Kodak enters the desktop printer market, plans to rumble with HP
By Paul Miller 
posted Feb 6th 2007 10:43AM
posted Feb 6th 2007 10:43AM
With traditional film sales all but dead, and the intense competition in the digicam space, the once formidable Kodak is hoping to find success and newfound revenue in that teensy little $50 billion market known as the print industry. Of course, Kodak has been selling photo printers for a while now, but this new launch is a full-on assault on the king of printing: HP. Kodak's secret is to skip over the whole bait and switch model of most printer sales, where everybody discount their printers heavily, and make it all back on exorbitant ink prices. Kodak will be charging reasonable prices for its three new EasyShare All-in-One printers, the 5100, 5300 and 5500 (pictured) which can print copy and scan for $150-$300, but the ink costs are at $10 for a black cartridge and $15 for a five color cartridge. With ink about half the price of competitors -- Kodak's secret is a print technology that doesn't require the print head to be in the cartridge, just ink -- Kodak is hoping consumers will feel free to print more photos and in turn buy even more ink from the big red K. The technology also supposedly produces prints that can last up to 100 years, and will be making it into stores with these new EasyShares in March. Who knows if this will be enough to give Kodak a fighting chance in the consumer print world, but even if all that results is a speedy and bloody price war, we sure wouldn't be complaining.[Via Cnet]
Sorry Kodak, ink cartridges without print-heads have been around for a long time so you get no applause there. You really flunk with the 5-color cartridge! Sheesh, run out of one color and throw out the rest of the ink - no savings for the consumer and big profits for you. Get with the program or get out of the business.
hey didn't SNL make a promo song for Kodak's launch.... junk in a box?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't part of the success of the original DeskJet the fact that the print head never wore out because you replaced it every time you changed the ink cartridge.
Seems as though if you had a problem with a Kodak print head, you won't be able to fix it that easily.
Regardless, ink is STILL incredibly overpriced.
I will be buying the 5500. I've had enuf of being bent over by Epson.
These printers use pigment based inks which is big news. Kodak claims that pictures will last 100 years without fading.
My first inkjet, a Canon, also didn't have the print head on the cartridge. used it a few years without issue, it's big probably was that for some reason it went through ink like mad. I also had one of those Kodak branded Lexmarks with the LCD on it, what a turd of a printer. let it sit for like 2 weeks and the print head on the cart would clog up. sometimes you could clean it with some alcohol, sometimes not.
I'll give kodak a while to see how they printers reliability is, and if my 6110 wears out I might consider one.
i would guess the reliability will be pretty good, afterall, the pedigree is largely HP. in fact, with HP quality and Kodak science AND cheap(er) ink, it is probably a solid product.
I won't hold my breath on these. The 100 years, first off, is harder to confirm than with most companies. They don't state whether it's photo album conditions or under glass, indoors. Companies like Canon, with their Chromalife100, like to promote the lesser of the two (photo album) by saying 100 years, when they get only 30 in the more realistic, under glass, indoors conditions. As well, Kodak's been at odds with the Henry Wilhelm Institute (the foremost authority on print permanence) since the beginning, since Henry Wilhelm's the guy who blew the whistle on just how quickly Kodak's photos fade. As such, they're the only printer company that doesn't use his information, and therefore their numbers can't be backed up.
As for the machines, themselves, it's clear they're shifting mostly away from the razor and blades pricing, as these machines are roughly double the cost of their comparable competition. Cheap ink is great, and hopefully this forces the competition to step up, but most consumers are going to have a hard time comparing the Kodak printers to their more experienced competition and pay twice as much for comparable or lesser hardware, even at the promise of lower cost down the line. In fact most customers don't even print frequently enough to make up the price difference.
Not to mention, while the cartridges are half the cost, we have yet to see any sign of the ink, itself, being at the same print volume for that price.
And the final clincher is photo quality. Kodak's banking on their name, but anyone experienced with photos knows that name hasn't meant anything for a while. Fuji surpassed them in film, everyone surpassed them in cameras, and they haven't competed on photo printer quality ever. Also they have no experience in the ink jet printer market, as the last printer they "made" was actually a rebranded Epson. So who knows whose technology they're using, but if it's their own I'd be shocked if their brand new technology can touch the photo quality Epson's been putting out for decades, or even the quality Canon's very recently stepped up to. I'd expect to see their quality more in line with HP's (which only looks photo quality from a distance), or more likely Lexmark, which is quite possibly the company they're licensing their tech from.
I'll wait until these hit the market and I can see the quality for myself, but I'm not convinced. Only reason I hope they do well is so that the real printer companies will have to shift their profit model to compete, and then I can get affordable prints AND good quality from companies like Epson.
Chris: One could argue that at that low a cost, the fact that it's a five-color cartridge isn't that big a deal. That said, after reading the articles, it's actually NOT a five-color cartridge. It contains black (in addition to the other black cartridge), cyan, yellow, magenta, and a gloss optimizer (similar to Epson's Hi-Gloss UltraChrome system). No light cyan, no light magenta. They're claiming their small droplet sizes make up for this. Catch is, they don't HAVE small droplet sizes. Black and yellow print at 6.7 picoliters, and cyan and magenta at 2.7 picoliters. It wasn't until companies like Epson got to 1.5 picoliters and Canon at 1 picoliter that they felt comfortable releasing photo-quality models that didn't have the light colors, and even then Epson at least supplemented them with red and blue. And the only other Epson without the light-intensity colors are the new PictureMate-200 line, which boast not only a 2-picoliter droplet size (not a massive difference, but still smaller than Kodak's 6.7 and 2.7), but dye-based ink which produces a wider color gamut, better light differentials, scratch-resistance, and much, much better color blending due to the ink's ability to physically blend on the paper. Sounds like Kodak's mixing three-year-old (at newest) Epson-like technologies with modern-day ink usage trends. I'm less and less impressed by the minute.
The photophy industry needs to figure out a way to make digital images last 100 years before you print them on to paper...they have a bigger problem there. All our digital stuff eventually fades
lol...I meant 'photography'
The future of Kodak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz6XjXu-oT8
After a Radio Shack rotating platen printer(look it up kids), my second printer was a n Epson dot matrix that used.....a standard typewriter ribbon! (again kids...look it up) - it lasted for months and months and when it started getting a little dull, you just flipped it over for another round. About $3 at any stationary store would get you a replacement.
The next Epson that I bought had a "custom ink cartridge"....the rest is history.
Stuart
Having seperate tank and jet head is nothing new. My older Canon i550 is like that. Canon also makes a 6-color model with the same design. Each color is a seperate tank. I think they are $6-$12 each.
Canon does it right: The ink tanks are nothing but clear plastic with a sponge inside so you can see how much ink is left. Refilling them is a no-brainer: I rotate between 2 sets and haven't bought new ink in 2 years. Here's the real kicker, and I don't think anyone else does this: The head is ALSO removable! If it gets really gunked up you can clean it or replace it for a lot less than a new printer.
No "Schick Model" or planned obsolesence here.
I too used the with canon compatible tanks or refilled the oems. Regardless of the brand of ink I tried none produced photos as good as the oem tanks. I also had to do a lot more cleanings. The newer canons now have a chip integral to each tank making reloading or the use of compatables much more cumbersome. I still have the canons but use them only enough to keep the heads from drying out since I purchased the Kodak. Give one a try you will most likely call it a keeper. Having reasonable ink costs makes the Kodak a definite must have for one who likes prints a lot.
I too used the with canon compatible tanks or refilled the oems. Regardless of the brand of ink I tried none produced photos as good as the oem tanks. I also had to do a lot more cleanings. The newer canons now have a chip integral to each tank making reloading or the use of compatables much more cumbersome. I still have the canons but use them only enough to keep the heads from drying out since I purchased the Kodak. Give one a try you will most likely call it a keeper. Having reasonable ink costs makes the Kodak a definite must have for one who likes prints a lot.
Kodak has a great site with many videos to support their lauch. Check it out http://www.inkisit.com
Kodak has a great new site to support their new printers. Check it out http://www.inksit.com
I have worked with a Kodak 5300 printer now for 2-1/2 weeks and my experience has been very good. I also own an HP 6180 (the $300 all-in-one) and the 8-1/2" by 11" documents are equal to the HP's, both B/W text and color. The 4"x6" photos on the Kodak are slightly better than the HP (a bit sharper and slightly brighter colors - also a whiter white on the Kodak).
The one thing I do not like about the HP is the 6 individual ink cartridges. Sure, each or the 5 individual color carts are only $10.49 each (black is more expensive), but I do a lot or printing and I am always having to buy 1 or 2 different cartridges every week or two.
I have printed about 100 photos and 75 or so documents and the ink cartridges are still going strong with only a small usage amount showing.
If the Kodak ink lasts like it appears it will, I will pay for this printer in less than a year with the less expensive ink costs.
I have used a variety of memory cards and USB drives and all my pictures and files have been read by the 5300.
The HP prints good, but the Kodak overall would be slightly better in print quality and with much less ink/printing cost per page or photo. I tried one of the $17.99 "10 cent per photo print" paper/ink packs and the 10 cent photos look excellent. The color cartridge that comes in the paper/ink pack is the same full cartridge that comes in the individual pack (the cartridge is still in the package - still working on the original cartridge). Another thing I like is that the Kodak printers come with a fully loaded set of ink carts, unlike the HP 6180 which only had "starter" (i.e., reduced capacity) ink cartridges that didn't last long.