird that you included hand copying, the printing press, and early photocopiers, but you skipped completely over home computer printers before the inkjet. There were a lot of printers that were good for what they did that existed in the daisy wheel and dot matrix spaces, as well as laser technology that ran alongside inkjet for a very long time. Even today, a simple black and white laser printer will cost you full price up front and the toner for it is cheap, with only six parts of the process inevitably wearing out - four of them are in the toner and the other two are in a toolless user-replaceable cartridge. That's one reason inkjet printers often have the heads in the replacement ink cartridges, by the way. They can wear out quickly, and for best performance need to be replaced. That's one reason remanufactured cartridges have lower quality, they're using worn-out parts past their prime. Which isn't bad if you don't need print shop quality documents at all times, in exchange for a significant savings. I've got a cheap used b&w laser printer from the mid-2000s that I have remanufactured toner cartridges for, with a total cost (minus paper and electricity) of less than us$100 and I expect it to be outputting high quality documents for another decade to come. I also have a lesser-used color inkjet multifunction device when I need color, and yes it's a pain to work with. It's so cranky that, even though it has ethernet, usb, and wifi, I find the way to get the least resistance printing and scanning is to just virtually "print" my documents to PDF and load them on a USB stick, and to scan to a USB stick, bypassing network or PC communication methods altogether.
I love the printer I have. But it’s an old black and white laser printer. I find those have the least issues. The ink is expensive, but it doesn’t dry out and stuff. If you absolutely need to print, oook around for a used laser printer.
HP LaserJet P1505n my favorite black and white compact printer. It can sit for a year without printing and the toner won't dry up. Can be found under $100, toner cartridge found for $20. Had mine over 15 years, no fuss. I once tried a Brother printer - worst customer experience ever. It's wild how IBM was sued for about 13 years for bundling (1969 - 1982), then Microsoft was also under trial (1996, browser/OS bundling) and now all the major corps do it as standard practice, and our government is too weak to do anything about it (I know it's not weakness - rather they profit from it and aren't doing their duty that is to help encourage healthy competition).
They probably didn't realize that the price of silver is lower than the price of a silver coin. They probably just looked up the price of silver and the price of a silver eagle popped up. But market rates of silver are at like $23 per oz.
You’re talking about inkjet printers. I bought a.color laser printer five years ago and it is still at 60%. I probably printed about 1500 pages at this point. I found some cartridges in Walmart in the clearance section for five dollars each. I probably will be using this thing for the rest of my life because I bought every cartridge that was there, and it was probably about six of them.
For me not the jamming paper or any mechanical feature is the issue On softwer side it's so hard to connect to Wifi, to PC, hard to handle settings, which I assume wouldn't be so much more expensive to make it better.
I don't understand the business model because I don't think I have never had an inkjet printer last into its 3rd round of ink. This model of selling at a loss still requires enough reliability in the printer to last level long enough to spend enough on ink to achieve profitability.
My Epson L360 3in1 printer broke 2 months after the 2 year warranty. Cost $15 to repair in a country where it is 3 day minimum wage. After that, it didn't break again for 5 years so far.
How appropriate, I took delivery of a new Epson ET-8500 printer today, after I got sick and tired of the cartridges in my old HP drying out if they weren't used often enough. £15 for a cartridge I then have to throw away after having used it from new for maybe 10 pages a month ago? No thanks, that's more than even Xerox's pricing! Now I have ink tanks, duplex printing, printing right to the edge of an A4 sheet, a flatbed scanner, wifi so I can put it in a more convenient location and print/scan via my phone, and it's about 10x faster than my old printer with higher quality. So maybe there is *some* innovation happening in this space. Given how much faster and more convenient it is I can see myself printing a lot more for the kids instead of putting it off for fear of an hour's troubleshooting.
as someone who prints for a living, i have to say that this video is pretty one sided and not very well researched get yourself a basic laser printer (exactly like that very first Xerox machine operated by a chimpanzee) and none of these things are an issue. the fact is simply that the printer is the very last analog device in your office, and in many offices is also the very last machine with moving parts. The expectation we have when we see perfect images on beautiful screens simply doesnt translate to what printers can do. And in the professional world, printers are about as reliable as your car. My company couldnt run profitable as an industry if my machines behaved the way you describe. it really is one single thing: Ink Jet Printers. DONT BUY THEM. and even this is changing, as the actual print industry, is moving to ink jet printers in the digital space. This will have effects on consumer products.
Our HP printer didnt allow non HP ink at all. It would either completely refuse to print or mess up the printing. Same thing was tried with HP ink which is significantly heftier in price than off brand one and it worked. Now we own a Canon and haven't had issues with it. I did read about manipulation of the products so they stop working after 100 thousand pages for example so u need to buy a new printer. Some law has striken that idea
Switched to laser 10 years ago and it's been great. No printer issues, the printer just works and is available to print every time you need it. It just showed me how printer companies had ruined inkjet printers for profit.
I recently installed a generic driver for my HP all in one printer by accident. suddenly this thing can print even when the cartridges are "empty" and even scan over wireless without needing an account or their software running on my pc.
This was indeed the best mistake I ever did.
I recently bought an HP ink jet printer. I print about 5 pages per month - literally. I hardly ever print anything. After two months the printer started telling me it was low in ink. I only print black. So 10 black pages and you're low on ink? Really? It's been about 6 months now and I'm still printing with low ink. Looks fine.
@@bobdinitto The first cartridge is like 1/3 of the capacity of a normal cartridge. So yes it is possible. I think i managed to get like 25 pages from mine
The worst is if the ink uses button cell batteries on their security chips instead of cheaper RFID. Most people will buy two sets of black and color ink and even if you've never opened the package after a few months the battery drains and the ink "expires". Double bonus is that even if the stores don't sell the stock it's purchased they're now forced to buy more stock anyway!!!
@@bobdinitto if it helps, the option for it appeared after I installed PDF24 creator. There might be another way to make it visible, but idk.
@Usman Hassan Probably the one that comes with the operating system? On Apple devices, that would be the generic AirPrint driver, on Windows, it would be the one that comes as part of it. Don’t know about Android or ChromeOS.
Rule number one when you are using printer:
1. Don’t show your fear when printing. If you are in hurry or desperate, they will print utterly slow.
Rule number two:
Make it learn to fear YOU
I had it done to me when I was printing out the engineering drawings to show the machinist.
3. No fear needed, your already out of ink.
@@larrbaII That's when you rip out the cartilage, RAM it back in, slam the lid down with a vengeance and DEMAND it print.
Works every time.
Make your printer fear you.
@@christopherderasmo5041 O.K. i regress. -- get a cannon printer.
I work in the IT industry. Hating printers comes with the territory.
Let alone the fact that said printers are usually operated by absolute tech buffoons who think "Hey, let's try to fix it ourselves with blunt force before calling IT!". Apparently you can insert USB-A the wrong way if you really want to and then wonder why your device doesn't work. First level support can be absolutely hilarious.
Paperless office is the solution. Or at least use less paper.
I work in IT. I have to tell people do not connect your printer over wireless. You will end up losing the connection and you'll have to go through the wizard again. I always tell people connect via ethernet if you can. Then I go in and change the port from the WSD port as this will lose connection, I switch the port to an IP address you will never really have issues. Printers are a pain.
USB cable for the win bro
@@benjaminsmith9943 I've had similar experiences with USB even, the only thing that I've ran into that works the best is the Network Port, yes for USB you can unplug it and plug it back in and that usually works but network port by far has less issues.
I’ve been in the exact same boat for networked printers, however using this method when you can’t Ethernet a printer still works pretty well. (Not to say I prefer it)
Ugh, dredging up some ptsd inducing memories for me...
the HP LaserJet 1012/1015 and 1020 was the pinnacle of printer technology.... cheap printer, cheap ink, never failed, no paper jam. There is one in the family running for almost 20 years now. From there with ethernet/wifi printers, the whole industry went down the hill.
I haven't yet found a model or a family of printers for colored documents or photos (yes I am who still prints them), that I will be happy as with my LaserJet 1012 printing black and white documents.
my friend thats my experience as well. one from 2005 psc 1214 in his last breath but was an amazing printer for 100 euros
My parents have had a beige one since before I was born and it's still going strong to this day
Can it print color?
HP LaserJet 4 (from the early 90s. These things worked for nearly 2 decades in business environments)
Epson was a game changer when they introduced those ink tanks that you simply pour ink to the printer and it works. HP and Canon wasn't excited about it at first, but eventually they felt the pressure and produced the ink tanks.
That's right. Epson with their eco tank was a game changer. I used to spend a fortune on ink cartridges. Even HP would make their cartridges to expire. So, the ones you bought on sale would expire and you won't be able to use them after some time. And don't even think of buying generic ones, because they won't work. Or they will work for a while until HP will force an update on the printer, and the generic cartridges would stop working. I bought the Epson 3750 model a couple of years ago and I'm still using the ink that came in the box. As the video said, we are printing less and less these days. Back in the days, you'd have to first print something out, then sign, scan it. These days most legal documents come via Docusign that doesn't require printing.
It was started by users doing the modding, they mod the printer ink cartridge, adding external ink tank, and tubes that connect the two. The practice was so popular that more tech savvy people even offering services to mod the printer in such way, and yes Epson eventually learn about it.
Its not that Epson didn't try to stop such practice, but rather they can't do that legally.
Can't beat em? Join em! Thus Epson eventually came up with their own version in form of Eco Tank.
Epson did however have their clandestine revenge by means of silent firmware updates. Before the updates the cartridge will query the status of ink sensor to check if the cartridge have enough ink to do the printing operation. After the silent updates the cartridge behavior changes instead of sensor status its counts how many ink has been sprayed after the counter exceed certain value the driver will start giving "Low Ink Warning" and eventually "No Ink Warning". This not an issue for non modified cartridge, but looks very BS in modded printer.
@@rashidisw ooh yah you are right. I remember seeing those vids on TH-cam, people doing all those modifications. And it worked very well.
How their printheads are performing though? I heard of many units suffering print head failure after a year or two usage. If that's the case it does negate the savings made. Right now I use a cheap HP inkjet with 3rd party cartridges, which are literally 1/3 of the price of the originals and the price per page is around that of a laser printer
The advantage of Epson too, at least where I live, Epson has a factory here so ink bottles are not that expensive. About $6 per 90ml bottle. Each bottle last 1500 pages compare to catridges' 200 pages.
Just FYI: The device in the thumbnail is NOT a printer 😅
He did it on purpose to get more viewer interaction! :)
More specifically, it's a type writer.
Yeah hahaha. Type writer just looked better and it does have printing functionally
Well technically it’s still printing the letters
The IBM Selectric typewriter was one of the first digital to analogue printers and often connected to IBM mainframe computers to print code listings, especially APL code listings.
So strictly speaking... It was more of a printer than most others.
A (Not so) Fun Fact: my color HP printer runs out of cyan when I only print black and white most of the time. When I email HP about this, they said that the printers are designed in such a way that it also uses color inks while printing in black to form a perfect black. So I need perfect black just to read some words on the document, and the printer just stops printing even when black full but not the other 3 (cyan, magenta, yellow)
That is the most perfect description of how they make their money EVER
Just change to 'black only' in settings.
Or remove the colour ink catridge it always works
@DJ_ 200 mine will work with an empty color cartridge but won't work without a cartridge.
Not sure what the problem is. You can change to black only in the settings, and get a worse quality black that is probably fine for your use case. To get a color that looks good as a black, you do actually need to use other colors. Try it yourself.
This seems hyper focused on inkjet personal printers. Laser printers work just fine and toner is pretty cheap per page.
Also, he skipped dot matrix printers. Granted I have no idea how much of a difference to the story they would've made, but it seems to me that they should've at least gotten a mention.
@@MrLancar SCREECH SKREECH SKA-REECH
@@MrLancar Little to no difference to the story, probably, as the time when dot matrix printers were *popular* was relatively short-lived, technologically speaking. They're still manufactured and available though: they're useful as a "permanent log" of transactions, such as for auditing what's going on with a fire alarm system, recording transactions sequentially in a banking system, etc. Great for auditing.
@@drewstemen9597 That they were still made and used even today came as a surprise, I must admit. I did some quick searching and saw that yes, indeed, you're correct. Also, the ink bands are cheap, to boot.
Not that I'd get one. As you say, they're a niche product, but it was still cool to see they're still around.
After buying so many ink printers, I gave up and bought a laser printer. Ink printers are a waste if you let it sit around for too long and some printers will waste the ink by "cleaning".
In my college, students who couldn't afford the textbook would print the entire pdf with the college printers
I'd argue that it's not about not affording the textbook, it's knowing it's not worth the money and you'll only be using small sections of it (even if the professor claims otherwise). Some people make college a game of last minute, late night studying. But many of us preferred the game of avoiding being robbed of money we didn't absolutely need to sacrifice just to jump through a hoop.
I literally would IPad photo an entire book 📕 at the library. Saved thousands.
Printing shops around my college have a photocopy of textbooks already that you just ask for the textbooks and they will make a photocopy of it for you for a fee.
@@Davidchendavidu can convert a Book in pdf though with cam scanner
@@Sunshine-jk9xd with pics and stuff too? No way - things keep getting better haha
As a former Quality Assurance at a major printer company (primarily Color laser printers), the biggest customers they cared about were banks. Also, laser better than ink, my laser is great and I bought it a decade ago for $100 and I only had to buy toner once.
Wholly agree with that sentiment regarding laser, my private little Dell c1660 may suffer from neglect, but over the past decade and change; whenever she was needed, she was there.
I think it's even still rocking the demo cartridges... come to think of it.
We just spent well over $150 on a printer, which has probably been used once or twice. I rarely need a hard copy for anything, it's mostly just a nice to have. And in this day and age where we are all trying to save money, we can always cut out the nice to haves and focus on needs.
If you need to print stuff at home, get a brother black and white printer.
They start at $100 at Walmart, they come with toner that lasts a while.
You can use 3rd part toner, no problem.
Toner doesn’t go bad like ink, as long as you don’t dump it out or get it wet, it’s fine.
I have one of the nicer models but the ex kept the cheaper one, both work great.
Seriously. Three years ago, I bought a Brother HL-L2320D, which is their base model b&w laser printer, for $80 on sale. I don't really print that much, roughly 1000 pages per year. Haven't had to replace toner. Zero errors. Zero paper jams. USB connection is always reliable. My previous inkjet printer would go through cartridges twice a year under the same printing frequency.
Ding ding ding we have a winner folks!
I have an HL-L2380DW Black/white printer/scanner. Works fine with my Mac over USB without even installing a driver!!
Windows has a driver that's easy to find. Cartridges last forever. I don't think it's *ever* jammed.
Friends don't let friends inkjet...
The K1ng is Speaking the truth.
If you want a printer because you use it a lot, get a laser. If you want a printer because you sometimes want a print, get a laser.
If you want a printer so you can print photos, you're mistaken: go to a photo shop instead.
I love Brother 520w. With airprint
Legend has it that when the band "Rage Against the Machine" came up with their name, the machine they were referring to was a printer.
Honestly the printer industry needs a disruption of some sort otherwise it's going out of hand, whenever I am in dire need of printing something, either the printer will not work or the ink has just vanished. I mean is it so hard to make a cartridge that can be locked when not in use to save the ink?
There has been a disruption for years now. Ecotanks last for about 3000 pages of 4 bottles of cheap ink . Bought one about 4 years ago now and only refilled it once for about £30 .
How? You hear the video explained that it will cost $1000 to manufacture a printer. Do you want to buy that, or to "buy" $100 printer and pay in "installment" by buying their expensive inks?
Bought a brother MFC L2712DW and I'm having a really good experience. Everything just works, never had a paper jam in over a year and I can use third party toner cartridges no problem at much lower price than original cartridges. Only gripe I have is with the mobile app, it's pretty slow.
Other than that can't be happier with a laser printer, I'd never buy ink.
Brother makes a great printer. Had a Brother ink jet printer that worked great for years. Only upgraded to laser when COVID hit and there were 4 of us in the house printing stuff for work and school, but we stuck with Brother. I can print effortlessly from my computer, phone, or tablet.
I like my Brother DCP 750CW so much that I bought two more from eBay. They accept cheap aftermarket inks and never go wrong! Hardly the fastest printing, though!
We have a little Epson that I predicted would die in about two years, then it went unused for a whole year because of the pandemic... So I rightfully assumed it was done for, since it was blocked as expected, thing is... It started to print better with a little more use, and three years after "recovering" it's still working fine, with barely any use (ink tanks have only been refilled ONCE), i don't get it...
My Epson printer saw a lot of duty, and lasted 10 years. The next printer was another Epson and... It's still working GREAT. 4-ink, but you can get great quality prints in glossy papers and normal ones. Ink isn't that expensive on EcoTank. They're also very dumb devices, you just connect it to your network and you can use it in any device!
I can't relate to all that "printers are hard to use" message at the beginning, sounds more like he's talking about a specific brand of crappy printers. Also known as HP.
My original Epson FX80 was built to last 100 years, those things were built like a tank!
Can it make hole in the wall?
Fx80 i belive was a color dot matrix printer?
I once read a meme about the music band „Rage against the machine“. Meme was „They not specified about what the machine was but I reckon that was a printer“
I used to manage Electronics for Walmart. During Black Friday sales it was not uncommon for certain customers to purchase two or three printers, then just throw the printers away and use the free ink that came with them, because that was cheaper than buying ink
I did something similar.
for years now i just print my document at printing shops,
consumer stuff is just trash, and the good appliences are too expensive
in most printer shops in poland one can print 1 page for $0.02-$0.05
its cheaper than just buying ink, let alone the printer :P
I used to hate printers and bleed money on ink as my wife's work requires making a ton of hard copies of paperwork.
Then I read about and bought an Epson Ecotank ET-4800.
Apart from one gripe - the document feeder for scanning a lot of pages at once can be picky sometimes, other than that it solved every issue I had with printers. I've had it over 3 years and: 1. I *still* haven't ran out of color ink - yes I'm still on the freebie ink that came with the printer and I've replaced the black ink exactly one time and it cost me about $10. We've printed approx ~10,000 pages on this thing. 2. The main printer interface has never once jammed. Ever.
How's that planned obsolescence sponge working in your Epson?
@@UltimatePerfection where I live, Epson imposes software obsocelence, as in the hardware still works but the firmware doesn't allow one to print beyond 10000 pages. Reached that limited once and cost $15 to repair where that is equivalent to 3 day minimum wage.
@@rzpogi That's why I chose Brother. Good thing I have learned about the Epson's spongegate and that firmware limit before I have bought a printer because I was originally going to go with Epson. But after I got that knowledge, I went with Brother InkBenefit. Saved money too as Brother was cheaper (the specific model I went with was DCP-T420W).
@@UltimatePerfection I spent roughly ~$320 on printing hardware and ink in the year prior to buying it and have thus far gotten 3 years out of it for $260 (250 hardware $10 ink) so if it died tomorrow it would still be no contest the best printer I ever owned.
@@FormerRuling Trust me, Brother is better. And cheaper both in ink and hw.
we've had a canon printer for years now. Most of my printing are Amazon return labels, forms and coupons 😅. I now buy generic ink. Eventually it dries out whether it's cheap or the good stuff.
I remember back in time between 2005 to 2007, I had a very regular Canon inkjet printer in my bookshop, that I configured to print as drafts, filling cartridges using 3rd party cheap bottle of black ink, it was spitting about 30ppm (I think it was 28), and quality was good enough that no customer complained about.
What is stopping other companies from making cheap and not terrible 3rd-party ink?
Just hard to find really. It’s mainly just Chinese knockoffs who are doing it rn
3rd party ink is easy to find. Hard is refill the cartridge our find a 3rd party compatible
The printer makers specifically do the best they can to make it difficult, not just from a technical perspective, but also from a legal perspective in the form of patents etc. They're engineered to such precision, to *require* such precision, that it takes a lot of investment to set up manufacturing of such devices. The ink itself is the easy part, it's deconstructing the barriers that the original manufacturer puts in place to make it difficult. That's why most decent third party inks are remanufactured cartridges that strip parts from used official cartridges, and require a supply of "empty" carts in order to sell their products. Any time you see a bin generously offering to recycle your used carts, it's not out of the goodness of their heart and a love for the environment, it's to get raw materials their business depends on.
I have a Brother printer (laser color) since 2009, it never fail, still works. Just stop using printers that require ink.
Most in jet printers have a sponge that it squirts ink into when you turn it on... eventully after so many purges the printer will brick and insist that you have it serviced by a factory tech.
Printers always knew that you are in a hurry
LOL!!!!
My problem with printers is the 'new' operating systems from Microsoft. Each of the (forced on me) Operating System will not support my laser printers. I lost the use of my Docuprint, Xerox, and Oki (each at 500USD to 1000USD) because they were each "Not Supported". They work fine. I stopped using Ink Jet printers because of the drying out, striping, colour registration problems.
Mine MP 150 is like 15 years old and still kicking. Love that fella.
Loved my BJC-250 until it became technologically obsolete and I couldn't hook it up to a new PC and couldn't find ink for it....
Printers can be still useful for some things, But not as necessary to use as they once where.
Hard to find a good quality printer to print tabletop games pieces and etc.
Why didn't you include ink tank printers? Brands like Brother sell ink tank printers that are reliable and lasts for years, and have ink tanks that can be refilled by third party ink.
Spend the extra money an buy a laser jet printer. Toner doesn't dry up, and majority of cheap desktop inkjet printers sold are being used to print text documents.
"Drop a like if you trust computer more than yourself"
Dear Harry,
I liked this video because I drop a like on all of your videos.
Should have I followed your indication above, I shouldn't have liked your video, because myself (and everybody else) DO NOT trust the computer more than myself!
Computers lose data, break down, they develop problems just like printers do.
I have a laser printer that I can trust, but that cost some money because it is actually well made. You are right, Inkjet printers are at their sunset unless they abandon the Gillette sale model.
Thanks for the video...
Fair enough
My Epson 1800 photo stopped working after 8 years or so working. I decoded the error code. It said that after the micro in the printer reaches a certain number of paper sheets passing, it locks up for a maintenance change of the spittoon. This was not customer accessible. Also the link said that they will sell me the reset disc for a good sum, but they will discontinue the ink line. As a retired electronics tech, this was insulting. Planned obsolescence. The new printer cost just a little more than the reset disc. The inks, still expensive.
MVP is the sad reality of much more than printers 😢
😔
@@LogicallyAnswered hi, could you logically answer how ubiquitous is the MVP approach along with it's pros and cons? I suspect many wannabe biz people still take for granted that a MVP is the holy grail. And that the invisible hand exists
*CONSUMER* printers will die, but professional printers will always stay. Consumers will have to go to print shops to print anything.
Last year I learned the hard way why you should always flick through a ream of paper to make sure nothing is trapped in it before you put it in the printer. Some plastic, an insect, or something else was burned around one edge of the heat roller so now pages come out embossed with the toner not fixed. This is despite my best efforts to access it and clean it.
I finally bought a laser printer and magically the problem went away.
Printer Rule No 1:
Never buy a ink printer.
Please make a video about Xerox "giving away" all those inventions. I think we'd love to watch that!!
Already have a video about that :)
My first printer was a commodore printer...A Dot Matrix monstrosity that made a horrendous racket but worked very well for what it was. My second printer was a color printer when these things were very new. It cost me 800$ and worked very well but was horrendously slow. My third printer was an 80$ Brother printer/scanner back when these were sort of a novelty. Never got the scanner part to work and it barely printed but it was cheap. We had an HP at work that went around the counter twice meaning it printed two million papers. It was amazing. So, My next printer was an HP I bought for 55$ and it's been amazing. It's had some hiccups but mostly works great. The problem is it's slow to print. It's 15 years old I loath the day when I will have to replace it. My father got a com,puter a few years ago and wanted a printer. I recommended an HP and it worked once when I was there and then no more. So we got a replacement and it worked once. We got another replacement and it worked once...I'm not kidding. Then I bought him a laser printer (no color), got it set up and it worked a few times. The internet guy came and "fixed" his internet when I was not there, now I can only get the printer to work when it's wired up. I can't get it to work wireless anymore. I really am not looking forward to buying a new printer. The problem is that I only print maybe three times a year but when I need to print, I need it to work NOW! It's annoying.
I guess the internet guy put some protection on the wifi router that won't work with the printer firmware. Or he just forgot to connect it to the printer.
heh! I still have a MPS1230 Commodore printer (it's a re-badged Olivetti DM100) and it still works fine with my C64 and it's a dual interface model so it also works on a PC with a parallel port configured as a generic Epson FX80.
printers are terrible, HP seems to be ahead that they last a few years, but ink prices suck, and setting up some models on a network isn't fun, setting your printer in draft mode apparently saves ink, if you don't care about quality,
It seems printers haven't really advanced, one can't really add anything new to something that prints, scans and copies. The only thing (correct me if I am wrong) is HP doesn't like it now when one uses generic cartridges or is it the ink refills, as they released a firmware update to prevent it from use.
This is a very interesting video. I've been using computers for nearly 35 years and have bought probably dozens of printers. The last printer I bought was a Dell 7130. This is for my home office and not a cheap one.
I bought it in 2010 and I think I paid somewhere around $2,500 for it. It's a monster of a printer and has a monthly duty cycle duty cycle of 50,000 pages.
One issue is that cartridges for it are extremely expensive. If I use the Dell branded cartridges it will cost me nearly $1,500 to refill it. I found I can buy knockoffs for about a quarter that. Interesting thing is I haven't bought color toner for It for the last 10 years as I don't print a ton. But luckily being a laser printer the ink doesn't go bad as there is no ink to actually plastic.
I gave up years ago trying use inkjet printers and keep them busy enough where the the ink doesn't dry out.
The most interesting think I’ve down with a printer is do those hand scans but with lego characters
It's funny they even got people saying "counterfeit". They're just third-party cartridges, they're not trying to trick people into thinking they're from the oem.
For me it isn't the hardware or the cost of ink, it's the software. Windows still notoriously gets stuck on print jobs with no ability to cancel without doing stupid troubleshooting like opening up services to stop the print spooler, deleting jobs manually from the windows subfolder where they live. They'll also show up as offline suddenly and sometimes you have to change settings in both the windows print dialogue and the software.
low end home printers might go away at some point- but high-end commercial printers aren't going anywhere, they will be around for a LONG time...
Got a second-hand HP LaserJet from 1998, printer says it had printed 60k+ pages, I've printed some 10k pages in that 25 years and had to change the toner just two times. Inkjets are a scam.
Always buy laser printers. Far cheaper to run than ink. Buy office grade laser printers.
Instead of buying a printer, it is much cheaper to go and get it printed out in a local internet cafe shop if you are just a home based user. Documents can be stored online instead of being printed and it is rare to have a huge requirement of printing stuff unless you do it for business.
One of the biggest "designed to fail" "features" of printers of any type that I've found is they are constantly changing the mechanical formfactor of the ink/toner cartridges. Then they eventually stop making the older designs rendering a functioning printer nominally obsolete because the consumables aren't available anymore. Eventually even the 3rd party ink makers stop making the formfactor (either the market gets too small for even them, or the availability of the casings for refilling dry up).
I don't get it. Without a hard copy of the document, how do you know it is legit and not a made up document?
That's one of the reason why "paperless office" dream of the 1990s is still .. a dream.
Honestly, today most people don't need printers anyways, they should go back to more expensive quality products and cheap ink. It's good enough if people can print something at library, work or school if they really need to. Consumer printers frankly should become luxury thing it is, or thing for small business, say printing photos, art or something where again it would be would make sense to sell more expensive quality product and cheap ink. Both for consumer and business.
Overall, I do think cheap consumer printers are totally unncessary in today's world.
Humm, well, I think you did show a good point regarding the printers being sold without profit as the manufacturers aim to recover that on ink/tonner; it also explains why models that use external ink tanks are usually twice the price of the conventional ones. BUT I don't think the product quality and improvement is frozen on time, no... actually, most manufacturers are selling models that are from marginally to substantially better from each other and this is a strong evidence of very alive R&D departments over such brands. Drivers updating are also, in my opinion, addressing problems much better since the HP 692C, which sold like water (I had one). And the ink cost, in my country at least, is slightly being reduced if we consider the cumulated inflation of decades. The HP692C ink cost was 55, some 20 years ago, and today the Epson XP231 is around 45, even though 55 worth around 350 today. So... no, I don't agree that printers are on top of headaches regarding electronics.
There's a magical solution called a black/white laser printer.
I’ve given up on printers too and haven’t owned one in the last few years. Got frustrated with expensive ink, clogged printheads, flimsy construction and so on. I’m so much happier just taking the trouble to walk to a nearby print shop the rare times I have to, not forgetting as well being able to free up space in my study and getting rid of the bulky eyesore.
I haven't have printers for more than a decade. Maybe because I can use my office printer instead. 🤣
A 100$ small black laser printer is the best bet for documents. Fotos can be bought online.
I bought a laser for $59 Canadian from Best Buy, came with enough toner to last the rest of my life! Compare that to ink jets that eat their ink cartridges even if you never use it. I had a Brother that would clean itself at 2:00 in the morning so much that it would run out of ink just from cleaning itself...
I've given up on printers. As an IT person I hate printers with a passion and I hate HP printers the most. Good riddence indeed.
Hahaha
I have this printer called the brother hl-2270dw and it is very nice, never failed with a jam or network issue and doesn’t complain about toner, very customizable settings as well, made in 2005 or something I love this thing more than any printer other than the hp desk jet from the 1980s
pc or desktop retires,while mobile devices some stays longer, while others run cheap materials.. this trend will continue.. its not the printers output but that documents availability is the only thing that counts.. great content.
I have a cannon Mf240 it is like the best printer I ever used. Idk how cannon make money on it. The printer is fast never jams the ink is cheap even if bought from cannon at least compared to hp. It is like 50 bucks for a black ink cartridge that will last forever over hp which is more expensive for less ink and a much worse printer
Bought a Brother TP720D and it's been printing, scanning and photocopying like crazy for more than 3 years now. Hella beat up for our home office use case.
As a Printer Engineer Ink Jets are Unpreparable on purpose
I've had five printers in my years of computer ownership. An HP 648C (would not recommend, required special expensive cartridge to print better photos and still looked terrible), 940C (far better, but still a wonky design). Then a Canon PIXMA IP3000 that I honest to God found in the trash and resurrected which happened to print extremely well and I only ever had minor issues with. An Epson XP-640 All in one, which prints beautifully but I've noticed has a fixed printhead. And finally my Canon PIXMA Pro-10. It's a beast. Prints well, and prints huge, but the DRM for the ink can go! 10 cartridges, and the printer is constantly cleaning itself. Even pro printers are not immune to being terrible with ink.
My father fixes and rents printers to local business and some small printing centers at schools. He always gets called at least twice a week for a problem with the printers (not that it generates more revenue as the tech service is included with the lease for the printer) like there is always something that just stops working with the printers. Not even here at our own house we are excepted from having troubles with them, being a minor mechanical malfunction or the thing just refusing to connect to the wi-fi for no reason.
I did research before I purchased my current printer, a CANON TS9020. It uses ink tanks instead of cartridges. It even prints just fine on non-branded ink tanks and I only have to replace the tanks that run out, instead of all of them everytime.
I have a 15 yr old cannon printer and it is still going strong. Sometimes the old tech just works better.
I had an ancient inkjet salvaged from a dumpster that was probably from the early 90's. That thing lasted me over a decade and the best part is that it didn't do that thing where it checked for new cartridges so i could just refill the old ones myself. I'm guessing it worked 25 years with basically no maintenance aside from cleaning the jet head with a paper towel dipped in rubbing alcohol a couple of times a year.
It didn't even break down, i just eventually stopped using it. I placed it near the dumpster at my apartment and someone snatched it up within an hour. It's probably still being used.
We've known for a while that HP, EPSON and other manufacturers of printers make the majority of their money on ink. What I don't understand is why these companies slap these printers together so dysfunctionally, even if a little quality control may cost them money. I assume they could make money by using $10 worth of parts and labor to sell a printer in store for $100+ that they pocket, assuming we don't return such dysfunctional printer for a refund. However, even though EPSON only got a couple hundred dollars manufacturing the two printers that I used between 1998 through 2021, I spent hundreds more on ink-BECAUSE THOSE PRINTERS PRINTED (therefore using a lot of ink)! When I got my 3rd EPSON last year, they not only forfeited that $200 I paid for it (since I had to return it to the store after it stopped printing), but how much did EPSON make on ink that I never bought refills for, since this printer stopped printing (jamming instead)? It didn't even use the content of the ink tanks it came with before it stopped printing for good.
Am I the only one who feels that WiFi set-up only increases the user's vulnerability to cyber attacks? Since I only print from the desk top computer I use which is next to the printer, it seems to me that the WiFi complexity only disables these printers from doing what they are built for-which is printing.
Am I the only one who feels that printer manufacturers could sell more ink at profit to make up for selling these printers at a loss?
I've been using Canon Pixma G2010 since 2019. It has an ink tanks that makes the cost of ink very cheap. I only refill the black and magenta ink tanks twice a year. I only refill the cyan and yellow colored inks once a year. Overall, I only spend $44 every year for inks. Yes, sometimes I experience paper jams, but its not because of the printer but because of the paper.
Unfortunately still relying on printing. My main supplier demands every order printed out, signed, scanned in and emailed back to them. They will not accept a signature done with a stylus on my notebooks touchscreen
I've never really had any problems and my brand evolution days are long over. My present printers are a result of that and are pretty old (one is 7 years old and the other is 8) and on the network, one wireless. One upstairs and the other downstairs and you can use either one from any of the computers. Both are upgrades from the same brands. I use both Canon and Epson machines that are top of the line. The canon acts as our photo printer although the Epson is just as good. As long as the network is up, they work. I can even print from my tablet, though rare. As a copier or even a photo printer, they'll both work stand alone and have nice screens. I don't need anymore than that so I'm quite happy with them and yes, ink is expensive. But ink always has been, I'm used to it. Luckily the heads in my machines are permanent and don't dry out, so I've never had to throw away ink/ head cartridges because of it. HP's are bad for that as are any of the the ink/print head combo machines. My cartridges only hold ink, on both the Canon and Epson machines. There are generic cartridges available for them but I won't use them. Been there, done that. I have excellent machines and the only problems I have is running out of paper. And yes, the Inkjet 500's were work horses, I had one back in the day and you couldn't wear them out. Ink consumption was just horrible. They're the reason generic inks were even invented.
Be great to have open firmware.
I have an Epson pri ter and they have ink bottles that you can fill into the printer and it's lasts upto a year or two and it's amazing. Haven't experienced a lot of problems and overall I'm very happy it's been more than 4 years
Having the inkjets on the cartridge does allow getting a clean set of inkjet nozzles with each new ink cartridge. If the off-brand doesn't work, try a different off-brand. And getting clogs in the ink jets is solved by replacing the cartridge. For me, my printing volume was so low that I had to waste ink on a cleaning cycle most of the time when I went to print. I switched to laser printers a long time ago and haven't looked back. (I'm not interested in the "photo" color quality afforded by inkjet. Laser color quality is good enough for my printing purposes.)
Honestly hate the newer printers. Designed to fail is an understatement. Designed to not use even half the ink and some are microchipped to force on brand ink. We have an older full size office laser printer which works great after at least 15 years. They should just go back to making more expensive functional equipment rather than trying to nickel and dime people. I set up a new printer and within 50 pages it saying it was out of ink already. Replacement ink cost like 77$ and it ran out after 71 pages and refused to print anymore until a new one was installed. The one that came it after that someone else installed it and it won't even accept it. Haven't ordered any more ink and they just print on the office one like the rest of us.
Great video! A rarely covered subject but an essential tool we all need.
ESSENTIAL tool WE ALL need? Is it 2023 as well where you're currently located? :D
2023 what does a year have to do with it
@@friddevonfrankenstein Ask your bank when they ask you to print, sign and upload a document.
I loved my old HP printers, they just worked.
Then they started with cheaper plastic gears, firmware that will just brick the printer if you ever used 3rd party ink.
Now HP is a company I avoid like the plague.
i have an old HP printer and without the company drivers, that thing is a work beast, as well as a canon printer that we actually found on the side of the road. i had to fix an issue with a ribbon but printers just works, empty or full cartridges, they just keep going
Back throughout the 1990s, I had the HP IIIP. It was just amazing, granted slightly slow to print. Very much regret tossing it.
I have a HP M281FDW color duplex multifunction laser printer with wireless, scanner and fax. It's been reliable for the past five years and it's going strong
I have a xerox printer from 2010. Xerox don't even make it anymore yet they still try and charge $180 for black toner. I buy a refill and chip replacement for less than $40 on eBay. Can't even do that with printers nowadays.
I buy HP Deskjet 500 along with my first PC, a Acer 386DX PC. Yes this printers like a workhorse, I'm still using this printer after upgrading a new PC twice.
New printer now like a trash, broken component, have a ink protect, regular component degradation, ROM reset, etc.
Now I'm still using a Epson L210 (still working like a workhorse). you can fill with cheap ink, just do a easy printer resetter after 5.000 page print.
The fact that 3D printers exist at a lower cost than the lifecycle of costs of ink is CRAZY!!!
Weird that you included hand copying, the printing press, and early photocopiers, but you skipped completely over home computer printers before the inkjet. There were a lot of printers that were good for what they did that existed in the daisy wheel and dot matrix spaces, as well as laser technology that ran alongside inkjet for a very long time. Even today, a simple black and white laser printer will cost you full price up front and the toner for it is cheap, with only six parts of the process inevitably wearing out - four of them are in the toner and the other two are in a toolless user-replaceable cartridge.
That's one reason inkjet printers often have the heads in the replacement ink cartridges, by the way. They can wear out quickly, and for best performance need to be replaced. That's one reason remanufactured cartridges have lower quality, they're using worn-out parts past their prime. Which isn't bad if you don't need print shop quality documents at all times, in exchange for a significant savings.
I've got a cheap used b&w laser printer from the mid-2000s that I have remanufactured toner cartridges for, with a total cost (minus paper and electricity) of less than us$100 and I expect it to be outputting high quality documents for another decade to come.
I also have a lesser-used color inkjet multifunction device when I need color, and yes it's a pain to work with. It's so cranky that, even though it has ethernet, usb, and wifi, I find the way to get the least resistance printing and scanning is to just virtually "print" my documents to PDF and load them on a USB stick, and to scan to a USB stick, bypassing network or PC communication methods altogether.
Funny how I got a printer ad from HP while I was watching it lol
It's sad that one day this tech will go away, but I still feel like theirs hope for it to stay alive.
I love the printer I have. But it’s an old black and white laser printer. I find those have the least issues. The ink is expensive, but it doesn’t dry out and stuff. If you absolutely need to print, oook around for a used laser printer.
HP LaserJet P1505n my favorite black and white compact printer. It can sit for a year without printing and the toner won't dry up. Can be found under $100, toner cartridge found for $20. Had mine over 15 years, no fuss. I once tried a Brother printer - worst customer experience ever. It's wild how IBM was sued for about 13 years for bundling (1969 - 1982), then Microsoft was also under trial (1996, browser/OS bundling) and now all the major corps do it as standard practice, and our government is too weak to do anything about it (I know it's not weakness - rather they profit from it and aren't doing their duty that is to help encourage healthy competition).
As a silver stacker… I can guarantee you Silver does not cost $34/oz. I wish. If it did, I would sell part of my stack to capitalize on it.
It hit that price in 2011
They probably didn't realize that the price of silver is lower than the price of a silver coin. They probably just looked up the price of silver and the price of a silver eagle popped up. But market rates of silver are at like $23 per oz.
You’re talking about inkjet printers. I bought a.color laser printer five years ago and it is still at 60%. I probably printed about 1500 pages at this point. I found some cartridges in Walmart in the clearance section for five dollars each. I probably will be using this thing for the rest of my life because I bought every cartridge that was there, and it was probably about six of them.
For me not the jamming paper or any mechanical feature is the issue
On softwer side it's so hard to connect to Wifi, to PC, hard to handle settings, which I assume wouldn't be so much more expensive to make it better.
I don't understand the business model because I don't think I have never had an inkjet printer last into its 3rd round of ink. This model of selling at a loss still requires enough reliability in the printer to last level long enough to spend enough on ink to achieve profitability.
Can anyone suggest a good scanner/printer. More emphasis on scanner.
Been using Brother B/W Laser for over a decade. The best I've ever used.
My Epson L360 3in1 printer broke 2 months after the 2 year warranty.
Cost $15 to repair in a country where it is 3 day minimum wage. After that, it didn't break again for 5 years so far.
How appropriate, I took delivery of a new Epson ET-8500 printer today, after I got sick and tired of the cartridges in my old HP drying out if they weren't used often enough. £15 for a cartridge I then have to throw away after having used it from new for maybe 10 pages a month ago? No thanks, that's more than even Xerox's pricing! Now I have ink tanks, duplex printing, printing right to the edge of an A4 sheet, a flatbed scanner, wifi so I can put it in a more convenient location and print/scan via my phone, and it's about 10x faster than my old printer with higher quality. So maybe there is *some* innovation happening in this space. Given how much faster and more convenient it is I can see myself printing a lot more for the kids instead of putting it off for fear of an hour's troubleshooting.
as someone who prints for a living, i have to say that this video is pretty one sided and not very well researched
get yourself a basic laser printer (exactly like that very first Xerox machine operated by a chimpanzee) and none of these things are an issue.
the fact is simply that the printer is the very last analog device in your office, and in many offices is also the very last machine with moving parts.
The expectation we have when we see perfect images on beautiful screens simply doesnt translate to what printers can do.
And in the professional world, printers are about as reliable as your car. My company couldnt run profitable as an industry if my machines behaved the way you describe.
it really is one single thing: Ink Jet Printers. DONT BUY THEM.
and even this is changing, as the actual print industry, is moving to ink jet printers in the digital space. This will have effects on consumer products.
Our HP printer didnt allow non HP ink at all. It would either completely refuse to print or mess up the printing. Same thing was tried with HP ink which is significantly heftier in price than off brand one and it worked. Now we own a Canon and haven't had issues with it. I did read about manipulation of the products so they stop working after 100 thousand pages for example so u need to buy a new printer. Some law has striken that idea
Switched to laser 10 years ago and it's been great. No printer issues, the printer just works and is available to print every time you need it. It just showed me how printer companies had ruined inkjet printers for profit.
I prefer laser printers but they are more expensive to purchase, yet cheaper to run.