[conspire] (forw) [svlug] Free HP Color LaserJet model 2605DN if you hurry

[Ruben Safir]

On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 01:50:37AM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):
> 
> > I owned one of these and it was a work horse but ended up with trouble
> > relating to a design flaw.  dust invetiably gets into the optical unit.
> > In the end, after the catrige ran out, I replaced it with a M551dn
> > which is a vastly better machine and was very cheap for the quality.  In
> > fact, it was hard for me to purchase because it disapeared from the HP
> > catelogue.
> > 
> > the 2605 is still on the floor.  I haven't had the heart to toss it.
> 
> Heh.  ;->
> 
> If you'd like two sitting on the floor, I can ship the Menlo Park one to 
> you.
> 
> Wow, that flaw with poor dust control is a shame.  My own experience with
> LaserJets from the primary business-focussed series was very good, and I
> heard good things about others of those.  E.g., up until around 2006, I
> had a LaserJet Series III with upgraded RAM and a PostScript cartridge, 
> and that thing was legendarily reliable.  It weighed over 100 lb and
> dimmed the house lights when you powered it on, but it was
> super-reliable and dirt cheap per page.  The 4 and 5 series were
> reported to be likewise.
> 
> I read that all of the most-recent laser printers built the drum and
> corona wire into the toner cartridge rather than making them a fixed
> part of the printer.  Thus, you buy new ones every time you buy a
> cartridge.  I've always wondered why, and whether that doesn't defeat
> some of the cost advantages of toner being cheap, especially relative to
> supplies for other printing technologies like inkjet or thermal transfer 
> / solid ink / phase-change.
> 


The cost of cartiges is most often close to the cost of the printer, no
doubt.  And, additionally, the printers themselves suffer from feature
bloat.  But my M551 has been really quite econominal.  It is not as
economical as my HP Laserjet$, which was a tank before my ex-wife
intentionally destroyed it, but the cartrages have outlasted their
specification by a long shot.  

Lets face it, it a game.  To a large degree, especxially with low end
printers, they are trying to give you the machine for free, and run you
dry with the cartiges.

But the M551 is a true work horse, industrial grade.  I've printed 2
hundred 5 page booklets on it, answer a few emails, get up and puzzled
why it wasn't printing, only to discover it was done.

I researched it for 2 years before buying it.  When I got some money, it
was my first purchase.  It far excedes my expectations.  And while it
doesn't print color to poster like quality, it is still amazingly
impressive.

> Maybe drums and corona wires have themselves become so cheap that it's 
> cost-effective to turn them into supply components rather than something
> that must be built to last the full life of a printer.  I don't really
> know what the story is.
> 
> I _do_ know that the cost per page over time of any type of printing
> except B&W laser (which includes similar printers with other light
> sources such as LED bars) is absurdly high, especially inkjet.
> 
> If I were shopping for a new printer, I'd start with princing printing
> cartridges, getting estimated printable pages per lifetime, and
> calculating average cost per page.  Then, I'd look at reliability
> prospets of the models with low cost per page, read reviews (e.g., on
> Newegg), and buy what seems to have cheapest supplies cost per page and
> most reliable operation over service life.  IMO, those things are _way_
> more significant than is purchase price.
>

No doubt, but I first like like to review them according to print resolution, 
and the sort them out by cartrige  cost.  What is suprise is that for
laserjets, last I looked, the quality is not improving that much,
although print speeds and feature bloat is.

I do also have a Epson Artisan 1430 which is a large format inkjet that
does print photograde images on postersize paper.  It is hugely
expensive to run, although the printer itself was very cheap.

Those cartriages cost a fortune.

I rarely use it.

> -- 
> Cheers,                                      299792458 meters per second.  Not
> Rick Moen                                    just a good idea.  It's the law.
> rick at linuxmafia.com                
> McQ! (4x80                        
> 
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