Ouch! I Can't Afford It!

[Iznogud]

At least HP printers don't have counters.

Google a way to fool them.
There were a bunch of Youtube tutorials on how to trick those bastards since they waste a huge % of ink and force you to get rid of them when there's stil plenty to go.

 

[Jaredberryman]

At least HP printers don't have counters. I bought a used epson from a friend recently, only to find that it uses a counter to determine how many pages you've printed, and forces you to buy, for example color ink after the set number of pages even if you didn't print a single page in color the whole time (and it won't print black if the color cartridge is "empty"! I could not find a hack to get around this. He was nice enough to buy it back from me as he hadn't know that when he sold me the printer. I am now waiting on a parallel cable adapter from China for an ooold HP printer. I try to stay paperless, but my wife is into printing things. Very crazy and annoying business model the whole cheap-printer / expensive-ink thing.

If you are printing everyday at a business, buy a cheap printer and install the continuous ink system (very cheap to do that). Actually, a better bet is to buy a cheap printer with the continuous ink system already installed. I think the most popular one is imprek. There are lots of bugs with this system but if you print everyday several pages it will work okay. The quality is somewhat reduced, but this is a good option for those who have to do a lot of printing.

 

[Jaredberryman]

I do exactly the same! I print helluva lot. My fav shop is close to fac la medicina , estacion de subte. the rates are extremely cheap. I usually print 1000's of pages.

Ceviche I did the math and if you are printing that much you might want to look into a cheap laser printer if it's just black and white. The laser cartridges will give a massive output, print very quickly, and you can normally get the cartridges refilled with ink multiple times before buying another. In the long run this option was cheaper for a larger number of pages. Maybe not worth the time of going and buying one for you but if you can find cheap paper it will give you some savings.

 

[EricLovesBA]

Brainfart - the printer I was describing was not an epson, it was a Kodak 2150. Anyway, as I said, I sold it back to my friend. He no doubt could use a hack if there is one, but my search at the time (last year) did not prove helpful. It seems the cartridge itself holds the counter logic, and it's not easy to get around.

 

[Iznogud]

Ceviche I did the math and if you are printing that much you might want to look into a cheap laser printer if it's just black and white. The laser cartridges will give a massive output, print very quickly, and you can normally get the cartridges refilled with ink multiple times before buying another. In the long run this option was cheaper for a larger number of pages. Maybe not worth the time of going and buying one for you but if you can find cheap paper it will give you some savings.

I wonder about your maths... Printing HUNDREDS of copies is TIME consuming. Not to mention annoyingly noisy and maybe also unhealthy.


Would you rather stay home/office and watch/feed the printer?

Time is precious, money comes and goes.

 

[Jaredberryman]

I wonder about your maths... Printing HUNDREDS of copies is TIME consuming. Not to mention annoyingly noisy and maybe also unhealthy.


Would you rather stay home/office and watch/feed the printer?

Time is precious, money comes and goes.

Which is why I said it might not be worth his time. If you're at the office, and sitting there working, it's not such a big deal to stick in a ream of paper. Honestly, I had such a tough time with the local copy places that constantly screwed up my order, that I had to start doing it myself. When I did the math and realized it would save me some money, too, I went ahead and got a couple of cheap laser printers.