[conspire] (somewhat OT) Epson (and other) inkjets
Rick Moen
rick at linuxmafia.com
Wed Jul 20 13:11:03 PDT 2005
Executive summary (as this came out much longer than intended):
o Inkjet printer mfrs. make mucho dinero from ink cartridges, little or
none on the printers themselves. Pervasive & evil abuse of customers ensues.
o Yr. correspondent does a small dance about this post being 90% off-topic.
Note: Stuff below is a bit off-topic, as Linux relevance is small,
and I might trigger a group rantfest about subscribers' awful computer
hardware.
<hat="listadmin">
Whatever, guy: The sky isn't likely to fall. Mailing list / Usenet
oldtimers' rule about off-topic digressions: They're welcome to the extent
they're some combination of short, amusing, or relatively infrequent.
</hat>
Anyhow....
I personally won't go near (i.e., consider purchasing) inkjet printers,
considering them a blatant scam to hook buyers on unacceptably expensive
supplies over the long term by selling them loss-leader cheap print
hardware in the short term. That key fact leads to so many subtle and
multifaceted ways in which the manufacturers screw their customer base
-- to drive expenses even _higher_ than you would think -- after initial
purchase that even the experts lose track of some of them.
Thread below is about Epson including a chip that makes the printer
_disable itself_ when the printer estimates that the "waste ink" bin and
pad need service, and _keeps_ the printer in that state even after
you've serviced it physically. (The printer exhibits this mode by
setting all indicator lights to flash, which is called a "service error"
or "maintenance request error". The official remedy for this is to take
your cheap printer to an Epson repair facility and, yes, pay them a huge
sum of money to (in essence) run some tiny proprietary utility to reset
the firmware counters.
Epson ink cartridges have _similar_ chips that must be somehow reset if
you aspire to refill your own cartridges (you rogue, you!); else they
won't work, either. The chips also prevent you from even _using_ the
bulk of the ink in the overpriced Epson-branded lawsuits. See lawsuit
about the latter: http://pcworld.about.com/news/Oct242003id113112.htm
Canny customers can find third-party utilities or hardware gadgets to
restore customer control over their printing (i.e., reset the
autodisable chips in printers and cartridges). But most people never
think to look for those, instead just believing the little pop-up
dialogue and thinking "Well, I guess the cartridge is out" or "Well,
I guess the printer needs fixing." Also, really, why should we put up
with -- let alone have to smoke out and defeat -- this kind of
manipulation at all? Isn't the idea supposed to be that when you pay
for a printer, you _own_ it?
My own mother bought an Epson colour inkjet as her sole printer against
my considered advice[1] (on the rather illogical grounds that she would
sometimes be scanning and printing old photos): My advice was to buy a
cheap B&W laser or LCD[2] printer for everyday, as they have much saner
costs for operating supplies, and a colour inkjet only if/when she
needed it to handle the rare cases of _needing_ colour.
As it turns out, even though she theoretically prints seldom, it costs
an ongoing small fortunate because printing always defaults to colour
(a default in Epson's Windows driver), and the printer refuses to do
anything whenever _either_ the B&W or colour cartridges runs low.
ObligatoryLinuxContent: The essential http://www.linuxprinting.org/
site includes maintainter Grant Taylor's expert advice on recommended
printers for Linux. Read those _before_ shopping.
...but note that even Taylor doesn't detail Epson's
customer-manipulating technological tricks, let alone how to overcome
them -- while recommending Epson colour inkjets for the quality of
output and Linux driver support.
[1] Not that Epson's inkjet competition is necessarily _less_ outrageous
in this area: http://timocharis.com/doodles/lexmark/ Abuse of
technology and the courts to protect manufacturers' outrageous
ink-refill profits is rampant. Thus my avoiding the whole product
category: Its underlying razor-blade-and-razor economic model pretty
much _guarantees_ that the supply / maintenance aftermarket will be
rigged.
[2] Same photocopier-based technology as laser printers use, but with an
inexpensive moving bar of tiny LCD lights as the light source that
sensitises the toner powder, instead of a more-expensive laser. Toner
cartridges end up being orders of magnitude cheaper than ink cartridges,
and the printers themselves tend to last much longer. You don't get
colour (however), except in extremely high-end laser printers.
----- Forwarded message from Brian Foster <blf at blf.utvinternet.ie> -----
To: Irish Linux Users Group <ilug at linux.ie>
X-Mailer: [nmh-1.1-RC1] MH.6.8, SUSE Linux 9.1
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:58:04 +0200
From: Brian Foster <blf at blf.utvinternet.ie>
Reply-To: Irish Linux Users Group <ilug at linux.ie>
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Lexmark Linux Printer/AIO Driver Developer's Kit
| Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 20:49:02 +0100
| From: Conor Daly <conor.daly_ilug at cod.homelinux.org>
|
| I fought with inkjet printers for a few years with
| sporadic and limited success. [ ... ]
I've never had any problem getting either Epson inkjet
I've owned to work, with both LPRng and CUPS. the best
approach seems to be CUPS plus Foomatic, and IIRC, the
Foomatic site reported Epson has committed to supplying
the necessary configuration stuff Foomatic needs; i.e.,
there is a very reasonable chance current and future
Epsons should "just work". both of my Epsons use USB,
which again has not been a problem.
at one time I did use some Epson software with one of
the printers, and that was a (small) annoyance, usually
when the printer went off-line for some reason.
the same situation is handled nicely by CUPS+Foomatic.
( also, at its core, the Epson software uses a non-Open
binary, similar to Nivida ??? arguably another reason to
use Foomatic. )
the only issue I've had is the first Epson eventually
exceeded what can only be called planned obsolescence,
with the firmware _deliberately_ refusing to allow me
to continue using the printer. despite being cheesed
off about that, I did ultimately buy another Epson,
this time a higher-end model. I subsequently found
that other people have made the same decision under
the same circumstances, so it's not quite as odd as
it sounds. besides, the bolshevik printer was a very
low-end (cheap!) model and by then also quite old.
my current CUPS+Foomatic configuration (which is just
straight-out-of-the-box SUSE 9.1) plays very nicely
with PostScript, GIMP, and `kprinter'. the printer
is an Epson Stylus C84 Photo, which cost me a bit
over 100 € when that particular model was brand-new.
Epson ink cartridges are, of course, where the real
cost is! ;-\ not sure if the printer would stand
up to heavy-duty use/abuse in an office, where _I_
would also go laser (no particular recommendation).
cheers!
-blf-
--
Experienced (20+ yrs) kernel/software Eng: | Brian Foster Montpellier,
??? Unix, embedded, &tc; ??? Linux; ??? doc; | blf at utvinternet.ie FRANCE
??? IDL, automated testing, process, &tc. | Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
Résumé (CV) http://www.blf.utvinternet.ie | http://www.stopesso.com
--
Irish Linux Users' Group
http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug/
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from Conor Daly <conor.daly_ilug at cod.homelinux.org> -----
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:04:40 +0100
From: Conor Daly <conor.daly_ilug at cod.homelinux.org>
To: Irish Linux Users Group <ilug at linux.ie>
Reply-To: conor.daly_ilug at cod.homelinux.org
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Lexmark Linux Printer/AIO Driver Developer's Kit
On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 06:58:04AM +0200 or so it is rumoured hereabouts,
Brian Foster thought:
> | Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 20:49:02 +0100
> | From: Conor Daly <conor.daly_ilug at cod.homelinux.org>
> |
> | I fought with inkjet printers for a few years with
> | sporadic and limited success. [ ... ]
>
> I've never had any problem getting either Epson inkjet
> I've owned to work, with both LPRng and CUPS. the best
The main issue I had was occasional incidents where it started printing
crap instead of what I wanted. It may have been to do with being on an
old external print server but it wasn't tractable.
> the only issue I've had is the first Epson eventually
> exceeded what can only be called planned obsolescence,
> with the firmware _deliberately_ refusing to allow me
> to continue using the printer. despite being cheesed
I heard of this. Essentially, it claims the waste ink pads are full and
you have to send it off for replacements. Now, you can _clean_ the ink
pads but the printer will still refuse to work. When I read that, I
decided Epson printers were not worth my time...
> I did ultimately buy another Epson,
> this time a higher-end model. I subsequently found
> that other people have made the same decision under
> the same circumstances, so it's not quite as odd as
> it sounds.
My assumption is that the other people were stuck in the old mode of:
"MS Windows has broken so I'll pay MS more money for an later version of
MS Windows..."
I chose the other mode:
"My Epson printer stopped working for me so I won't buy Epson printers..."
Conor
--
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>
Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
Hobbiton.cod.ie
12:57:34 up 2 days, 16:13, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.04, 0.00
--
Irish Linux Users' Group
http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug/
----- End forwarded message -----
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