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

[Ross Bernheim]

Rick,

In my case, I wanted to do a lot of color printing of photos. I had a full color
darkroom but moved to a Canon inkjet printer. Economics were that the printer
used individual CMYK cartridges which helped on the ink cost. What got me 
was the paper cost! Color inkjet paper for photo printing was more than what
I was paying for Kodak color printer paper by twice or more!

{Plus side was I could work in the light rather than a dark room. No chemicals
and disposal problems. When I got a cat, I didn’t have to worry about cat hair 
getting everywhere and ruining a print. Final straw was when the chemicals
started to get harder to get and more expensive.

I switched to jet putting all the photos on a CD and handing out copies of 
the CD. Much less expensive and time consuming.

Finally  switched to just posting the photos on Facebook.

My how technology changes!

My printer now and for a while has been a Samsung b&W laser printer.
Good price, reliable, duplex printing and Postscript. Cartridges are not
inexpensive, but reasonable and given the number of pages they print and 
cost, very good TCO.

Postscript is one of the must haves on my list of printer features. It avoids
the problem of proprietary drivers that are incompatible with the latest 
upgrade of the OS. Had this problem with dot matrix printers over the 
years. Also with A nice laser printer that used Adobe Gears which was
obsoleted by Adobe so had to revert back to basic emulation of an early
HP Laserjet and losing many of the features that made the printer attractive
in the first place.

Ross


> On Feb 2, 2017, at 10:06 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> 
> Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):
> 
>> 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.
> 
> People keep falling for that old "Give 'em the razor; sell 'em the
> blades" trick.  It's depressing.  I warn and warn and warn, but so few
> people listen and say only 'But that inkjet was so _cheap_.'
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebie_marketing
> Note Lexmark DMCA chicanery:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebie_marketing#Printers
> 
> My own now-late mother went shopping with my help around 2005 or so, and
> directly against my strong urgings to the contrary, and to my distress,
> bought an Epson Stylus colour inkjet printer (as her sole printer).  It
> really pained me to see my own mother walk resolutely into one of the
> dumbest errors in merchandising.
> 
> Why?  Because she'd also bought a fullpage scanner with a slides
> attachment, claimed she was going to digitise many hundreds of old
> slides and snapshots from prior decades (she never did), and thought
> she'd need the ability to _occasionally_ print in colour.
> 
> She almost never actually needed to print in colour, but the thing about
> inket printers (or at least that particular model series) is that, it
> turns out, you cannot configure the printer or its drivers to _avoid_
> printing in colour.  Print a Web page with a red background, and the
> printer splurges expensive red ink everywhere because you cannot say
> 'No, just do this one in B&W.'  The only solution to the problem would
> have been to move the Epson aside and buy a cheap B&W laser to serve as
> her _main_ printer.  This was what I urged after the Epson's money trap
> became evident even to my mother -- but then she didn't want to buy one
> because she already had a printer and another one would be 'too
> expensive'.
> 
> I almost wanted to (metaphorically) drop an anvil on the Epson (er, make
> it fail), so that it could have inexplicably needed replacement and Mom
> could have ignored that wretched Epson, gotten a decent printer, and
> saved money.  It would have been like the parable of Hamaguchi Gohei
> setting fire to the rice fields to save his town's population from a tsunami:
> https://ihatov.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/hamaguchi-gohei-a-living-god-by-lafcadio-hearn/
> 
> So many people, having made a hapless, destructive error, feel a need to
> double down.  (Happens in politics, too.)
> 
>> 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.
> 
> Ah, there you go.  I see from looking up the model number that it's
> specifically part of an HP _Enterprise_ model line.
> 
> One of the bits of advice I gave to Robert, a recent CABAL attendee
> looking to buy a used computer to run Ubuntu on (if he didn't have aa
> vendor build a new whitebox, instead) was to look for business-grade
> model lines and carefully avoid any model lines marketed as for _home_
> use, as they would be underbuilt, flimsy, inadequate and terrible in
> many ways, because
> http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-bicycles .
> 
> To my wonderment and gratification, he followed my advice and got a 
> really good 2014 beefy business-grade workstation at Weird Stuff in
> Sunnyvale.  (This was in recent postings, here.)
> 
> For a printer, what do you most need?  You want it to not bleed you to
> death for supplies, and you want it to be ultra-reliable.  To me,
> anything else is gravy including print quality / resolution (within
> reason).  Thing is, when you really need something printed, you need it
> _now_.  Sometimes like last night whenI was running late getting to
> SVLUG, I need to print something just before running out the door, and 
> the printer jamming or hanging is a big problem.  A printer breaking
> down and needing service is much bigger problem, of course:  Most of us
> don't have a spare workhorse printer sitting around gathering dust, so 
> you have serious problems while a printer is in the shop or you're
> frantically shopping for a new one.
> 
> So, yeah, it makes all kinds of sense to me to pay a bit more to get
> something from an enterprise model line.
> 
> My hunch is that toner cartridges for popular models of business
> printers like the historical LJ III, 4, and 5 series tend to be cheap
> per page because of a very competitive market for supplies (notably
> including third-party cartridges).  I'm not sure of this, which is one
> reason why I say check the cost of supplies and try to estimate average
> cost per page, before buying any specific printer model.
> 
>> 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.
> 
> IMO, this is the only proper (niche) role for an inkjet:  Something that
> fills a specialised need for which it's necessary, but that is otherwise
> carefully not used because it's too damned expensive in supplies per
> page.  Like if Mom had moved the Epson Stylus to the side and used a
> cheap B&W laser printer except in exceptional circumstances when she
> actually needed colour and was willing to pay through the nose to do so.
> 
> The usual excuse I hear from people owning an inkjet as sole printer is
> 'Well, it's expensive per page but I seldom use it.'  This is the
> characteristic sound of someone who carefully never runs the numbers
> lest he/she confirm having made a dumb mistake and it being smarter to
> start over.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> conspire mailing list
> conspire at linuxmafia.com
> http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire