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Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let

Yeah, I sort of swore a blood oath that I would never buy another ink jet printer 10 years ago because one of my color cartridges dried up, and it wouldn't let me even print black and white, despite the fact that the black and white cartridge appeared to be fine. Replacing the color cartridge was like $70. Instead of fixing this problem, I threw the ink jet away, and found a used Samsung ML-2010 on ebay for $60. It prints documents just fine, the only things I ever bother printing are forms that I have to sign. Now I have a 15 year old HP office printer, also only black and white, and I genuinely like it. If I ever need to print color for whatever reason, I'll walk to one of the print shops a few blocks from me. It's not worth keeping a full color printer in my house that will work exactly once.

II2II 3y ago
After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.
- tombert 3y ago
  Which model did you get?
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
  - II2II 3y ago
    I ended up getting an Epson EcoTank printer (ET-4850). Specifications claim to have 7500 page (black) and 6000 page (cym) yields, which is around what I would expect for a similarly priced monochrome laser printer. The ink itself costs about 1/2 of that for toner a similarly priced monochrome laser printer (black only, verses all four bottles). Colour lasers are more expensive for supplies. Would I recommend it? No idea. I'm still new to the inkjet printer market. I'm sure hiccups will pop up along the way. On the other hand: it works in Linux, is quiet, and the lights don't dim when it comes to life. (It is also worth mentioning that it is more of a document printer than a photo printer.)
    - throwanem 3y ago
      I happened to pick up the same model a little while back, to replace an HP that died after most of a decade of good service - Instant Ink's an amazingly good deal, if you use it for photos, but I wanted something I could easily use better than stock inks in. The resolution is reasonable, though the default color settings produce a blue cast (vs. both on-screen rendering and my Pixma Pro 100, as well as the HP it replaced) that I haven't figured out how to reliably prevent yet. As a photographer this irks me greatly, enough so that I won't print my own work on it until the problem is solved; others may not care. It tends to go into deep sleep and need a poke to start listening to the network again, which is annoying when it lives with the other printers in the attic. I work around this with a homelab cron job that curls the printer's admin web interface once a minute. Other than that it's been solid thus far, though admittedly I've only had it a few months. Certainly it'll be a while before I need to refill it.

II2II 3y ago

After avoiding inkjet printers for some 30 years, I purchased a colour inkjet printer after comparing the cost per page to a colour laser. Granted, I went for a tank based (rather than cartridge based) printer. Will I be happy with the decision 10 years down the road (which is the age of my current laser printer)? I have no idea. But the point is that you can avoid the cartridge based inkjets and get something where you refill the colours according to your needs. I also suspect that some of the applications mentioned in the article aren't using the built-to-a-price-point inkjet printers. Quality varies. Sometimes you have to check the reviews and pay a bit more for that quality.

tombert 3y ago
Which model did you get?
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I don't know if this is what they purchased, but EcoTank is a good term to search for if you want an inkjet that won't charge you an arm and a leg for proprietary cartridges. The basic idea is that instead of swappable cartridges, they just have ink tanks that you top up from a squirt bottle. These bottles are cheaper than any cartridge while containing like ten times the amount of ink.
- II2II 3y ago
  I ended up getting an Epson EcoTank printer (ET-4850). Specifications claim to have 7500 page (black) and 6000 page (cym) yields, which is around what I would expect for a similarly priced monochrome laser printer. The ink itself costs about 1/2 of that for toner a similarly priced monochrome laser printer (black only, verses all four bottles). Colour lasers are more expensive for supplies. Would I recommend it? No idea. I'm still new to the inkjet printer market. I'm sure hiccups will pop up along the way. On the other hand: it works in Linux, is quiet, and the lights don't dim when it comes to life. (It is also worth mentioning that it is more of a document printer than a photo printer.)
  - throwanem 3y ago
    I happened to pick up the same model a little while back, to replace an HP that died after most of a decade of good service - Instant Ink's an amazingly good deal, if you use it for photos, but I wanted something I could easily use better than stock inks in. The resolution is reasonable, though the default color settings produce a blue cast (vs. both on-screen rendering and my Pixma Pro 100, as well as the HP it replaced) that I haven't figured out how to reliably prevent yet. As a photographer this irks me greatly, enough so that I won't print my own work on it until the problem is solved; others may not care. It tends to go into deep sleep and need a poke to start listening to the network again, which is annoying when it lives with the other printers in the attic. I work around this with a homelab cron job that curls the printer's admin web interface once a minute. Other than that it's been solid thus far, though admittedly I've only had it a few months. Certainly it'll be a while before I need to refill it.