Your printer is lying to you
Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:38PM EDT
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Out of ink? Already? When Farhad Manjoo's Brother printer abruptly stopped zipping out prints, he began to wonder if the printer wasn't simply lying that it was out of toner in order to trick him into buying more before he needed it. The prints hadn't been fading at all, but the printer simply refused to go on without a new cartridge.
No fool, Manjoo turned to the web for a solution: He saved his 60 bucks and instead found a simple fix. By covering up a sensor on the side of the toner cartridge with a piece of electrical tape he tricked the printer into thinking the cartridge was full. Well, not so much trick as convince: Manjoo says his printer's been going strong ever since, eight months and hundred of pages down the road, pumping out perfect pages.
Printers of both the laser and inkjet variety are notorious not just for requiring expensive replacement cartridges but for trying to get you to replace them well before you need to. It's epidemic in the industry, to the point where class action lawsuits have filed against Epson and Hewlett-Packard over the trickery.
In his story for Slate, Manjoo helpfully digests most of the conventional and unconventional wisdom for getting extra life out of a toner or inkjet cartridge, from vigorously shaking your laser toner to de-clump it to digging into the menus to find options for overriding "cartridge check" features. Because there are so many printer models out there, Manjoo ultimately recommends a web search for specific advice, but FixYourOwnPrinter is a good place to start.
Saving a tree may be good, but saving a whole bunch of oil and keeping a cartridge full of chemicals out of the landfill: Even better.
LINK: Take That, Stupid Printer!
See also: Cheap printer ink: Easy savings or bad investment?
Comments on Your printer is lying to you
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2 Posted by alan_r_cam on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:49PM EDT Report Abuse
It almost makes me pine for the good old days, when I'd re-ink the ribbon for my Epson dot-matrix printer. Almost, but not quite.
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3 Posted by cnull on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:27PM EDT Report Abuse
@alan_r_cam - wow, that brings back some memories. I had completely forgotten about re-inking ribbons... yow.
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4 Posted by coolkyle4@snet.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:29PM EDT Report Abuse
mine doesnt do that, and its a hp 2110xi, it normally fades out, and it will still print, but i have to buy a new cartridge if i want clear prints.
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5 Posted by alexgannis on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:50PM EDT Report Abuse
Plus some people never use their printer as much which after six month without changing your ink cartridge could damages your prints header from old ink.
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6 Posted by beth_lukomski on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:05PM EDT Report Abuse
Any Inkjet printer does a head check on each power up. In order to save ink, it is recommended that you do not power down the printer. There are some higher end printers that allow you to control the behavior on Power Up, but this is not the case with all.
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7 Posted by mlindsey76 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:23PM EDT Report Abuse
I used to have to deal with Lexmark SC 1275 color lasers. 4 toner cartridges and various other pieces that would need to be replaced at the direction of the onboard computer. We had several printers that would demand new cartridges on a regular basis even though the printers weren't being used. After talking with a Lexmark tech, one of the other techs I worked with was told to remove a fuse from the cartirdge, wrap it in tin foil, and put it back in the cartridge. All of a sudden, the printer shows the toner as full.
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8 Posted by junquemailbox on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:44PM EDT Report Abuse
It goes beyond printes! We have an InFocus overhead projector that died in the middle of a meeting. We didn't have a spare bulb (it cost $540) so in looking through the manual I saw that after installing the new bulb you needed to reset the bulb counter. I did the reset and it started working again. Turns out that when the counter gets to 2,000 hours it requires a replacement whether you need it or not. I couldn't find anywhere that resetting the counter would override this.
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9 Posted by wood.chuck_1989 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:49PM EDT Report Abuse
Ink for an InkJet printer costs about $8000/gallon. Buy an InkJet printer someone you don't like, and watch them go broke buying ink!
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10 Posted by pcofmind1 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:04PM EDT Report Abuse
This type of trick (or corporate pocket-lining?) has been going on for years. I worked for Xerox back when office copiers were considered "high tech", and Xerox had gotten sued over their price-gouging practices for copier toner (I was often somewhat embarrassed when it came time to go over toner charges -- "hey, it's only 3.5 cents a page", never mind the fact your monthly toner costs will be $1,200). Discount the daylights out of the equipment, then nail the customer later with hugely profitable ink or toner replacements. Part of the American corporate business model -- in fact, just look at McDonald's. They make very little on the burger, but make probably 800% markup (just a wild guess) on french fries and soda. Use more, eat more, order more -- and hope the customer doesn't notice the true cost until faced with a bill.
1 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse
Hmmm, most of the HP, Canon and Okidata products I have / use play it pretty close to the vest when it comes to ink and when it runs out. We usually run them until they dont print anymore - but its normally no more than a day or so after we get the warning that it's low. When it says it's out we can usually print a few more pages in an emergency, but that's it.