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I just replaced my inkjet printer, and my #1 requirement was "not from HP". HP has made some great products, but this anti-competitive tying (to prevent the use

I just replaced my inkjet printer, and my #1 requirement was "not from HP". HP has made some great products, but this anti-competitive tying (to prevent the use of competing ink cartridges) is unacceptable. HP, please do better.

PaulHoule 3y ago
The trouble is there is no quality control for aftermarket ink. HP’s salespeople will try to point out to commercial customers that aftermarket ink has a high VoC content and will contaminate your office. What I know is that people are often complaining on forums about inksplosions they have when they try to do borderless printing, the lowest common denominator is that they were using third party ink. Ink has to do a lot of things, and cooperating with the system that cleans up overspray is one of them. I had a low end Epson tank printer and found six months later that the ink faded horribly, it would have been possible in theory to find a third party ink that was more lightfast but impossible in practice as that kind of information is not documented and most people just don’t care. I upgraded to the next step up of tank printer which has much more persistent ink, at least I could point to results where people made prints and tried accelerated aging them.
- _nalply 3y ago
  And is HP's ink really better? Who knows.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    The alternatives are certainly worse. Hp, Canon and such do research on their products, so far as I know third-party ink companies just get the cheapest thing from China that's roughly the right color. See http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/PCWorld_Cheap_Inks_2003_10.pdf http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/PCWorld_Cheap_Inks_2003_... Roughly there is no mechanism by which third-party ink vendors can prove the quality of their products so it is a "market for lemons". As someone who has a habit printing photographs, art reproduction, and anime art I'm amazed at the high quality output that I can get if I use quality materials. You'd better believe that photo and quality matte paper are not a scam and get better results than you're going to get on cheap paper. The same is true about the ink except there isn't any mechanism to enforce the quality of ink. As much as I think third-party ink is suicide, I will grant that HP and their ilk seem to be trying as hard as they can to piss people off, have a lawsuit, congressional hearing and all that.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > HP’s salespeople will try to point out to commercial customers that aftermarket ink has a high VoC content and will contaminate your office. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but I certainly wouldn't assume it is because a salesman said it.
- reaperman 3y ago
  Curious what people's use-cases are for inkjet! I can't see myself ever wanting one. I use an old Brother laser printer personally (full-duplex, color, and wired networking) - it's very economical, the quality is good enough for recipes, notes, and official forms, which are the only things I print. Laser printers historically haven't been very expensive, I think I got mine around $100 and it's lasted over 10 years now; all I've done is replace the black ink twice. I could see if I was printing super high-quality photos on special paper I might want a dedicated photo inkjet; but given that I'm buying it specifically because I care about getting the highest quality over a cheap color laser printer... I don't think I'd be persuaded to save money on off-brand ink for something that's bought specifically for making the highest-quality photos at home. Which use cases are best served with an inkjet using off-brand ink (assuming the off-brand ink still works properly, of course)?
- tim333 3y ago
  I get through life fine without my aftermarket products being policed. You try different stuff, check reviews and the like. Some are worse than the manufacturers, sometimes better eg some Anker stuff.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    When I was researching my ink problems I found the only people who did useful reviews were http://wilhelm-research.com/ http://wilhelm-research.com/ not everybody agrees with their methodology but they're pretty much the only game in town. Their testing is expensive so it only happens if a big player is paying for it. My experience is that the vast majority of people who post reviews on sites like Amazon of this kind of project are not qualified to have an opinion. I remember Best Buy having a prominent review of a printer about what a piece of crap it was that had a picture of a print they made that came out terrible, it looked just like what you get when you print on photo paper and put it with the wrong side up. (I've made that mistake too but I blamed myself and not the printer) The one thing I did learn from reviews about ink for my old printer was that people will fill it with "transfer ink" and are happy with the results they get printing coffee mugs, T-Shirts and such. Overall though I'd be a lot more inclined to trust third-party inks if there were reviews I trusted.

PaulHoule 3y ago

The trouble is there is no quality control for aftermarket ink. HP’s salespeople will try to point out to commercial customers that aftermarket ink has a high VoC content and will contaminate your office. What I know is that people are often complaining on forums about inksplosions they have when they try to do borderless printing, the lowest common denominator is that they were using third party ink. Ink has to do a lot of things, and cooperating with the system that cleans up overspray is one of them. I had a low end Epson tank printer and found six months later that the ink faded horribly, it would have been possible in theory to find a third party ink that was more lightfast but impossible in practice as that kind of information is not documented and most people just don’t care. I upgraded to the next step up of tank printer which has much more persistent ink, at least I could point to results where people made prints and tried accelerated aging them.

_nalply 3y ago
And is HP's ink really better? Who knows.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  The alternatives are certainly worse. Hp, Canon and such do research on their products, so far as I know third-party ink companies just get the cheapest thing from China that's roughly the right color. See http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/PCWorld_Cheap_Inks_2003_10.pdf http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/PCWorld_Cheap_Inks_2003_... Roughly there is no mechanism by which third-party ink vendors can prove the quality of their products so it is a "market for lemons". As someone who has a habit printing photographs, art reproduction, and anime art I'm amazed at the high quality output that I can get if I use quality materials. You'd better believe that photo and quality matte paper are not a scam and get better results than you're going to get on cheap paper. The same is true about the ink except there isn't any mechanism to enforce the quality of ink. As much as I think third-party ink is suicide, I will grant that HP and their ilk seem to be trying as hard as they can to piss people off, have a lawsuit, congressional hearing and all that.
JohnFen 3y ago
> HP’s salespeople will try to point out to commercial customers that aftermarket ink has a high VoC content and will contaminate your office. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but I certainly wouldn't assume it is because a salesman said it.
reaperman 3y ago
Curious what people's use-cases are for inkjet! I can't see myself ever wanting one. I use an old Brother laser printer personally (full-duplex, color, and wired networking) - it's very economical, the quality is good enough for recipes, notes, and official forms, which are the only things I print. Laser printers historically haven't been very expensive, I think I got mine around $100 and it's lasted over 10 years now; all I've done is replace the black ink twice. I could see if I was printing super high-quality photos on special paper I might want a dedicated photo inkjet; but given that I'm buying it specifically because I care about getting the highest quality over a cheap color laser printer... I don't think I'd be persuaded to save money on off-brand ink for something that's bought specifically for making the highest-quality photos at home. Which use cases are best served with an inkjet using off-brand ink (assuming the off-brand ink still works properly, of course)?
tim333 3y ago
I get through life fine without my aftermarket products being policed. You try different stuff, check reviews and the like. Some are worse than the manufacturers, sometimes better eg some Anker stuff.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  When I was researching my ink problems I found the only people who did useful reviews were http://wilhelm-research.com/ http://wilhelm-research.com/ not everybody agrees with their methodology but they're pretty much the only game in town. Their testing is expensive so it only happens if a big player is paying for it. My experience is that the vast majority of people who post reviews on sites like Amazon of this kind of project are not qualified to have an opinion. I remember Best Buy having a prominent review of a printer about what a piece of crap it was that had a picture of a print they made that came out terrible, it looked just like what you get when you print on photo paper and put it with the wrong side up. (I've made that mistake too but I blamed myself and not the printer) The one thing I did learn from reviews about ink for my old printer was that people will fill it with "transfer ink" and are happy with the results they get printing coffee mugs, T-Shirts and such. Overall though I'd be a lot more inclined to trust third-party inks if there were reviews I trusted.