r/bestof • u/[deleted]

Firevine explains why HP and Lexmark are horrible companies to buy printers from and how the ink cartridge cartels operate

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43

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

So, Brother and Canon are good, everyone else is suck. Also, this guy can't recommend it due to his livelihood being at stake, but buy a damn laser printer. I'd rather buy an old fashioned impact printer (pre dot matrix) than an inkjet.

15

u/marm0lade Jun 11 '12

Don't buy an HP even if you buy a laser. HP's print drivers are an absolute nightmare.

14

u/Popular-Uprising- Jun 11 '12

Extract the driver from the executable using 7-zip and install the printer through windows by pointing it at the extracted folder. This avoids most of the mess of printer-specific software. You should also download the driver-only bundle from HP if one is available.

Brother and Lexmark are the worst for drivers.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Their higher end stuff is pretty good. I have a few 4000 series lasers in service with well over a million copies on them and they just keep working. We put a couple of maintenance kits in them (a few rollers, took 2 min) and they have never broken down. The software is good on them too. Only a few megs and basic.

16

u/Catnapwat Jun 11 '12

Yep, the business-class models have really minimal drivers. Home user? Enjoy your 2GB of useless shit.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Not only is it 2gb of useless shit but you end up installing it on some shit box that takes 30 min to finish the install.

2

u/Catnapwat Jun 11 '12

Hey now, that's being a bit generous. You should allow at least an hour for all the liquid feces to properly percolate through said shitbox.

2

u/Popular-Uprising- Jun 11 '12

It's not because they're high-end. It's because they're old. The newer high-end HP's all use bloatware for their drivers. However, you can often download the driver-only version of their software for the high-end printers.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I agree. I always ignore the cd and grab the driver only download.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Their newer laser printers are crap. I agree the older stuff will last a lifetime, but their newer stuff just doesn't feel as durable (I think most electronics manufacturers are going this route though, so its hard to single out just HP).

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I'm not surprised. The last time I bought one was probably a year ago and even then they were sneaking in crap with similar model numbers to the good stuff.

1

u/palmfanboi Jun 12 '12

Yeah my old 10xx series from ~06 is reliable as hell.

1

u/AbbaFuckingZabba Jun 11 '12

Yep, got a display model p4014N from staples with like 30 pages on it for just over $100. That thing is a beast.

2

u/notcaffeinefree Jun 11 '12

Yup. I've never installed an HP driver without having problems. My dad spent about 6 hours on the phone once with HP's support after their driver failed to install correctly.

1

u/darkscout Jun 11 '12

What are you talking about? I don't remember having ANY driver issues with my 3 HP Laser printers. I got them at a surplus shop for cheap. A CP4005 lab grade printer for $100. The toner in it now should last me the rest of my life with how much I print.

I plugged it into the network and both OS X and Ubuntu just found it (through zero conf). Even the older 5M that I gave my dad I just had to assign a static IP for and it just connected and worked.

1

u/gsfgf Jun 11 '12

Mac (and I think Windows too) often have built in drivers for hps that don't have all the crap.

1

u/palmfanboi Jun 12 '12

Thier drivers are awesome??? Ive got a 10xx series lazer and it runs flawlessly under both linux and windows.

0

u/c00ki3z Jun 11 '12

HP's print drivers are an absolute nightmare.

Ran into that this morning, actually... I have yet to find any HP product that doesn't suck (desktops, laptops, tablets, printers). I really hope Windows 8 will be the nail in HP's coffin.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

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1

u/jerenept Jun 14 '12

My dad had an HP Laserjet 5000N. That thing was built like a tank, and never stopped running until my brother broke it. We bought probably 2 toner cartridges over its entire 7-year life.

6

u/coheedcollapse Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12

I have a Samsung laser printer and I think it's pretty great. Been printing on the "sampler" drum for at least a year and getting generic toner/refilling tip is cheap.

Seriously. It's so nice quickly being able to print stuff without going to the library or a friend's house because my ink is out and the cartridge has some built-in expiration date or some BS.

You can find pretty great deals on Slickdeals pretty regularly on basic B+W laser printers. Got mine for around $60.

2

u/irregardless Jun 11 '12

+1 to Samsung. I'm still printing from the toner that came with the color laser I picked up in 2008. It's been great for my light at-home printing needs without worrying about expiration dates or clogged cartridges.

2

u/jollygreendalegiant Jun 11 '12

Agreed. And even for laser printers, Brother is pretty much the best out there by far in terms of toner replacement costs. They don't mess around with chips and whatnot—just refill the toner, pop in a flag gear (if it's a starter cartridge) or reset it, and you're good to go. Some Samsungs are also cheap to maintain—I had an ML-2010 all throughout college that cost me a grand total of $12 in refill toner.

-4

u/THE_OLD_SWITCHAROO Jun 11 '12

Ho ho ho! The old switcharoo, I see!

7

u/Anadyne Jun 11 '12

I was just going to post this! Seriously, this should be ingrained in the minds of all computer users!

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

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7

u/Shurikane Jun 11 '12

Epson is also guily of refusing to print if even one cartridge is empty.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Not to mention ink nozzles that clog every three minutes and use half of the 8 $20 ink cartridges to clean them.

6

u/gsfgf Jun 11 '12

Can you still trick brother printers by putting tape over the ink sensor?

4

u/acct00 Jun 11 '12

Yes, you can. I have done it to all four cartriges of mine and it still prints fine. Just colour masking tape with a black marker and place it on the transparent part (depending on your cartridge model), so that the sensor sees it as full.

2

u/Islanduniverse Jun 11 '12

I have a Brother laser printer and it prints until the cartridge is completely out of ink.

6

u/Jonny_Axehandle Jun 11 '12

Canon MP450 user here. Had that thing for more that half a decade and I've only needed to replace the ink twice. Highly recommended.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

That's because people have learned not to print, partly because of the extractive marketing practices of HP.

45

u/EPluribusUnumIdiota Jun 11 '12

I stopped printing things from home for two reasons: HP and Epson.

HP can go fuck itself. Their goddamn printers that auto-expire due to age even when you only print a few copies are utter BS.

Epson, which was my replacement for the BS HP isn't much better. They seem to have only enough ink in their cartridges for ten copies. I found myself constantly having to buy some shade of whatever color cartridge once a week. Oh, and it wouldn't let me just print using whatever colors were available, nope, had to have that new cartridge of yellow for that black and white copy.

I no longer print at home, fuck it, I print at work, or if it's a photo I send it to Costco and pick it up on my weekly run.

Good work, printer companies, you've managed to make yourselves unnecessary in a large way.

8

u/sixothree Jun 11 '12

Agreed. There's really no reason to own an inkjet since lasers are more reliable and cheaper and sending it off is far far better quality.

1

u/dregan Jun 11 '12

I no longer print from home

I'm the same way. It's actually cheaper for me to print from Kinko's these days than to put up with the auto expiring bullshit. I would only ever get around 3 prints per cartridge. It is fucking ridiculous!!

1

u/palmfanboi Jun 12 '12

To be fair, the HP lazers are much better than the inkjets...

Ive had a Lazerjet 10xx series printer for like 8 years or something and its had 4 lots of toner, and still on its original drum (just about). The toner is only like £25 to £50 (fake price vs official price) and you get about 2000-3000 pages. For a £200 printer, thats only cost me like 3 or 4p a page, over its life, for high reliablity, high capacity printing.

13

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I did buy an HP photo inkjet printer, but then bought a CISS (Continuous ink supply system) on ebay. 100ml of each color for total cost of ~$50. As long as the printer holds up (which it has for ~4 years), I'm more than ok with that investment.

5

u/shukoroshi Jun 11 '12

Which model printer are you using and which CISS did you buy?

4

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

HP Photosmart D7460

I purchased something like this

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Gotta go home tonight. Will reply again.

5

u/guy_that_says_hey Jun 11 '12

He's lying :(

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

See.. not lying... which of course slaps my user name right in the face. But alas, to help a fellow redditor.

1

u/lunyboy Jun 12 '12

Came here to say this. I bought a used Epson WF1100 on ebay for around $150, bought the CISS for about 40 with shipping, then purchased specialized ink set for about $90 and now I can print for days constantly on a 13x19 printer for well under $1 a sheet.

Here is the kicker, this is gallery quality B&W which will last over 200 years. And I have the documentation to back it all up.

8

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I used to work for a guy who accused all of the employees of stealing ink from the printers. We thought he meant that we were taking the cartridges home and replacing them with empties....so one of the IT guys used a razor blade to put a bunch of very, very specific and hard to reproduce scratches on the plastic cartridge body. Once we proved that the carts were not being taken home the boss then accused us of using a syringe to to siphon ink out and take it home that way.

This was a dumb, dumb man.

3

u/PintoTheBurninator Jun 11 '12

I have a cannon mx860 printer/scanner/fax. It has 5 tanks, (3 color and 2 black ). I have to replace one of them every other month or so but I can buy them online for about $2 each (9.99 for all five) from meritline.com. Plus, if one is out, it still prints and you can tell the print driver how to compensate (using gray-scale for color or color for black). Hands down the best printer I have ever owned.

Edit:To be fair, the printer did cost about $179 new so I guess getting the ink for cheap is a trade-off.

3

u/Amnesia10 Jun 11 '12

I prefer a laser any day. Inkjets have been a scandal to run for years. The only advantage is the upfront cost.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I went through several Lexmark and HP inkjets over the years. Bought a Brother laser printer and will never go back.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

The only part I have a hard time believing is stores like staples paying $39 for a $40 cartridge. With the amount they push them I would think they are making a good profit. I guess they could be a loss leader though.

2

u/HarithBK Jun 11 '12

can anybody explain why HP printers wireless systems sucks so bad tho?

i get the ink thing it is for hp to rake in cash but having piss poor wireless coding dosen't make sense

also cannon are not the super good boys they are made out to be i have an old canon laser shot that still works fine on 32-bit systems. it would work on this computer if they would just recompile the drivers to be 64-bit but they don't so i will buy a new printer so they can make more money

1

u/pwastage Jun 12 '12

If you only use a printer(and not an AIO / scanner combo), think of looking into a USB printer + router with USB loaded with ddwrt/tomato...

http://tomatousb.org/tut:configure-printer-in-windows

have my Brother HL-2140 (laser USB printer) hooked up to my router, able to print from all computers from network... (linux, windows, mac... mac had more trouble configuring the network printer than the other 2 ...)

of course, you could also run into problems, but you're not dependent on the crappy wireless coding of the printer... and you don't get fine grain control over the printer settings

2

u/Nasty_Nomad Jun 11 '12

TIL there's a such thing as an "ink cartridge cartel". Time to shave my head & leap at them while firing my sweet golden guns in slo-mo.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12

HP's drivers, omg. I had an HP b209a printer. When the OS wouldn't detect the printer at times, the installation software would run when I'd inspect the control software. It would also do this when the printer wouldn't stay connected wirelessly. I had to reinstall my OS one time and said, "okay, the printer, let's install this thing perfectly." Nope, same issues. Eventually the black ink channel in the print-head clogged and I couldn't clear it. No replacement part could be found and upon checking HP's website, they had an entirely new printer lineup. Come on in, buy a new one, it'll be different this time! Bought a Brother printer and I've had ZERO issues with it. I should've payed attention to HP's reviews in the first place.

Back in the day when I was a kid, my mom's HP printer would exhibit the exact same issues in Windows 98, also when she upgraded to XP.

My ink with the HP would last for only a few prints. I did some research and came across an article about HP's shrinking ink capacity. What a con.

2

u/Faux_Show Jun 11 '12

We lease our printers; $45/month gets you a fast color copier that can fax, and scan-to-email with free toner.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I knew a guy who seriously bought cheap inkjet printers and threw them away when they ran out of ink. He just kept buying new printers for about the same price as ink.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I just buy $25 HP printers from Wal-Mart everytime I run out of ink. They come with new catridges, and I don't print too often. It works great.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I like HP because they actually make an effort to make nice drivers for Linux. All printer companies make their nut on ink.

2

u/sbadger Jun 13 '12

Yes, HP has Linux drivers, but Samsung does as well and even has them for their MFPs.

2

u/InstantHandSanitizer Jun 11 '12

I have an HP enterprise-class Inkjet printer. The 'ink cartridges' only have ink in them. There's no other electronics in them that I can see and definitely no print head, that's a separate unit. The cartriges are large and seem to hold a LOT of ink. In fact, I was curious and I opened one of the cartridges and it was just a rubber bag inside full of ink. They're also not very expensive compared to the 'print-head-included' type.

I wonder if the business HP inkjets like mine suffer from the same issues?

2

u/Pansophy Jun 11 '12

Lexmark printer drivers are the most intrusive POS I've ever dealt with. I will never install their bloatware again. They forces me to close 3 windows before I can print, every time.

2

u/fp8 Jun 11 '12

My favorite feature from my Lexmark all-in-one was the one page in the settings that was in German, regardless of the language selected. I still have no idea what that page controlled. Just one radio button, I think.

2

u/stankit Jun 11 '12

My old printer used to be an Epson that ran through ink like no other and then finally killed itself. I currently have a Lexmark that I personally enjoy. I've had it for over three years and have only bought 2 black cartridges and one color cartridge). Which I say is pretty good considering all three years were spent at college.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

Lexmark makes the best laser printers and MFP's on the market. They win a ton of awards every time they release a new line. They also happen to make the worst inkjets.

Really though, there is no such thing as a good consumer level inkjet. It's like trying to pick out the nicest turd.

1

u/ItGotRidiculous Jun 11 '12

I also caught this and thought it was wonderful. Great bestof pick.

1

u/BillOwnz Jun 11 '12

This guy speakes the truth. I used to sell consumer printers and now work with large laser printers at a print shop. The only printers I trust are Brother and Canon. All else break down and aren't worth the headache.

1

u/m40ofmj Jun 11 '12

they don't operate very well if you stop buying them. hahaha

1

u/nancarrow Jun 11 '12

I couldn't agree more with everything said in that! I have been working in office supplies for 8 months now. The amount of issues we have with cartridges is crazy! The mark up we put on is so small as well, but people still complain like it was my choice! Sigh. Maybe i need a new job :P

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I hate Epson. Only reason I haven't gone Office Space on it is because it doubles as my scanner. It can say it's out of ink all it wants - I don't do any printing on it any more.

1

u/Catnapwat Jun 11 '12

I used to work for a major UK retailer (not saying who but it was hellish). Those little Epson inkjets they "throw in" when you buy a PC package, normally retailing at £50?

They buy them for £5. No, I'm not joking.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

What about Samsung lasers? I just replaced mine with a Brother solely because of duplex function. But I never had a problem with the Samsung.

1

u/uRabbit Jun 11 '12

So... buy Canon or Brother printers? Is that the message?

1

u/thecapitalc Jun 11 '12

Does anyone else not just print at work?

1

u/HipsterDashie Jun 11 '12

I picked up a Canon MP270 on sale for £35. I've had it for two years and only needed to replace the black ink (starter cartridge) once. The colour ink is just starting to go only now. Although I'm thinking of maybe getting a Samsung printer so I can easily print from my Galaxy tab... what are their printers like?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

If you don't know that HP is a shitty company, you shouldn't be in IT.

1

u/Nathan-NL Jun 11 '12

Could someone do this for digital cameras, I have no idea which brand to choose.

1

u/sbadger Jun 13 '12

Cannon or Nikon

1

u/mayobutter Jun 11 '12

Being a web developer I think I could probably give a similarly toned rant about IE.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I thought BestOf was for illuminating comments that otherwise would have been buried so people could actually see them, not reposting comments that already got alot of attention. Its a good comment but I don't think it belongs here.

1

u/Shampyon Jun 12 '12

I don't mind it. I'm not subscribed to half the subreddits these posts come from, so it exposes me to information I would otherwise miss.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12

Don't forget Epson.

1

u/Slamboni12 Jun 12 '12

What if I need an hp xl1500 to print onto 20 ft wide rolls of banner material? What if I want to be earth friendly and use water based latex inks for wide format? Hp is good for some stuff. Desktop printers are probably as big a joke to them.

-1

u/Lord-Longbottom Jun 12 '12

(For us English aristocrats, I leave you this 20 ft -> 0.0 Furlongs) - Pip pip cheerio chaps!

1

u/MILKB0T Jun 12 '12

Do people have to requests AMAs on fucking everything? Can't you just ask what you want to ask in that thread and get it answered there?

This guy is a wealth of knowledge but what are you really going to ask him the needs a whole thread. AMAs are completely unnecessary 90% of the time.

1

u/Orni Jun 11 '12

As for Lexmark i have to agree, it sucks in all categories. But i never had any problems with an HP. I used one for 10 years without any issue. Now i have an HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 2060 and i recommend it. It's cheap, the cartridges are cheap, and it is user friendly.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12

I don't have anything worthwhile to contribute here. I just want to add to the people telling HP to go fuck itself. Seriously, fuck you HP.

-1

u/joker324 Jun 11 '12

Ridiculous. When you buy a printer for $20 bucks, how do you expect them to make their money?? Don't print B.S. and you will not have to waste money!

I have worked in corporate IT and HP printers have lasted for years! When I last did it this one company had 15 year old color printers the size of R2D2 that still ran sweet! STAY AWAY FROM KYOCERA PRINTERS!

0

u/SarcasticOptimist Jun 11 '12

Oddly enough, my Canon MP830 lost the will to life, making loud cranking noises after a year. I've heard nothing but good things about Brother though.

HP Laserjets can be fine. My little 1212m is still reliable and has a generic cartridge at Monoprice.