Anoni Moose wrote:

Very cute... The Sherman Anti-trust and Clayton Acts in the US makes it
illegal for a company to tie consumables to a product sale. For some
odd reason, no one has acted upon this to deal with printer companies
yet. I think it is just a matter of time...

What killed the ALPS printers were problems with banding, and other
output quality issues, unavailability of their consumable ribbons, the
need for special and limited type of paper, cost per print, and customer
service problems.


That's hardly what he's saying, that's what you wish to hear. Most
advances in the last 5-7 years in inkjet technology have been:

1) incremental and evolutionary, not revolutionary
2) have mainly been advantageous to the printer companies in terms of
sales of ink or other consumables (introduction of light dye load inks
instead of making them deliver a small enough dot size, etc)
3) weren't enough, in themselves to force people to upgrade to the next
generation

Advancement can be accomplished in a manner which does not leave the
previous owners with obsolete machines due to lack of available parts,
no drivers, or non-user serviceable parts that failed or consumables
that were very costly or not accessible for replacement without service
manuals and special tools.
He's speaking about a replacement part and it's value relative to the
whole product. Everyone knows Rolls Royce is an overpriced car. You
pay for the name and possibly, the service. They break down just like
other brands, maybe even moreso. I think you'd be just a bit annoyed if
every car company charged the same price Rolls did, or if a new engine
for a car cost as much as the whole car did (before the cost of the
servicing even was added in).

Art

"Arthur Entlich" <artistic@telus.net> wrote in message
news:nYR6d.6806$Du2.2934@edtnps89...
First let me say that I am no fan of Epson.

However, what ever name you want to give it, if they are able to dispose of
them in an 'environmentally sound' manner then so be it.
Only a very small percentage of printer users actually refill, so without
this program these cartridges would end up in the landfill.
Your message seems to indicate you are more upset that you (or your company)
can not use them as refills than it does a concern about the environment.

PC Medic wrote:

You couldn't be more wrong. I don't have any personal interest in
refilling them, and I don't own any type of refilling company. In fact,
I don't own any Epson printer that I can't refill myself (that is by
design).

What Epson is doing is greenwashing. Disposing of plastics in this
manner is the absolutely worst manner of "reclaiming" any value from it.
Besides that I very much doubt there is a truly safe manner to
incinerate these cartridges, without considerable contaminant that will
need to be dealt with is some other manner, considering the components,
taking a highly processed petrochemical configuration and reducing it
down into an inefficient heat source is a horrible waste. Most plastics
can be cleaned and remanufactured into something else. Epson made no
effort either in their design or use of materials to allow these
cartridges to have a second life of any type.

And yes, it does bother me that Epson tries using bragging rights as a
recycler while their intent is much more likely to keep the cartridges
out of the hands of a company which might actually reuse them.

Art

Arthur Entlich <artistic@telus.net> wrote in message news:<ciS6d.6808$Du2.1384@edtnps89>...
Maybe, but maybe not. There is a free market in the consumables.
There are third party inks and paper companies. So the tie isn't
forcing printer buyers to buy those from the manufacturers. I
think a court case would be tough to do.


Mine didn't band any more often than the epson color inkjet that
I had in the same timeframe. Vast majority of prints had no banding
even if some did. And those which didn't were spectacular in
quality compared to inkjets of the same vintage (my
ALPS printer is the MD1300).

I found that only a problem after the printers were discontinued
about four or five years ago. As recent as a year or so ago,
they still had'm on the shelf at our local Fry's. I only
switched to an inkjet early this year (the i9900) after having
used the ALPS printer for something like ten years (seemed
that long anyway).

I'm pretty much stuck to Canon's Photo Paper Pro now. Don't
see much difference in practice. :-)

Dye-subs had the reputation for being very expensive, but the
ALPS ones weren't. Mine wasn't. Price per printed page was similar to that
of inkjets of its time. Other brands of dyesubs were VERY
inefficient in the way they used ribbons and such, but the
ALPS wasn't bad. Biggest problem is that the printer itself
was very expensive. Runtime costs weren't. And only the dye-sub
mode needed the special paper (photo prints). For non-dyesub mode
printing, any old typewriter paper worked fine. I heard that
other brands of dye-sub paper (such as Tek's) would work, but
that wasn't much help.

Service I don't know about, my MD1300 still works fine now. Only
problem is that it indeed is hard getting supplies now (can be
gotten, but fewer internet sources all the time). Also inkjets
have finally gotten good enough to compete with the 600 dpi
ALPS dyesub and win (particularly with gamut, because the ALPS
dyesub really was a pigment-sub despite it's name).


You're saying that they probably can make a 0.01 picoliter droplet
printer now that works great, doesn't clog, but they're holding it
from manufacturing on purpose? Epson's now getting rid of the photo-xx
inks when they finally got a droplet small enough in production
was to increase ink sales?.

In a business where there's not much competition, I'd agree that
they may do that in an instant. And maybe Epson who has owned the
photo printing market until recently had been doing that. But when
there's competition (as Canon is providing now), I can't see them
playing that game.

Those improvements that aren't enough in one "generation" of product
aren't really being complained about. I think the subject was
the destroying of the earth and pocketbooks by filling it with thrown
away product "for no reason" other than generating sales. Well, the
only generation of sales that causes the tossing of an old printer is one
that's major enough to make the buyer do just that.

If you're saying that printers are such high volume consumer products
that the economics are that such replacement is the only practical way
to fix things (rather than repair), then yes that's true. But that's
been true for at least fify years if not longer. Even back in the
transistor radio days of the 50's/60's folk complained that new ones
were cheaper than having a broken one fixed. The problem isn't that
the fixing is so expensive, it's a product of having the incredible
great price of the new one being so chaap due to the mass manufacturing
and mass distribution of it. That economic reality makes the availability
of repair even more expensive because nobody will want to do it other than
for warrantee repair (where costs to the mfgr is hidden).

Yes, the reality of mass economics kicks in, and it's the pits. Doing
things in mass mass quanities, makes for incredible product for
unbeliveable low prices. Unfortunately that produces expectations
that everything can be done for a proportional low cost. Repair and
replacement of a part may cost more than a new printer. It's not
a ripoff, it's just the economics of life. It's math. When it's
not doable economically, then it's usually not done.


Yeah, I'll admit that I went a bit too far to make a point, but I think
the point being made was still proper.

If they sell 100,000 printers a year, and it sells for $100, and
they also sell 100,000 printer heads a year separately, then I'd
expect the printer head to cost a good deal less than $100. If
they are selling 500 printer heads a year, I'd not be surprised if
it costed the consumer $75. Cost to deliver the part isn't
just the manufacturing cost. If that printer head is one now made
ONLY for replacement purposes for that printer (only manufacturing
a year's worth in a batch of 500 units), I'd not be surprised
if it costed more than $100 retail. I say this not based on observation of
what happens, but in terms of my expectations of how much it costs
to provide the goods at the retail level worldwide including the stocking
of the parts, and the special ordering for parts in onsie quantity
rather than in large lots where the overhead of distribution is
amortized over a larger quantity than one.


Mike

On 1 Oct 2004 15:35:43 -0700, gewgle@yahoo.com (Anoni Moose) wrote:


Yet. Did youi know that the new HP inks have, built-into the printer,
the capability to tell whether you're using approved HP inks or not?
And will then warn you if you're not using them? How long before the
printer says "F**k off, you're not using *those* inks in me..." ;-)

--

Hecate - The Real One
Hecate@newsguy.com
veni, vidi, reliqui

Anoni Moose wrote:

Is there? Have you been following the many law suits by companies like
Lexmark to try to stop 3rd party cartridges from being made? Have you
seen many HP clone cartridges?

It was a definite problem in Canada and from what I heard, parts of
Europe. I didn't follow the issue in the US.

That's seems to be a fairly unique situation. Most people I know have a
wide variety of papers available to them which work with many inkjet
printers and provide very acceptable results.


The non-dyesub prints were wax based inks, which suffered from more
banding than the dyesub. I agree that Alps made much better use of the
consumable inks due to the ribbon approach. The cost per print needs to
have the cost of the printer amortized into it to get a real cost. As
you know, most inkjet companies download the cost of the printer to the
inks and papers. Alps may not have done so, (which I commend) but that
doesn't mean the cost per print is equal, you have to look as the
hardware and consumables together to get a real picture of costs.

I'm not sure where you get that from what I wrote. What I am saying is
that the technology is driven in part by what can turn a good profit
within the business model in use. What I am saying is that a 1
picolitre droplet was probably possible to develop with similar cost of
R&D that went into developing the extra heads for low dye load inks,
variable dot technologies and new drivers to work with a 6 color system.
I'm saying that the low dye load inks were ultimately very lucrative
for the inkjet manufacturers in terms of inks sales, and allowed them to
sell a lot more ink.

Epson's now getting rid of the photo-xx
I don't know if Epson is getting rid of the low dye load inks or not...
I've heard rumors that Canon might be. Companies make decisions of what
technologies to pursue based upon which are likely to prove most
profitable. Smaller dot sizes (which reduces ink consumption and sales)
versus a system to actually increase ink sales... which do you think was
emphasized?

There was very little competition. And there is some collusion in many
industries also. Interestingly, Epson's first color printers (I know
because I owned one) sold in Canada for $1000 (about $800 US at the
time, as I recall) . The Epson Stylus Color has massive cartridges that
sold "reasonably" compared to others. In fact, I have a report
commissioned by Epson, although carried out by an independent company,
which , at the time compared that printers per page costs to other
similar products on the market at the time (I believe one was a HP and
one a Canon). The cost per page (not including original cost of
ownership) found the Epson the cheapest to run.

However, all the inkjet printer companies began to follow suit and lower
printer costs while tremendously raising cartridge costs at some point.
And don't tell me millions weren't invested in many of those companies
developing design strategies to make their cartridges difficult or
impossible to refill. That was not for public benefit at all.

And maybe Epson who has owned the
Perhaps you are correct, and we'll see some changes not that Canon is a
real competitor for Epson again. But Canon has its own set of issues,
such as developing pigmented inks that work in their head and a head
that either lasts longer or has a cheaper replacement.


Not true, in fact a perfect example are the people who want to replace
the heads on their Canon printers but are finding it so costly it make
no sense to do so.

My point is a vast majority of inkjet printers that have been tossed
were due to the cost or unavailability of parts, inability to self
service them, and cost of ink cartridges.

No it hasn't and I don't know where you get this from. I don't know how
old you are, but I can almost recall 50 years ago. Back then almost
everything was salvaged and repaired.

Even back in the
Again, this is hogwash. A family member did electronics repairs for
many of those 50 years you speak of, starting with radios and TVs and
moving up to very high tech gear for studios. It is only in the last
10-15 years that the cost of labor and repair has outstripped cost of
replacement, and most of that has occurred because we live off the backs
of "3rd world" labor, and because no one pays the piper for the
pollution of creating and burying the stuff. The true costs of
manufacturing are not actually considered in the costs.

Fixing VCRs was a viable business until less than 5 years ago when the
cost of the units themselves came down to under $100.

Again, because right now no one is paying for the true costs of creating
and burying the components. We do not pay the real cost of oil, from
the political instability and wars to the environmental costs to the
diminishing of the resource. We choose to live in a society where we
"stick it" to the next generation to deal with the problems we create now.

Unfortunately that produces expectations
It's flagrantly fake math. It's math based upon exploitation of poorer
countries having poorer standards of living.
If the price for the replacement head was more reasonable, indeed more
people would repair them. It's a chicken and egg thing. The truth is
if they sold 100,000 printers, eventually, they will sell at least
100,000 extra heads if people started to keep the printers and repair
them. Further those heads take up a heck of a lot less room to store,
cost a heck of a lot less to make (than the printers) and cost a heck of
a lot less to ship. In fact, how about just providing an extra head
with each printer in the box?

Cost to deliver the part isn't
who have worked in electronics repair, I know manufacturers use their
parts sales as a way of controlling how long they wish a product to be
serviceable. Legislation was necessary to force most of them to carry
parts for a minimal time, even. The inkjet companies have just taken it
to the next level, which they learned about from the sale of ink cartridges.

Art

Arthur Entlich <artistic@telus.net> wrote in message news:<qf78d.20093$223.13201@edtnps89>...

Yes, HP's are harder to clone, but I suspect there still are
refilled cartridges available or refill inks for them But in any
case, talking about the overall market, there's a lot of third
party ink cartridge providers, and specifically to the fellow
who started "this", there are Canon ones.



My point is that although I have more papers available for photo printing
than I did with my ALPS dyesub printer, in practice I use only one for
the most part. For non-dyesub printing, the ALPS worked on most anything,
but I rarely used it for non-dyesub use where it's quality wasn't so
good. Its dyesub mode was awesome, but it's non-dyesub mode was
not. For me it was a dyesub photo-printer, so that's where my opinion
comes from. Using it in non-dyesub mode made no sense seeing as how
the quality was so good in dyesub mode. Only time I used "regular" mode
for photos was for making T-shirt transfers (a rare happening, usually
at Valentine's day or my wife's birthday). For non-photo use, a much
cheaper printer would be more appropriate .



That's a good point. How many prints one makes would make a big
difference. A casual printer very much benefits from the current
Gillette business model being used for consumer printers.


My comment came from your #2. I disagree with your conjecture above,
particularly if one also takes into account the time it takes to do
those things. Coming out with product sooner is financially advantageous
to coming out later. When the photo-magenta and cyan inks came out
(quite some time ago) dropsizes were something enormous. I don't want
to SWAG a number other than to say it would have been double-digit pl.
Epson has taken 1pl to be the boundary to get rid of them. Design time
for adding the light-inks to improve results for immediate marketplace
advantage would have been tremendously faster as well as less expensive
to develop than making 1-pl drops in production printers.



They did so in the new R800.

Well, dotsizes have dropped very very substantially, while number of
inks has barely doubled.

Yes, I have one too. Still sits in my garage (heads probably
dried solid by now). Still printed as of a few years ago (wife
was using it), but pretty crummy by current print quality standards.


Especially after using made-in-China clone inks. :-)

You can now buy a printer who's quality will run rings around that
printer that you and I have (and paid good money for) for under
100 USD. It's still a mechanical thing, not benefitting that
substantially from semiconductor cost reductions. I think Epson
was doing two things. One, it was selling it for more profit than
they sell their current printers. Secondly, at the time Epson was
a has-been company. Their dot-matrix kingdom was gone and they were
nothing in inkjets. They needed a cost/quality blockbuster to get
them back into the game (something Canon's been doing lately
with their printers the last few years). I think that also was
a factor in their market placement then.


True, if they can't counter Epson's advertising in some other way.
Canon has the advantage that they're big in the cameras that feed
the printers with things to print, while Epson is a nil factor there.
They may be able to move what the public uses to choose.

Good point, but I don't know if that's a proper characterization of
the market "in general".

Yes, but at least some of what you say I think is a non-issue. Making
things serviceable, let alone self-serviceable, is a good goal, but
in markets where cost is being squeezed for tenth's of cents (giving
the consumer low purchase prices), I don't know if higher purchase-prices
would justify those features happening, particularly in the context of
it being in a market of advancing technology (with inkjets only recently
becoming nearly "photo-quality" in my opinion, despite the rhetoric).
Should manufactures raise prices 10% (or whatever) and have them more
self-serviceable? Would that be wanted by the market in general? It
even then would only work if most people replaced their print heads
rather than buying another printer that costs less than the old one
and prints even better.

Canon makes head replacement a self-service job (assuming one can
find a head :-). Epson, the market leader in photo-printers,
does not. Is this huring Epson? I don't know. Certainly,
the head-replacement-with-ink method HP has been using (they still
doing that? I haven't checked) was successful for business use.


Ever try having your transistor radio fixed? I did when I was a kid
and even when a 6-trannie one was spendy, fixing wasn't economic. I
remember being devistated!

People did fix tube gear, I did. People didn't keep them despite their
great self-servicablity though.

I'm 52.

Probably true, but that's not how I'd choose to repair or not.

If I could have my old one fixed for $7 or buy a new one for $11, I'd
probably go with the new one. Why? Because for $7 I still have my
old one. It's other components also are older too, and probably less
reliable. Also probably isn't as good as a new one. So cheaper?
Yes, but economic? I'm not sure. Could just be me.

As low as 40 USD, or even lower. But with VCRs there's another
aspect. There performace hasn't changed much of any in a long
long time. Only the prices have changed. If you're having the
head swapped out (what? not self-replaceable?), you'll have about
the same as new one. Not generally true with printers where the
new-unit alternative is likely better at what it does.

True. But that's a matter of getting the costs rolled in, not trying to
do a balancing distortion of the "natural forces". Just makes things
harder to fix in the end.

No, it's real math based on that.


I like that idea. :-) I think these are only now starting
to become reasonable. "Photo" inkjets, despite my thinking the
original Epson Color stylus to be "great!" at the time, really
haven't been all that good. One reason why it took me so long to
get away from my dyesub despite ALPS discontinuing ALL printer
sales here in the US something like five years ago. I really
hadn't liked the quality of inkjets until recently. Once the
quality is adequate for long term use, then unit-logevity issues
come into play.

Note that I think we both think that printer companies would
generally be happy for us to use the same printer "forever". They
don't make their money off selling them.

Mike

P.S. - Been enjoying the conversation. 95% of the time we usually
totally agree on things, and we haven't had the opporunity. :-)
I don't use my "real" email address for usenet postings else
my already insane spam load goes even higher.

ajmayo@my-deja.com (Andrew Mayo) wrote in message news:<2b20cd9f.0409270036.44776b10@posting.google. com>...

SAME thing happened to my i560 this week. Fortunately, the unit is
under warranty, and the local Canon repair outlet replaced the
printhead free of charge.

The repair guy told me the replacement will probably last longer than
the original -- implying that Canon's quality control is slipping
badly.

Otherwise, I really like this printer, and have found Canon's much
easier to maintain than HPs.

In article <qf78d.20093$223.13201@edtnps89>,
Arthur Entlich <artistic@telus.net> wrote:


I get clearly truer color with Canon papers and inks on an i9100. With
black and white, other papers get a color caste that is impossible to
remove.

--
Robert B. Peirce, Venetia, PA 724-941-6883
bob AT peirce-family.com [Mac]
rbp AT cooksonpeirce.com [Office]

"Bob Jones" <questionz_99@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4396eabe.0410051343.73dc9f33@posting.google.c om...
Hmm, he replaces your printhead with a like part ....
I am baffled how this would conclude that their quality control is slipping
?

Perhaps the tech was suggesting that the head which was installed as a
replacement was an older item in stock for some time, and that the one
in the printer that failed was from a newer batch?

Art

PC Medic wrote:

Perhaps, but there have been no changes


"Arthur Entlich" <artistic@telus.net> wrote in message
news:nd7ad.9533$663.5636@edtnps84...

Except, perhaps, for manufacturing quality, or quality control?

Art

PC Medic wrote:

Andrew Mayo wrote:

Not me. My S520 was only about 15 months old when the head quit.

It was after my second ink replacement (very lightly used). The problem was
that I decided to buy Best Buy's brand of ink. I think it's called "Basix".
That was the end of it.

Live and learn.

Think
with ULTRA fine resolution and 2 pica L DROP size
these heads will clog .... epson too...
HP lexMARK BEST option
you can refill them 10x ...
fixed heads no advantage canon / epson
"crabbs" <crabbs347@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Xns95C5C4E99D79Ccrabbs347comcastnet@63.218.45 .44...

There is a big difference. The 5th Photo dye black cartridge enhances
many of the prints. You are not mixing black from the color ink tanks.
It is on sale after rebate at Frys for $100.00.

Mapanari wrote:

I empathise with you completely on this issue. I am just surprised that you
opted for another manufacturer who uses the same technology in their
printers. I think printers with internal printheads is a serious design
fault especially since they are soo expensive to replace the printheads. It
would be good if these printheads were easily changeable by the user eg like
in my electronic typewriter which came with a spare printhead as well. Until
these features are readily available with printers with a fixed printhead, I
would avoid them like the PLAGUE.




"Mapanari" <whosthat@anonmail.com> wrote in message
news:Xns962AB0F2DF38mapi@216.168.3.64...

With most new inkjet printers easily on sale for <$50 (ie. the price
of a new set of color + black ink cartridge), why even worry?!?

When it breaks or even runs out of ink, simply toss the old printer
(or donate), and buy a new one! Can be cheaper than buying a new set of
cartridges (when the sales have printers going for <$40), and you'll
never have to worry about breaking the printer!

=)

Heck, I'd just stock up on replacement printers instead of cartridges
even with sales! (ie. instead of swapping out used for new carts,
simply swap out old for new printer)

I've written this dozen of times. People who do not wish to learn some
basic maintenance of their printers, should stay away from Epson
printers, because, due to their permanent ink head, they will eventually
need to have some cleaning maintenance done. Doing so, which takes
15-30 minutes once a year (YMMV) at the cost of about $1 in cleaning
supplies, will almost always bring the printer beck to like new print
quality, even on a 8 year old printer. One nice thing about Epson's
head design is that as long as you use a reasonable compatible ink the
basic quality of the print as dictated by the head will be there. With
printers that use an integrated head and cartridge unit you will not
often find a 3rd party product that works as well as the OEM, and
refilled cartridges are "used" heads that do degrade from use. The
permanent Epson head doesn't degrade from use unless the use is
considerable, or a very inappropriate ink was used.

Many people who buy Epson printers are repeat purchasers, not because
the printer fails, but because the people are very pleased with the
print results. If most people's experience with Epson printers was like
yours, they would be losing market share, in fact, they wouldn't have
any customers left by now. Clearly, that isn't the case, considering
the back orders on the R1800, for instance.

I am awaiting for clarification of your warranty experience with your
Epson printer. After you indicated they wouldn't fix a head clog under
warranty, that you spent a great deal on trying to fix an ink head clog
yourself, apparently unsuccessfully,, and other pronouncements, I am
very interested in the full story. Which printer, when did the clog
occurred, what exactly Epson did when you attempted a warranty repair
during the warranty period, which country you were dealing with, etc.

Art

V wrote:

Mapanari wrote:

Epson and HP DONOT make shitboxes. Lexmark does. I do prefer Canon but
the best value is the IP4000. It is better at photos than the IP3000
because it used a black dye photo cart instead of mixing your colors to
create black. The contrast is better and the result appears richer.