Deskjet turns 20: HP celebrates two decades of robbing you blind
By Paul Miller 
posted Feb 28th 2008 4:28PM
posted Feb 28th 2008 4:28PM
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Canon printers all the way
I hate Canon and their non-removable print heads. At least with HP you change the 'head' every time you change ink, with Canon they slowly clog up and become unusable after about a year, depending on usage.
Love Canon cameras, hate their printers.
Canon used to have their print heads on the cartridges, but for some reason they decided to go with the Epson "Throw the printer away" strategy a couple of years ago.
If you ever find a Canon that takes a BC-02, BC-05 BC-20 or BC-21 cartridge, cherish it. Their by far the easiest cartridges to refill, reuse and maintain.
HP wise, after the deskjet 900 series they pretty much went into disposable mode. my 15+ year old 560c still works, and I've given 500 and 520 B/W deskjets to friends of mine that still print away. The only problem is finding cartridges for them. Especially the 500 series color carts.
I dont know what you guys are talking about. The new Canon printers with two cartridge system have printheads built right on the cartridge. Just like HP.
The ones with individual cartridges do not have printheads on cartridges but the printheads ARE removable unlike Epson. Search for a ip4000 printhead on ebay and you'll find them all.. they run for about $40.
I've only used Canon printers and I love their quality and they come with 3 times the ink in their cartridges. Too bad people dont realize this.
Why would they stop? They're not the only company relying on a household name to make money. Seems to work fine for them.
Yeah, but there's something wrong with the system when whole stores like Cartridge World (not as fun as Disney World, I understand) are set up just to sell cheaper inkjet cartridges. I wish Xerox would work on really knocking down the price of solid ink printers.
I got a HP Deskjet-all-in-one, and when I replace the Ink Carts, I noticed the print head goes with it. So every time I buy a new cart, I essentially buy a new print head too. Does that drive up costs?
Look at this:
http://images.tomshardware.com/2002/09/06/hp_deskjet_5550/hp_deskjet_5550_4.jpg
Those "ribbon wire" go to the print head, which gets replaced when you buy a new one. Drives up costs if you ask me.
Maybe, however, you are getting a brand-new, clog-free print head every time.
But in another, more accurate way, yes, they are totally gouging you for it.
Yes but...
My first inkjet was an Epson (I remember how bullet-proof their dot matrix printers were... inkjets turned out to be very different though).
The Epson strategy was to leave the print-head attached to the printer & just replace the ink reservoir. I wasn't exactly a high volume printer (put off by the price of ink and poor quality results!) so needless to say the print-head quickly got clogged and nothing I could do would unclog it. Piece of junk.
I had an Epson c80. If you don't use that printer every day the print head gets clogged. Due to my infrequent usage, I had to use the clean print head function every time I turned it on.
The procedure for cleaning the print head? Blast ink at it till it comes clean. If at first you don't succeed - blast more ink at it. Needless to say, brand new carts were empty after about 6 uses because of the stupid cleaning technique.
I now use laser exclusively.
Here at my office, all the printers are HPs. Mostly Laserjets, only the big copier/scanner/fax/email machine in the back is a toshiba estudio I think. For the most part, I think HP does a good job. Hey I just noticed HP makes printers and computers!
now crawl back under your rock.
HP's LaserJets are great machines, but more importantly to an IT guy like me, they are VERY servicable and have great support. They have detailed online part diagrams and you can purchase most parts at fairly reasonable prices from them. Their tech support really goes above and beyond...for a 4-year-old, no support contract printer, I got fast, knowledgable American tech support that followed up with calls and e-mail to make sure everything was working fine afterwards.
But yeah, they f**k consumers over whenever possible. I've advised my family to purchase the low-cost ink Kodak injet printers and they work quite well. My grandmother's printhead went bad on hers and they shipped her a replacement with instructions easy enough that she was able to install it. On top of that, she got two extra sets of ink cartridges because it took them an extra week to get it shipped.
It didn't used to be this way. The DeskJet 500C shown in the picture was around $500 to purchase, if I recall. And the ink cartridges weren't nearly as outrageously priced as they are nowadays.
Do you really think that HP can design, produce, package, ship, and support a color inkjet printer for $69? It's the ridiculously overpriced ink cartridge sales that are subsidizing the ridiculously low printer prices.
I miss the old days.
I dont know why you make it seem like HP makes crap printers. I havent used many but i have an HP all in one that is not only designed great so it isnt an eye sore like other all in ones but it prints fast and efficiently when printing documents and prints photos quite nicely. Furthermore, i dont mind paying for the print cartridges every once in awhile but if it bothers you just by a cheap refill kit.
Just how i feel about the whole thing.
Why all the hate. I've had HP printers for all of those 20 years and I can't recommend them enough. Yes, I know as far as ink and toner go they cost more but my experience has been outstanding reliability. No, I don't work for HP. I have owned other printers but I've always comeback to HP. I do have to also say that Canon is excellent as well. Just my 2 cents worth.
R
All I know is that the HP printer I currently own is such a piece of crap that I have to manually feed it sheet by sheet. It doesn't even have the ability to feed paper properly, and the ink I have to buy costs a good $5 more than other HP inks. Biggest money sucking POS I've ever owned.
That picture brings back memories. Mainly bad ones.
I second that. Makes me take a trip down the memory lane back to 1998 when I had a microwave sized HP deskjet 600 which woke up the entire family every time I was printing out homework late at night. I remember that ink was dead expensive, not only that but you were lucky if your printer lasted more than one and a half years.
Did you ever have to carry yours up and down stairs? I bloody did.
Spoiled youngins. I had an old dot matrix printer way back in the day, could wake up the whole darned neighborhood when it's printing...
Oh, and it only took paper with holes at the sides, very cool, those days.
I have a friend who still uses the original Deskjet 500 on a daily basis (on a Mac Quadra emulating an Atari TT030). I had one myself, damn reliable printers.
My sister does, too.
Stupid thing is: All (and by that I mean *a lot*) of DJ500 printers I knew had severe problems with the paper tray rollers after a few years. And all could have been repaired by very simple means. So simple that HP charged approximately the same sum for the repair as they did as an original retail price. Essentially my repair method was something elaborate as putting a piece of cardboard into the paper tray.
Needless to say that the Laserjet we bought as a replacement before we figured out how to repair the DJ suffered from almost exactly the same defect after a couple of years. But HP had a repair kit then.
My Grandma has one of those :D
Myself, I have an HP Deskjet 6800 which is an A3 printer, and funnily enough, just earlier today I was replacing a cartridge and thinking the last one didnt last long.
to be fair ink has come down a lot in price over the last few years, and HP is one of the cheaper brands. Here in the UK, a colour cartridge will set you back about £15-£25 on the high street, while online often under £10. Not too shabby really
HP blows. Bring on the competition.
My dad had a 510 back in 1992 or something like that. It came with a 3 year pick-up-and-return warranty! I think I had a problem with it at almost the end of that period. I called. They picked it up the next day. And I think it was returned or exchanged within two weeks. Ah...those were the days. Now where did I put those mix-tapes?
My dad had a 510 back in 1992 or something like that. It came with a 3 year pick-up-and-return warranty! I think I had a problem with it at almost the end of that period. I called. They picked it up the next day. And I think it was returned or exchanged within two weeks. Ah...those were the days. Now where did I put those mix-tapes?
True HP makes a mint selling cartridges. What would be a fair price to charge? $10? Have you tried to fill a cartridge? What a pain that can be and most refilled cartridges are junk ink or toner.
Are extra capacity carts the solution?
The problem is that these printers are not very good to start with either. I've had several Officejet printers, all sorts of jams and print feed problems.
And I have lots of empties here, what do I do with them, just think of all the landfill waste....
There has to be a solution.
I try to buy laser printers when I can, but the toner is very very expensive. Basically I can buy a new printer for the cost of the 4 toner carts.
...and when you need to buy a new drum it's pretty much the cost of the laser printer. Assuming that it takes you 2+ years to work your way through a drum you're best off chucking the printer and buying a new one - that way you get all new parts & warranty, full toner (assuming they don't pull a fast one & ship with a "starter" toner) and newer technology, all for about the same price.
I've got a networked B&W laser at home... reliable perfect printouts every time at much less cost than our colour inkjet.
But it's all crazy economics and not exactly good for the environment!
HP computers suck so much and their printers are so overpriced. Canon is very good and more than competitively priced
I don't miss the days of the 3 series DeskJet printers. Having to use those spring-loaded brillo pads on the rollers. What a mess those made...
Some break free :-)
http://flickr.com/photos/ianjw/2272182976/
that was a sad story but with a happy end. hope he finds a usb.
it's the same age as me! however, I'd like to think I don't look as ancient as that thing :)
I missed the 20th anniversary of the razor blade. Where was that?
I have got to say, even though their cartridges are indeed way overpriced, they have the best desk jet printers I have ever used. They just keep chugging! Now if I could say as much for this piece of junk Lexmark. Why did I leave my HP at home?
I know their ink carts are expensive, but, after having gone through several Epson and clogged heads, I bit the bullet and got an HP all in one. It has been working flawlessly for almost 3 years.
The worse part of the Epsons dying on me were the fact that I had to uninstall old drivers and install new drivers on several computers. The HP just keeps working. I don't mind paying a bit more for the ink because it's headache-free.
Well I'll be damned...the printer in that picture...I think I have that very one still. Not actively connected to my PC, but it still works amazingly. HP Deskjet 500c I believe. Best printer ever, except for that 1ppm nonsense.
screw bubble jet printers
laser all the way!
Bias article maybe? If it costs too much for you then don't buy it.
My first DeskJet was the 825. Good printer. Better than the 24pin it replaced.
OMG!
i have that exact same printer!
I had a Deskjet 1200C, I think, the thing was a tank. All I know is that HP still has to sell the cartridges for them because they don't break. You still can get 70ml of ink for $18, a far cry from the 7ml $35 ink carts they sell now. You could print a thousand pages before you ran out of black ink. Up until 5 years ago I would only buy HP, now I won't even take a HP printer if it is given to me.
HP printers used to stand for quality. Now they are absolute pieces of crap with ink that lasts for 50 pages if you are lucky. They kept the ink carts the same price but dropped capacity to 1/8th what it used to be thinking people wouldn't notice. Then HP tells us that its better ink and that the printer uses less of it per page so that is why the capacity has dropped, yeah right.
I bought a Canon printer for $70 that uses 38ml tanks. The build quality is far superior to the HP in the same price range and even if it breaks in a year I'll have paid for the printer with the ink savings due to the $30 7ml ink carts the HP takes.
Exactly, I'm seeing this in the IT world for sure, and it's starting to slip up the line into the previously great business inkjets and laserjets.
Every single HP consumer printer is complete and total ass with overpriced consumables. Drivers are 600MB and clog up your computer, paper feeds are flimsy and unreliable, etc etc...
I still love the high end laserjets and designjets, but the lower end models are starting to turn to crap as well.
I've found that Samsung, Canon, Epson, Brother, even Dell all have better deals and better printers on the low end than HP, with much thinner and more stable drivers and usually better price per page/ ink costs. Epson sure does love to waste ink still though.
The worst thing is that you cannot really spend $300 or so on a good inkjet printer anymore, it's going to be crapola for $99, or something you don't need for $500 that is still built like it's $99.
The biggest advantage of having the print head in the ink cartridge is that they are airtight. the ink never dries out. I can't tell you how many cartridges and printers I've had to throw out because the ink dried before I could use it up. I only used HP printers (both ink and laser) for years. I finally found a Canon printer that has the print head in the cartridge and it was on sale so now I'm not exclusively HP.
By the way, I feel the same way about the laser printers that have separate Drum heads. In the long run, it's cheaper to have the printer head in the cartridge.
I have had the same laser printer for about 5 years and have never replaced the toner cartridge. Solid investment.
Ink jets are cheap... Easily replaced... Almost disposable. After my $600 Epson laser died after 5 years and I replaced it with an Epson 400 for $100 which last 3 years and I just replaced my HP 7620 after 3 years for another $100. I don't care... They're cheap and disposable. Makes it easier to justify the move to a better resolution and ink quality every couple of years.
Been printing with a Deskjet for the past 10 years, I can't complain all that much.
check your pocket.
;-)
Hah! That's a DeskWriter, not a DeskJet, in the picture. A short lived product for the Apple Macintosh from the late 80's.
instead of buying new cartridges, i just buy new printers with pack-in cartridges.
The trouble with it is :
a) you are creating more electronic trash.
b) first ink included with a new printer is half charged (or even worst).
Do what I did... Screw Canon, Epson, and HP!
I voted with my pocketbook and purchased the new EasyShare 5500 All-in-One. The black ink cartridge is $9.99 MSRP! The colour ink cartridge is $14.99 MSRP! You can find a bag bundle that contains one of each of these for less than $22! This printer is so worth the investment IMO! No more expensive inks!
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=9/11921/10580/10581&pq-locale=en_US&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=9976
You are welcome! :)
I bought an HP deskjet in 2003 for $50. I still haven't used all the ink in the black cartridge (or any cartridge). Who prints at home? Print at work, man.
My first printer was a Canon BJ300. Took tractor paper (a plus back then) and non-printhead ink meant it was cheaper... until HP ubiquity made the Canon carts impossible to get, so I switched to a HP DJ550c.
I now like the few-years-old Canons that use BJC3 series carts. The heads are 'permanent' but removable and serviceable (and replaceable if need be), and good 3rd party ink is $1.25/ea.
One of the things that made early HP inkjets good was that they all used the same green top (and later blue) carts. At one point that universality made prices start to drop... then I bet HP realized this and started going to a buncha different cart models and jacking up the prices.
I used to be a big fan of HP, but I recently had to call service on a 4-month old LaserJet, and the support was awful. I have had better on the phone and in online chat (I got to use both) with Dell. Worst support experience ever.
Bah whatever. Once again Engadget is all talk...all the time. I do HP, Lexmark, and Canon printer repairs all the way down to their inkjets. (Thankfully not every often since its a colossal PITA and usually cheaper to just buy a new inkjet...usually.)
HP makes the best damn hardware on the market, with only a few notable exceptions in their inkjet line. (Not all just a few exceptions.) The problem isn't with their hardware or their ink its their horrid drivers. The default install is something like 200MB with all kinds of added shit bundled in with 20MB of drivers and utils. Thank God for WinRAR and extracting that crap.
I had that Deskwriter in the picture.
$699, and worth every penny at the time when your other options were the Imagewriter II (slow and loud), or the Laserwriter (expensive)
Ink cartridges were good for several hundred pages and could easily be refilled (unlike HP's carts today)
Used HP for over 10 years, but their ridiculous cartridges (in price an design) and crappy software finally turned me away. Tried Epson: better carts but wasted too much ink.
Then I saw a Canon MP970. Found an all-in-one that game me everything I needed in one device including networking and direct CD printing (modded the firmware to Europe to unlock it - google it). The quality is unmatched IMHO. too bad they decided to go with these new PITA chipped carts. Cost more to get them re-filled/replaced, but so far the cost per page is much better then the Epson.
Epson Lx-810....no contest
What bothers me about HP is the fact they need to come up with a new model every 5 or 6 days it seems. They seem no different than the the other. On the plus side, the HP Laserjet I was given has been a flawless performer. Just need some more toner.
However, on a newer HP deskjet I have, shared via network via SAMBA wont let me install the drivers without seeing it. It can't see it due to samba oddities. Argh.
When is a start up going to finally come up with a new technology to replace inkjet???
I am sick of the absurdly high prices of ink carts and the problems with print heads.
Canon spare parts supplier want about AU$186 for a replacement print head for a i965, but I can get a i4500 brand new for only AU$143.
Then they go and start chipping their carts, tossers...
I just bought a lexmark for $20 only to find out the replacement ink cost $32. My mom bought a HP just because the ink was cheaper.
What happened to the wonderful memjet tech announced circa 2005 or so? I'm sure it wasn't vaporware, since we all see the videos. It's as if no printing manuf. wants to license it. http://www.memjet.com/pages.aspx?id=technology
Supposed to be alot cheaper than current tech, but just doesn't seem to be picking up popularity for some reason.
I'm still on my Lexmark X5150 and I'd really like to upgrade soon. But horror stories of HP building 'expiration' dates into cartidges and Canon and Epson printers clogging up after a few years of use (I've actually SEEN this) and of course ink costing as much as the printer in 2 months, I'm a bit paranoid to just jump into buying one...sure they're only like $100 bucks but still. Come on memjet....
Ehh, circa 2007*. It was announced around march of 2007 I think, not 2005.
Epsons are the best, cheap but good quality ink all the way, i as a student used my £30 printer and spent about £35 in ink in total throughout my entire final year and trust me, that was a lot of printing, i would need a mortgage had i bought a HP with there £30 a pop half filled cartidges!
I picked up an Oki Data color laser about three years ago for $250. The cartridges are still 70% full after printing 600 sheets!
HP must be furious that Kodak has pissed on their turf. The Kodak printer was a little more expensive but it only costs $25 to refill the printer. HP's been getting away with murder for too long. I've had my Kodak Easyshare 5300 printer since Christmas and I'm still printing using the original print cartridges - I've been printing a lot of photos too. Kodak's line of ink jet printers are absolutely amazing when it comes to cost per print. They say you can print twice as much for the same price and so far, I believe it. The quality of it's print outs is outstanding as well. I surprised more people aren't talking about it here.
Don't like the "give away the razor; make money on the razor blades" business model used for inkjet printers. Plus, the technology is poor because of clogged jets due to long term disuse.
Don't like the current laser jets, because a perfectly good print engine is tossed out after the toner dust is gone.
Some dual purpose, business copier/printers deliver toner to the print engine with replaceable bottles. A consumer version of this would be terrific, because it would be economical and keep us from tossing out perfectly good print engines.
For those of you wondering how to purchase hard-tofind ink cartridges for old HP printers, HP provides a supplies shopping site called SureSupply. You can get there by clicking "Shop for Supplies" on this website -
https://www.hp.com/go/suresupply
Direct URL -
https://h30042.www3.hp.com/SureSupply/.
At work, we have an old HP Deskjet 1600C. It doesn't get used much.
If you guys don't want to waste money, I suggest you buy a printer that uses a different cartridge for each color (cmyk lc lm). The printers that have all those colors in one cartridge will cost you the most in the long run because certain colors are needed and used more so they run out faster than other colors.
Typically yellow is needed the most, magenta second, then cyan, light magenta, light cyan and then black (Which is used the least and last the longest). If you don't buy a printer that uses 1 cartridge per color you have to replace the whole thing when one color runs out even when all the other colors are at pretty high levels. Printers that use multi-colors in a single cartridge are typically cheaper for this reason.
With the printhead argument there are 2 types used in consumer desktop inkjet printers. HP uses thermal printheads which use heat to push ink droplets out, the heat wears out the printheads pretty fast and need to replaced more often to maintain the quality. That is why on hp deskjets the printheads are built into the cartridge. The other type of printhead is Piezo printheads which Epson uses, uses electricity to push ink droplets out. These last quite a long time due to less wear on the head.
I own 6 HP Designjet 5500's 60" large format printers which is pretty much the same technology in the DeskJet printers but at a larger scale. The ink cartridges cost $199 each x 6 colors for 600ml and printheads last about 3 cartridges and cost about $75 each color to replace. I also have 16 foot Vutek and a 72" roland which both use piezo printheads that cost about $700-$1200 each to replace but last until there is physical damage or short circuit to them ( I've put literally a few hundred GALLONS of ink through them with no problem). Ink costs on these printers run about $150 per liter albeit it being a different type of ink.
When it comes to large format printers, the cost difference between the 2 types of printers are substantial. HP printers have the best quality and are much cheaper (around $19,000) , but ink costs are higher and media cost is also higher since the ink it uses requires coated media (i.e. photopaper). The 16 foot vutek I have cost about half a mil, and the roland which is more comparable to the HP's I have is about $35,000 but ink and media is about 1/3 the cost if I were to print the same thing.