So I managed to brick our lexmark printer last night by installing a firmware update. It now won’t ‘validate’ the cartridges, in a move to prevent generic ink being used, or let you print b/w if a (genuine) colour cartridge is empty. There is no way round this, as I don’t believe you can roll back a firmware update.

Are printer companies so dependent on ink revenue that they need to resort to this bullshit, or is it an isolated case with lexmark? Google turns up a class-action lawsuit on this, trading standards are investigating etc – seems like a battleground. I want to launch the printer into the nearest landfill, but are all brands like this nowadays?

Are printer companies so dependent on ink revenue that they need to resort to this bullshit,

Yes.
You can buy a printer for £20-30. Take it apart and count how many bits it contains. Even with cheap labour in China, that’s a massive loss leader for the companies, even excluding the massive R+D that went into designing the printer in the first place.

yep my hp now detects fake carts and rejects them, it also says its carts are empty when they bloody well are not. Its a massive con.

We ditched our Lexmark when the previous cartridges ran out – or more correctly ‘we’d used our licence amount’…

Went Kodak.

Yep, after thinking I was being smart I bought an Lexmark which took separate cartridges. What I didn’t realise was that each one held enough for about 5 pages and still cost £ 12 a throw (it seemed to reject generic cartridges once half empty and would stop printing). I’m now seriously considering an office grade HP printer, there just over the £ 100 mark but judging by the performance of ours at work coupled with the fact the cartridges only cost slightly more than the Lexmark micro cartridges and hold many times more link I’ll soon get the money back. I seem to spend most of my time at the moment unable to print because one of the 4 cartridges is playing up or worried about the cost of printing. not much point in having a printer under those circumstances.

Does anybody use those kodak ones which supposedly have more reasonable inks?

My HP has started doing the same as the OP’s, and with the price of ink it is essentially useless:

HP still call printer ink liquid gold I believe.

Kodak have the cheapest inkjet ink around.

Samsung or Dell are reasonable for toner (laser printer ink)

I bought one of these 6 months ago and have used nothing but ‘compatible’ inks in it…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Epson-Printer-All-In-One-Individual-Technology/dp/B003L3ZY9A

They don’t last long but you can but the replacements for well under £2 per cartridge on Amazon. Print quality is fine for general printing but not good enough for photos. Its wireless too.

I have a lexmark c500n. Bottle of toner cost me £5 to fill it up 🙂 Then again, it’s an office printer… not a home one.

I’ll never buy a ‘home’ printer again.

Back when I used to work somewhere that sold Lexmark printers, we worked out that it was cheaper to replace the printer when it ran out of ink than buy new cartridges.

See also, Gillette.

Wearing my inkjet engineer hat, I’m always impressed with what HP, Epson etc do. It’s seriously impressive what they do billions of times a day.
As a consumer, I hate ink jet, because of the expense of the ink, and the hassle I get from my wife when it doesn’t work. (“But you’re an ink jet engineer, why doesn’t it print”).

Cougar – Member

Back when I used to work somewhere that sold Lexmark printers, we worked out that it was cheaper to replace the printer when it ran out of ink than buy new cartridges.

See also, Gillette.

HP at least are now wise to that, and ship with half sized ‘starter’ cartridges. Mofos.

I too will never buy a home printer again. When I get to use one of these and one of these for free, i don’t see the point.

Euro – your willy waving worked. I’m jealous.

I too will never buy a home printer again. When I get to use one of these and one of these for free, i don’t see the point.

I remember installing one of those into a design department. Bowing to peer pressure, I set the printer name as ED-209.

I have access to similar kit Euro, but its not much use when your 9yr old daughter wants to print her latest MoshiMonsters creation on a Sunday evening!!

Kodak ink is probably the cheapest least expensive. But I still have issues with printing b/w when the colour cartridge is empty, read, it won’t.

I’ve had to return lots of duff genuine Kodak cartridges because the printer rejects them.

Interesting there’s a couple of printer types on here. My firm are looking at one of these bad boys.Imagine what a can of ink costs when you’re running double sided B2 paper 😯

Going back a few years we had several large IBM print stations which some idiot had located in our main datacentre room – cue a layer of paper dust covering the inside of the servers.

I use these
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Multipack-Compatible-Cartridges-BX310fn-printers/dp/B001JB039M

Lexmark are awful anyway – never had a good experience with one.

I think printer ink is quite expensive stuff in general. And it’s still cheaper than sending stuff to a printers or having your pics printed in Boots. Isn’t it?

the-muffin-man – Member
I have access to similar kit Euro, but its not much use when your 9yr old daughter wants to print her latest MoshiMonsters creation on a Sunday evening!!

Tell her if she waits until tomorrow, daddy will bring her home a life sized version 😆

Wait4me, I’d want to see that impressive looking lump run a few thousand sheets on varied stock before purchase (or is it paper specific?)

Generic ink sucks
Last tax disc I printed lasted barely 2 months before it faded
Canon ink rocks for colour 🙂 😯 😀

Had a cheap Canon which was garbage.

Now have a slightly more expensive Lexmark, which is also garbage – had a new printhead, won’t use all the cartridge, no amount of head cleaning makes it print properly, wi-fi connection is seemingly from before wi-fi was invented.

I think printer ink is quite expensive stuff in general. And it’s still cheaper than sending stuff to a printers or having your pics printed in Boots. Isn’t it?

No. It’s very cheap. It’s the cartridges (for certain types of printers) that are expensive to make but the margins are still obscene.

And at the price of most carts it can cost more than 50p per photo in ink and decent paper. Boots is about ten times cheaper!

Choose a printer that uses ink carts with re-useable print heads (Epsom) rather than disposable print heads with ink combined (HP,Lexmark etc). That way you aren’t a hostage of cartridge prices.

Thks for the epsom tip – looks like a good replacement. I’m not even that arsed about generic v proprietary ink cartridges overall, it’s the method of trying to control consumer choice retrospectively via a sneaky firmware update that’s bogus. Not printing b/w with an empty colour cartridge is then beyond ridiculous.

Wait4me, I’d want to see that impressive looking lump run a few thousand sheets on varied stock before purchase (or is it paper specific?)

Euro, already got a few of its little brothers and they are able to run a very wide amount of substrates. I used to run xerox iGen and because of the extra heat required to fuse dry toner, the paper stock was far more limited. Yuk, talking about work outside of work hours 🙄

Choose a printer that uses ink carts with re-useable print heads (Epsom) rather than disposable print heads with ink combined (HP,Lexmark etc). That way you aren’t a hostage of cartridge prices.

Only if you print regularly, if the printer sees little use then the heads block and fubar the printer (ex-epson owner, where no amount of head cleaning, fnarrfnarr, would unblock it)

Just to give you an idea the laser cartridge market in Europe alone is worth approximately 800 million a year, of which remanufactured cartridges account for about 20%. Ink is a far larger market.

What printer have you managed to firmware block? It is possible to roll back if you have a copy of an earlier software version, It’s getting hold of an earlier version that can be difficult.

I may also be able to put you in touch with someone who can provide you with cartridges that will work.

Esmondperry…your post seems to be based more around industrial links for cij machines etc. rather than domestic printers…
An advert/spam type post perhaps.

Aren’t you more of a competitor to Domino or Xennia etc. in terms of inks than the domestic market?

Edit…..oh bloody hell! Delete his post before mine even gets a look in! Now it looks like I have resurrected a thread and made a nonsensical post. For a change…

Kodak may have the cheapest ink, but they also have a reputation for unreliable print heads.

I’ve always used Canon inkjets, I now have a Pixma iX6550 which uses five individual cartridges for each colour (C/M/Y/K/K – one black for text, the other for photo/graphic use). The printer cost me £149, the cartridges are about £7 each if I hunt around.

Print quality for such a cheap photo printer is outstanding – granted it’s not lab quality but it does for portfolios. Borderless up to A3+.

I won’t use generic/remanufactured cartridges for the simple reason that the ink is very often inferior and can ruin print heads.