[geeks] Printers, postscript, networking...

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 @ 14:37 -0400, nate at portents.com said:

> I have issues with color inkjets these days - the chips they use, and the
> rumored secret additives they have in their inks which prevent clogging
> that supposedly cause third-party inks to eventually be a problem, to the
> latest I've heard where they detect refilling of first-party inks and then
> the printer driver gives the choice of replacing the cartridge right away
> or disabling ink level monitoring forever and rewriting the printer
> firmware as warranty voided, or having to spend $80 on third party
> refillable, chip-resettable (with a $25 device) cartridges, and then who
> knows if you'll get the 30-years behind glass, 100 years in archival
> storage lifespan out of those prints.  Bah.

Amen to all of that.

Inkjet cartridges are far too expensive, far too small, and the
protection crap they have in them is just criminal.

The part about the Windows drivers disabling printer features and your
warranty is true BTW. They really are that damned evil and stupid.

HP inkjets tend to not clog as bad, because usually the carts have a print
head on them, so you are always replacing them.

They all suck, IMHO.

Unfortunately, it is hard to get color otherwise.

Color lasers are nice, but good ones are expensive, and everyone I know with
one says they pay a lot in consumables if they print much.

> Big beef I have is that while it's nice there are five or six seperate
> inks, it still won't print black and white only documents with one color
> ink exhausted.  Dumb.

Also, some printers are stupid and reset *ALL* carts when you replace one of
them, wasting ink in the others even though it isn't necessary.

> I agree, large-volume color prints absolutely make sense to do online
> mail-order, and I'd only be using a color printer at home for low-volume,
> occasional stuff.

...which means it will gum up and waste ink... :)

I'm pretty well settled on a B&W laser, since 99% of my printing is
text, and I'll send off for photos.

For color printing... I don't know yet. It's a hard problem to solve with the
current dismal crop of color inkjets.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Star Wars Moral Number 17: Teddy bears are
dangerous in herds."]