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Printers and their liquid gold upkeep

DeusfauxDeusfaux Registered User regular
edited August 2011 in Help / Advice Forum
Looking for general advice on home printing. We don't do that much, but I think most people often need the ability to print off a form to sign or get access to certain doucments for this and that. I guess that means we won't be doing many images and certainly not photos.

Have a Canon MP560 wireless inkjet + scanner currently. It was between $100 and $200 new. I like it. The scanning and wireless qualities are essential.

It's now all out of ink, after frankly what I thought was not much use. What really irritates me is that the CMY tanks are all empty too and VERY few pages were printed in any color. Less than 5 for sure.

So there are several issues.

#1. Why did the CMY tanks empty even when printing in grayscale?

#2. Do official Canon ink tanks have to be used; are there consequences of using cheaper 3rd party ink tanks?

#3. How much truth is there to the suggestion that with the cost of printers so low and ink so high, that it often makes sense to just buy a whole new printer? Are the cartridges that come with new printers just as full as the refill ones?

#4. When do laser printers become more cost effective? They are a lot more upfront, but in the long run they are cheaper, right?

#5. Suggestions on where to buy ink. (at a glance, NCIX offers better prices than Future Shop or Best Buy does

edit: #6. I forgot there is also a second black tank. Why are there two? One is the size of the color tanks, the other is larger and is called PGBK stead of just BK.

Deusfaux on

Posts

  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    edited August 2011
    The ink cartridges that come with the printer often do NOT come with a full tank. They are often "trial ink cartridges" with reduced capacity, especially in the cheaper printers out there. The thing about low printer cost/high ink cost is mostly a joke. It would only be true in some very specific cases, and only on "just a printer" inkjets, not the combination that you are looking for.

    A lot of inkjets print using the color cartridges for grayscale images, as it is difficult to get a good greyscale from the black cartridge alone. It varies widely from printer to printer, though, even from the same manufacturer.

    In the long run, laserjets are cheaper, but not by much. It really depends on the printer model, its durability, and the cost of toner. I know I bought a 200 dollar laser printer a while back, and my family is still using it. I only had to change toner cartridges on it once, ever.

    Hahnsoo1 on
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  • MushroomStickMushroomStick Registered User regular
    If the vast majority of your printing is black and white, do yourself a favor and get a laser printer. I bought one for maybe $150 like 6 years ago and have yet to use up the toner it came with. I've had inkjet cartridges dry up on me because I didn't use them up fast enough before, this doesn't seem to be an issue with the laser printer.

  • EsseeEssee The pinkest of hair. Victoria, BCRegistered User regular
    I've definitely heard that laser printers take WAAAYYY longer to run out than your ordinary inkjet printers, so that is definitely an option.

    As for your printer, specifically... yes, printers pretty much always come with less ink than you'll get when you refill or buy a new cartridge. Speaking of which, you'll likely spend a SIGNIFICANT amount less on ink if you find a local ink refill place (or if you don't, you can pick up third-party cartridges that work with your model), since the actual ink is much cheaper than a new cartridge. I don't have much personal experience with this yet because (I swear this was just a coincidence, not anything related to the refill) the electronics on the cartridges that came with the printer, which are the ones I was refilling, failed a brief time after I got the refill. Anyway, I didn't personally notice any drop in quality, although just like you I don't typically personally print photos, mostly just text. Speaking of which! If you want your CMY cartridge to not run out when you're printing black-and-white stuff... when you go to print something, find the option in the print settings to ONLY print black-and-white/greyscale (there should be one). This should keep all/most of the load on the black cartridge, so it won't use the color cartridge. I'm guessing they waste CMY on blacks because this looks better on photos, but for printing text there's really no reason to waste your pretty colors for that. You should also turn off any other fancy things that are for improving the quality of photos unless you're actually printing PHOTOS-- for example, since my printer is from HP, there's some sort of "HP Real Life Technologies" option that likely uses extra ink to improve photo quality.

    Now, to be fair, my mom (who DOES print photos) had a nice Canon printer for quite some time, but she recently picked up a refurbished HP printer because Canon's cartridges are expensive, and it seems like they tend to eat ink a bit for no reason as well, from what she said. But I wouldn't go buying a new printer without seeing how long a new or newly-filled cartridge lasts. If you're getting a refill, I'd recommend that you double-check with the people who will be doing the refill that the trial cartridges don't have lesser capacity or anything (rather than just being half-full, which is probably how yours were), because if they do you won't REALLY know how long a cartridge lasts.

  • RuckusRuckus Registered User regular
    Also, a laser printer manages long periods of disuse better than inkjets. An inkjet that doesn't print for a month or more can clog. Usually the worst case scenario with a Laser printer is that you have to take out the Toner cartridge and shake it.

  • matt has a problemmatt has a problem Points to 'off' Points to 'on'Registered User regular
    We use a Brother HL-5730 laser printer at work, it's wireless, with the TN-650 high capacity toner. It's about $250 for both on Amazon at the moment ($170 for the printer, $75 for the toner). The TN-650 will give us about 10,000 black and white pages before it has to be replaced. 10,000 pages is about 2 months output for us, we've had it for a year so far, with no problems at all. The regular capacity TN-620 is around 3000-5000 pages.

    We also have that same Canon as you, we use it for color-only though. It lasts for about 100 8.5x11 color prints, or around 350-400 photo size prints at regular resolution. The second black tank is so black and white printing lasts longer (or so I've been told).

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  • Descendant XDescendant X Skyrim is my god now. Outpost 31Registered User regular
    Deus, do yourself a favour and go to Future Shop. They have a Samsung laser printer for $50. If the toner is too expensive when you run out, you can buy yourself a new printer for less!

    Garry: I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!
  • DaenrisDaenris Registered User regular
    Definitely get a laser printer if you don't need color.

    I got a used HP LaserJet 4mp from my roommate when he graduated college because he didn't want to take it with him. It's old and bulky, but it's built like a tank.

    It's been 9 years since then and I believe I'm only on my 2nd replacement toner cartridge, and I use 3rd party refill cartridges that are around $40-50. I don't print a huge amount these days, but in my last year of college and first year out job hunting it saw extreme use, and now that it's not used so much I don't have to worry about the ink cartridges drying up.

  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    Daenris wrote:
    I got a used HP LaserJet 4mp from my roommate when he graduated college because he didn't want to take it with him. It's old and bulky, but it's built like a tank.
    It is, indeed, built like a tank. We had one in our family, and it outlasted 2 of our computers. It finally failed due to a catastrophic series of events (which included our basement flooding), but that was a great printer.

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  • DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    #1. Why did the CMY tanks empty even when printing in grayscale?
    Because (like many other situations where you're dealing with a huge faceless corporation) Fuck you! That's why.
    #2. Do official Canon ink tanks have to be used; are there consequences of using cheaper 3rd party ink tanks?
    You can probably find knockoff cartridges for around 60% the cost of namebrand, though the carts for newer printers may not be available yet.
    #3. How much truth is there to the suggestion that with the cost of printers so low and ink so high, that it often makes sense to just buy a whole new printer? Are the cartridges that come with new printers just as full as the refill ones?
    A half-truth? Yes, buying a new inkjet may be as much or cheaper than buying new carts, but you're getting starter packs, which don't have the duty-cycle of the carts you buy. As far as I can tell there's no reason to buy an inkjet unless you hate money. Buy a cheap Brother laser and go to Walmart to print you photos.
    #4. When do laser printers become more cost effective? They are a lot more upfront, but in the long run they are cheaper, right?
    If you've ever run out of ink on an inkjet you've just justified the move to purchasing a cheap laser (docs and text) and doing color prints at Walmart (photos) or Kinko's/printshop (for color docs).
    #5. Suggestions on where to buy ink. (at a glance, NCIX offers better prices than Future Shop or Best Buy does
    Dunno, buying inkjet ink is a fool's errand. If you are very happy with your inkjet and your demands of it require multiple projected cart replacements, then look into a refill kit. Will cost a fair amount up front (as they have counterfeit carts to fool the printer), but ought to have enough ink for 4-5 refills.
    edit: #6. I forgot there is also a second black tank. Why are there two? One is the size of the color tanks, the other is larger and is called PGBK stead of just BK.
    Often manufacturers sell hi-capacity black carts in addition to standard capacity carts.


    Duty cycle of an inkjet is rated for around 500-600 per cart exchange (5-10% coverage), whereas the duty cycle of a cheap laser is 3000 (1500 for a starter toner cartridge) per toner cart exchange.

  • ValaenaValaena Registered User regular
    The PGBK is likely a photo black. What that actually means, I'm not sure. I think its just darker black for when you are doing pictures.

    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • VestyVesty Registered User regular
    edited August 2011
    The reason it uses CMY when printing back is because it is printing rich black. It is a pretty common print process when using a machine with color inks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black It isn't using a lot of color ink but it'll add up over time. The reason for it is to give richer deeper blacks (hence the name). At work we have a black and white only machine and a color machine and the difference is pretty noticeable. Whether or not there is an option to turn that off and just print straight black I'm not sure. I wouldn't hold your breath.

    I think PGBK is already mixed rich black but I'm not sure.

    Vesty on
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