[HN Gopher] HP LaserJet Tank - Refillable laser printer
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HP LaserJet Tank - Refillable laser printer
Author : tobiasrenger
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-08-17 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hp.com)
| [deleted]
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand this. Inkjets go through ink fast so
| they need to be refilled a fair bit and those refills are
| expensive and hold very little.
|
| Toner is good practically forever. A new toner cartridge isn't
| cheap (and stupid DRM exists) but it's still way better than
| inkjets. So I'm not sure this provides as much value.
|
| Also, isn't HP the company that likes to disable your printer if
| the credit/debit card on your auto-refill plan expires? They're
| not exactly a bastion of integrity.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Toner is good for a long time, toner cartridges are not. The
| Canon engined LaserJets integrated the drum and waste container
| with the toner cartridge. So the waste bin fills up, the wiper
| for the drum gets old and useless, etc. etc. and the cartridge
| will need to be replaced. I've aged out a few toner cartridges
| in the various LaserJets I've owned over the years.
|
| The current crop of LaserJets are all based on Samsung engines
| (yuck), so HP could have started selling the pieces separately.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Also, isn't HP the company that likes to disable your printer
| if the credit/debit card on your auto-refill plan expires?
| They're not exactly a bastion of integrity.
|
| How is that evidence of integrity or not? The subscription ink
| is only good when your subscription is good. Netflix doesn't
| let you watch movies when you don't pay either. You're not
| allowed to drive your car if your license or registration
| expires (although neither is enforced through the internet).
|
| Afaik, all of the HP printers that work with subscription ink
| also work with owned ink, too. For low volume printer users who
| are capable of managing their account, the lowest tier
| subscription seems like a reasonable way to keep fresh ink on
| hand, but I dunno. I opted for laser color and don't have to
| deal with liquid supplies anymore, but at a higher capital cost
| and the printer only takes more volume than my previous
| multifunction inkjet (which I keep so I can scan).
| scohesc wrote:
| The only way I could see this providing value is for larger
| multi-function printers that offices use - I don't see this
| having any benefit in the home/small office market - just seems
| like they're trying to ride the wave of Canon(Epson?)'s
| refillable inkjet tanks.
|
| Toner is pretty toxic (fine microplastics that are easily
| aerosolized - they go right through a lot of vacuum filters!!!)
| so I could see them marketing it as "don't touch dirty
| disgusting toner cartridges anymore! You don't even have to
| _SEE_ the toner!"
|
| This could probably also make it a LOT easier for third parties
| to make HP toner refills, unless HP's done something like
| trademark/copyright/patent the "toner delivery mechanism" to
| stop third parties from copying it.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > 250-sheet paper input tray
|
| nothing more annoying than having a half-empty ream of paper
| sitting on a shelf.
| benj111 wrote:
| stop being so pessimistic. the ream is half full.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Unless I want to make emergency office supply trips (in fact, I
| don't), I have to have _something_ on the shelf. How is a half-
| ream worse than a ream?
| bombcar wrote:
| The ream is wrapped and stays clean and secure until you load
| it in, a half ream is opened and loose and gets dirty and
| jams when you load it in.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If that bugs you, close it with Saran/plastic wrap. That's
| what we did when I was a typesetter.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I order by the case and re-order when I've loaded the last
| ream.
| [deleted]
| pcdoodle wrote:
| HP got all of us to recommend brother due to HP's horrible
| software and customer abuse. I don't think that damage can be
| undone.
| criddell wrote:
| Brother says "hold my beer".
|
| > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
| alyandon wrote:
| That is extremely disappointing to see as I'm in the market
| for a new printer and I guess Brother is no longer in
| consideration. :(
| yellow_lead wrote:
| FYI HP has a recycling program for used ink cartridges. If you
| are going through a lot of these, you can send them back to have
| a second life. Heard about it on Marketplace.
|
| https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information/recycling/ink-toner....
| mmastrac wrote:
| My HP LaserJet 6P is still running strong, almost 20 years after
| I bought it second-hand and almost 25 since it was released (!).
| I've been using nothing but unofficial toner in it and other than
| some streaking that developed in the last few years (too lazy to
| clean the toner for now), it's been flawless.
|
| Apparently HP made things so well for so long that they've
| decided to correct that mistake.
|
| No subscription required. A small JetDirect server makes it an
| IPP-capable PCL printer.
| kube-system wrote:
| Running stuff well within its intended duty cycle is also a
| good way to get a long life out of something. I like to buy
| second hand enterprise gear, and I really never see failures
| out of anything that wasn't already worn out.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Same here. Firmware updates are often unavailable, sometimes
| you end up with a janky Java-requiring interface, but overall
| it's approximately the same as the equivalent consumer gear
| and it'll last 2-3x longer (that's _after_ it was discarded).
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| The JetDirect 600 series got a few firmware updates (and
| they will take any firmware you send it over PCL) and did
| away with the Java based interface IIRC.
|
| The duty cycle on the regular LaserJets (not P or L) was
| high enough (I want to say something like 50,000 pages per
| month) that if you come anywhere near it you'll need to
| start servicing it regularly. I think most folks (even
| businesses) who owned them didn't come near their rated
| duty cycle.
|
| As for correcting the lack of vendor lock in, HP did that
| with starting with the 4100 series. I think HP used an RFID
| chip on the cartridge itself. Eventually they backed down a
| bit with the 4200/4300 but they did make the various
| cartridges non-interchangeable which is absolutely asinine.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I'll have to take a look and see if my JetDirect 300X has
| new firmware.
|
| EDIT: Nope, it's a Javapocalypse for that particular
| device.
| dervjd wrote:
| I bought an HP Laserjet Enterprise M601DN off Craigslist 5
| years ago for ~$150 from a business that closed down. Had
| 250K pages printed when I bought it, and I printed tens of
| thousands more (law school books). Still going strong with no
| issues.
|
| If you have the space, older HP Enterprise printers are
| absolute tanks.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| How does it handle documents with complex graphics/large files?
| I had this exact same printer and for anything other than text,
| this thing took forever to "process" the document. Eventually I
| trashed it.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I've never had issues w/complex graphics. Are you using PCL
| mode + a print server? It might have also had one of the
| lower memory configurations.
|
| I'm mainly using it for shipping labels and other simple
| print jobs, but for sure I've printed complex graphics on it
| and they're always pre-rasterized on the printing computer.
| Marazan wrote:
| I have a cheap, domestic HP1020.
|
| Absolutely fantastic piece of kit for printing text.
|
| It is from the before times, apparently it was so good it
| started eating into their low end commercial unit sales so they
| discontinued it.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| How does it handle curling of paper? I had this model but it
| would start to curl paper if you printed more than a few
| sheets at a time.
| Marazan wrote:
| Seems to do fine. I printed out a manual for a thing
| recently and the pages came out flat I think.
|
| It _is_ weirdly muddy with images though bit noone is
| buying a monochrome printer for images.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Fool me once...
| jbverschoor wrote:
| We had laser printers 20+ years ago with similar refills.. pro
| laser printer though.
|
| All these scenes are just scams... How come we don't have to put
| Tesla-power in, or BMW-gasoline?
|
| Because "tech" is "magic", and people like to be fooled or
| something
| whitewingjek wrote:
| > NOTE: The printer only works with original HP toner refill
| kits. If original HP toner is not installed in the printer, the
| printer will not work as expected.
|
| Still vendor locked. Rather just stick with something you can
| refill yourself.
| scohesc wrote:
| I wonder how they could tell though - Maybe the refill bottles
| themselves have electrical contacts and that's how they
| serialize the refills? Once it's been dumped into the printer,
| they burn an efuse on the refill so it's now useless to
| anybody?
|
| Seems like more waste than anything.
| grishka wrote:
| Seems like an interesting reverse engineering project.
| function_seven wrote:
| My uninformed guess is an RFID tag in each refill bag. The
| printer will scan for Genuine Authorized Original Virtuous
| Toner, and only then allow the fill port to open. Once open
| you have one hour before that tag ID is burned and can't be
| used further.
|
| Or maybe you need to use the app and do this? (https://ssl-
| product-images.www8-hp.com/pub/msc/C26A0B64-54DB...)
|
| Whatever the mechanism, reviews are not good:
| https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-143a-black-original-
| nev...
| radiojasper wrote:
| I love how they market that as protecting the _end user_
| from counterfeit.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| If this is how it works, then I don't think they'd burn a
| tag. People will inevitably do a partial fill or maybe even
| just open it up to see how it works. And if there are
| multiple tags, which one does it burn?
|
| The bottles also do not appear to be one time use.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| uhh.. or maybe just chemistry? you can fill the tank with
| urine if you want but YMMV.
| bregma wrote:
| That's fine for the magenta but what about the cyan,
| yellow, and black?
| dublin wrote:
| Methylene blue works both as a nootropic _and_ a cyan
| urine ink source! (Dosing is often roughly "keep going
| until you pee blue all the time"...)
| spdustin wrote:
| You might be eating too many beets ;)
| andrewia wrote:
| Looking at the manual, the toner refill kit is entirely passive
| and has no electrical contacts or other authentication. That's
| just verbage to scare you into buying their refill kit instead
| of the inevitable generic version.
| solardev wrote:
| > the toner refill kit is entirely passive and has no
| electrical contacts or other authentication
|
| Yet.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Mixing different toner particle sizes and compounds has ended
| in complete disaster for me in the past. I recall mixing and
| matching OEM with third party and then the toner not sticking
| to the paper properly. Guess where it goes if the toner does
| not end up on the paper and the printer thinks it did? It
| starts accumulating in the printer leading to a total
| disaster because now the printer never worked right after
| that.
|
| Now I just buy my OEM toner used on eBay. Thats the secret.
| Find a semi new somewhat popular business class printer and
| keep an eye out for companies offloading their unused OEM
| toner.
| broknbottle wrote:
| Avoid HP at all cost and stick to Brother, Cannon and Epson. HP
| is a company that had the privilege of having their logo on a
| iPod but is a complete turd at the end of the day.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Canon's Linux support is very poor. It has a proprietary
| printing language which needs a closed source daemon/filter to
| work, and it's finicky.
|
| How finicky? If it doesn't like the version of something it
| forks itself until it borks your computer.
|
| Used HP, Lexmark, Xerox, Samsung & Kyocera. All worked with
| Linux. Also, none of the HP printers I used created any
| problems during their lifetimes with me. One of them was very
| light duty, and I worn it down in 7-8 years, that's all.
| bpye wrote:
| Linux support for Brother printers is variable. brlaser kind of
| works for mine, but only with a patch, and some documents still
| end up producing a white page...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Most of their laser printers have binary drivers available
| for linux
| throwaway821909 wrote:
| Maybe worth mentioning the Epson EcoTank, included ink lasts
| forever, works offline, no weird DRM on the ink bottles that some
| are discussing here
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep... plus, HP has screwed over customers so many many times.
| joe8756438 wrote:
| Yes. I just bought the monochrome ecotank printer for a project
| and worked out with a rep from inkowl to get 3rd party mixable
| dye ink to print a custom mixed single color. worked pretty
| well.
| codazoda wrote:
| I want to read more about this.
|
| I picked up an HP ENVY Inspire yesterday to do some
| experiments to see if I can create images of modern tech but
| produce something that reminds me of the nostalgia of the
| 80's CRT's using the CGA palette (cyan, magenta, black, and
| white). So far, I'm not happy with any of my results, but the
| printer does give me decent color matching.
|
| I also considered the EcoTank. I didn't consider custom ink
| though and that sounds interesting.
| joe8756438 wrote:
| I wasn't able to find much info on it. I went around
| compared all the printers i could find then compared the
| third party ink options for the ones i was interested.
|
| i'm still experimenting with ink mixing. decent results so
| far. the thing is there are so many ways to go about it
| with 8 base ink options available.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I've had great luck with both Xerox and Brother printers. Both
| laser and inkjet. No vendor lock in, no funny business.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I picked up a Xerox laser a year or so ago, it's working fine
| w/ Ubuntu, macOS and Windows on my home network, though it was
| a little squirrely to get set up (now that it is, I leave it on
| wifi in a spare room, but to configure it via its web interface
| it needed to be cabled in).
| dublin wrote:
| FWIW, Xerox inkjets were what drove me to Oki's color lasers.
| They erfectly good printer that they stopped selling ink for
| after only about a year. Knockoff ink cartridges are just money
| flushed away. I'm done with Xerox.
|
| Brother's printers are reliable, but have some of the worst
| setup and UIs in the industry. "Actively User-Hostile" is not
| going too far...
|
| Canon and OKI for me, please. They just work.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Apparently Oki stopped selling printers to the the Americas
| this year :(
|
| https://www.oki.com/us/printing/
| andrewia wrote:
| Bad news from the Q&A section of one of the printers:
|
| > With the enhancements giving the new drum a 50k page life it's
| no longer intended to be a user-serviced part and won't be sold
| via retail channels. That said, it is still able to be replaced
| through an HP Service Center or HP Parts in the event it is
| needed to be replaced.
| selectodude wrote:
| It's annoying news but my Brother laser, regarded for its
| serviceability, needs new drums every 12-15k pages at $90/ea.
| That's on top of $75 toner cartridges every 5-7k pages. This
| $400 printer with $30 ink refills that ends up being disposable
| at the end of its service live has a lower TCO than anything
| else I've seen.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Yeah the brother magic went away, they 3x the price of first-
| party consumables a few years ago.
| pnutjam wrote:
| so $400+$240 every 12,000+ pages, vs $400+$300 (10 x $30) for
| about 2,200+ pages?
|
| It's not even close....
| Spooky23 wrote:
| In a $300 printer? What do you want?
|
| In SMB environments, that's probably a 10 year device.
| Honestly, do you want a 2022 wifi solution running past 2032?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > What do you want?
|
| No artificial restriction? They say the part is changeable,
| but then say they won't allow consumers purchase and do so
| because they consider 50K EOL.
|
| So what we want is for a $300 printer to not end up in the
| landfill because a $50 absolutely replaceable drum cannot be
| replaced without a service center's unnecessary involvement.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The service life in that form factor is probably 3-4x the
| typical device. So at the cost of repairability, you get a
| more durable device that's probably like 30-50% cheaper.
|
| And... for the majority of customers they will likely never
| need toner or service.
| megraf wrote:
| CISS's (Continuous Ink Supply System's) have been around for
| decades. You can buy pretty basic printers and retrofit them with
| a $100 system that will hold enough ink to print 10's of
| thousands of pages. The problem with this system is that the ink
| heads dry (quickly). If you're doing a lot of printing (daily /
| weekly) - a CISS is pretty much your bread and butter.
|
| Refilling the ink in a CISS is pretty simple as well, just take
| your time.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's for inkjet printers though, no?
|
| This is for a laser printer. No worrying about drying ink
| heads.
|
| But now you've got me curious -- who is printing 10's of
| thousands of pages using an inkjet? I would have thought that
| anything at volume is laser, with the exception of photo
| printing.
| fibers wrote:
| companies that still deal w a lot of paper like factories or
| warehouses
| seltzered_ wrote:
| My understanding is you can still use CISS at a smaller
| scale, for example here's a 'mini' setup I came across: http:
| //new.proinkshop.com/index.php?route=product/product&pa...
|
| I've hesitated on actually trying this though as there's
| usually some details about keeping an old firmware version or
| something to make it work.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| > who is printing 10's of thousands of pages using an inkjet
|
| Specialty applications such as large-format inkjets (eg
| 3ft/1m wide continuous roll paper), edible ink for baked
| goods applications, custom inks for
| branding/proofs/industrial, and so forth. My favorite was a
| specialty cake printer that was designed to print directly on
| the icing of a cake, not on an edible wax or fondant sheet
| (which always seem like cheating to me).
|
| There are quite a few applications where desktop-like inkjets
| are used in high-throughput modes. They either don't sit idle
| long enough to suffer from dryout or they're built to deal
| with it. They do automatic light clean cycles and some models
| have rubber gasket head parking areas to seal the heads and
| prevent ink evaporation when idle. Some manufacturers also
| sell auto-cleaning units so the printer can do a full deep-
| clean automatically.
|
| I'm not counting true industrial applications (eg packaging
| expiration date print heads) since those aren't usually
| document-centric nor do they speak desktop printing protocols
| like PCL.
| rsuelzer wrote:
| The printer space ripe for distruption. I have had really bad
| experiences with HP Printers, specifically related to force
| installing software / drivers on PCs. I consider the HP
| SmartPrint app to be malware as it completely locks down the
| printer if it detects a non-HP cartridge. Or at least it used to,
| before they were sued. Now it ensures you are constantly
| harrassed about buying genuine ink, gives false low toner
| messages, and flashes various warnings designed to scare
| consumers into overpaying for toner. I assume the same is true
| for all brands. I'd like to see a printer that isn't agressively
| marketing toner to me or at least offers it at a fair price.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Laser and ink are of course not the same, but since this focuses
| on economy and efficiency I have to mention the Epson EcoTank,
| which absolutely shadows the LaserJet Tank here.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Tried to help my elderly relatives set up a simple HP inkjet
| printer/scanner/all-in-one. I discovered that they have to create
| a login and administer the printer through the HP Windows app
| just to be able to scan a document.
|
| Fuck.that.noise. And the notion that "we'll just unlock as few
| pieces as necessary to just be enough to not have customers leave
| us".
|
| I'll give my money to anyone who doesn't try to control and
| exploit every aspect of the experience. If such companies still
| exist. I think others have mentioned Brother/Epson as still
| tolerable brands.
| benbristow wrote:
| I've got a HP Laser Colour WiFi printer/scanner/fax combo I
| bought from Argos (Like a British Amazon with local physical
| retail shops and same day delivery) 3 years ago. Wasn't exactly
| cheap though, around PS250. Sits near a window so is often near
| sunlight. Still has the starter toner and prints like a charm -
| used it the other day to print a gig ticket. I don't even know
| how to change a toner. I use it very rarely but it's nice to have
| around whenever I need to print/scan things.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| How does this compare with my LJ 4100N toner (6000 pages) for
| PS33?
| misrasaurabh1 wrote:
| ommz wrote:
| > Requires the HP Smart app download.
|
| > Subscription may be required; subscription may not be available
| in all countries
|
| > HP account required for full functionality
|
| > Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner
|
| The disclaimers, or more succinctly, the anti-feature section.
| zepearl wrote:
| > _...or up to 2 years..._
|
| How does that have to be interpreted? Will the printer request
| the toner to be changed after 2 years of ~inactivity or are
| they referring to the subscription?
|
| I bought a Kyocera about 10-15 years ago and one of its toner
| cartriges (CMYK) is still the original one... :P
| broknbottle wrote:
| more like, the anti-consumer subscription based feature
| section. Two things are a sure thing post 2020, Covid and
| subscriptions.
| andrewia wrote:
| I think that's only for the Wi-Fi printing. The HP smart app is
| terrible and makes you sign up for features that work on a
| local network. I just visit my printer's internal web server
| with a desktop user agent to show the "remote scan" features.
| Printing over local Wi-Fi doesn't need the HP Smart app, just
| the HP print service plugin that doesn't require login (and
| also conveniently enables USB printing, if you want to use an
| OTG dongle with your phone).
| [deleted]
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Requires the HP Smart app download.
|
| To be able to scan your documents to your phone directly.
|
| > Subscription may be required; subscription may not be
| available in all countries
|
| For some advanced, Prizmo-like scan features and OCR which are
| probably cloud based.
|
| > Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner
|
| Considering printers at same size provides ~3000 pages, that's
| good. 2 years is probably printing n 5% filled office documents
| every day or so.
|
| > HP account required for full functionality.
|
| For HP smart app and web-based functionality (like mail2print)
| to work, not the printer.
|
| HP is _still_ the best manufacturer which provides a complete
| driver stack which provides same quality printing in Linux.
| CUPS supports them in "driverless" fashion now, too.
|
| I use an old HP 4515 web printer, which is the first generation
| of these devices. Many embedded web features are deprecated
| (like printables), but it still works great as a wireless,
| mobile enabled MFP.
| [deleted]
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Considering printers at same size provides ~3000 pages,
| that's good.
|
| They used to sell a 6000 page cartridge as their _low end_
| offering in this class of printers. This is what 's its like
| to be a boiled frog.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| The last 3 HP LaserJets we've bought at work have had to go
| back because they _require_ an HP account to print. You can
| 't use port 9100 unless you've got an account, it just sits
| at an error state. No matter what we did you couldn't sign
| in, their cloud service seems to be down all the time and
| support wouldn't help.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Strange. mine has an option called "Remove embedded web
| services", and it transforms to a dumb printer.
|
| Then you can re-enable it if you prefer later.
| zeropoint46 wrote:
| I have an HP deskjet f4210 and it doesn't work with windows
| 11 at all. Gave my wife a new laptop with windows 11 and
| there are exactly 0 drives anywhere to be found for it. Can't
| even re-use windows 10 drivers. However, they will run you
| through about 5 different tools and HP accounts and personal
| information gathering while trying to "find" drivers for it.
| Sure, I get it, super old printer, but it works just fine for
| what we need it for, why upgrade just cause we are using a
| new OS?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Just from top of my head:
|
| Why not connect to a Raspberry pi or an Orange Pi zero and
| share it via CUPS? CUPS will make it a mDNS enabled,
| "driverless" printer, which can be used from any device
| (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and your toaster)?
|
| If you want wireless, don't use OrangePi Zero (1) though.
| Its wireless is not supported well under Linux.
| zeropoint46 wrote:
| yeah, I had an older rpi and I did that for a bit, but I
| couldn't get scanning work on it well or the way I
| wanted, plus the older PI was super slow. I'll probably
| revisit this in the future. However this whole thread had
| me track down some drivers for the printer and now it
| works. Seems like what HP now does on their site when you
| select windows 10 or 11 or even 7, is just say, windows
| update has the driver, you're good. However, if it's not
| "officially" approved by MSFT then its not in the windows
| update as is the case with this printer. So I found some
| raw bundle of drivers, extracted them and windows was
| able to manually locate the driver file. I just want HP
| to host that file so that I know it's trustworthy, and
| honestly, why shouldn't they host their own driver files?
| osrec wrote:
| In my experience, the best Linux support has been from
| brother. Also, their printers seem more light weight (in a
| good way), and their compatible ink is cheaper. Good for
| basic documents etc, but probably not for printing photos.
| sf_rob wrote:
| I love my Brother, but their Mac support is (was?)
| laughable. Their main support path is to download the
| Brother app to load a PDF you output to your filesystem and
| send it to your printer. I'm clueless about the subtleties
| of printer drivers on Mac's but their solution was so
| clunky. Works flawlessly on Windows and with some minor
| tweaks on Linux Mint.
| CharlesW wrote:
| In my experience, for at least the last decade Brother
| laser printers (B&W and color) don't need anything
| special to work with Macs. Our household is currently on
| a 4+ year old color laser printer that "just worked" with
| our Macs, Windows machines, iOS devices, etc.
| dublin wrote:
| OKI has absolutely the best color laser (really micro LED
| strip) printers, and they work flawlessly with PCs, Macs,
| or Linux, PCL, PS, or native, and wired or wireless
| (depending on model). I swore off _all_ inkjet printing
| after buying my first color OKI over 20 years ago, and that
| decision has saved me thousands in ink and uncounted hours
| of frustration as I watched that ink being spewed out to
| clean clogged printheads. Life is too short to use inkjet
| printers.
|
| OKI's toner is polymer, so in addition to looking great on
| paper, you can print on "weatherproof laser labels" and
| they will last for years outdoors. (Outdoors, colors
| eventually fade, especially red and blue, but the blacks
| are still very readable on some devices I've deployed after
| over a decade outside. Not bad for what were intended to be
| temporary prototype labels...)
| fsflyer wrote:
| Looks like OKI has pulled out of the America's market as
| of 2021.
|
| https://www.oki.com/us/printing/
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What's a good model number for OKI? I'm in this market
| and have already had to send back a couple of printers
| for (among other things) dropped network connections.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| In other news one toner of a generic HP laser printer prints
| about 3500 pages, without apps or subscription. And then you
| can send them to HP and they'll recycle it for free, if you
| care about the environmental impact. I don't quite understand
| what is the market for this product.
| extrapickles wrote:
| I think the idea is to reduce (its reduce, reuse, recycle in
| order of preference) as a bag of toner needs less resources
| than a cartridge.
|
| The internet indicates a 5k page cartridge costs ~5kg of CO2
| to make, and each trip to the recycling center costs ~1kg of
| CO2 (rough average cost of shipping a package).
|
| A 5k page pouch in a box weighs 0.2kg, assuming a 4x
| weight->CO2 cost (high end of plastic production), it comes
| out to 0.8kg of CO2 per pouch. This is less than the CO2 cost
| of shipping back the cartridge for recycling.
|
| If you assume the cost of return shipping and recycling is
| free, the cartridge will need to last >6 times to be worth it
| from a initial cost perspective. The figures I can find on
| cartridge lifetimes is 3-4 recycles before they are too worn
| to recycle again.
|
| Even though its single use, its still a net win from a
| lifecycle perspective.
| bayindirh wrote:
| The biggest problem with higher end printers are on the long
| tail. I have a very nice Samsung laser printer. Networked,
| has duplex printing, fast, 3000 page toner and 9000 page
| imager with all replaceable rollers and everything.
|
| The thing is, it was built jointly with Xerox, and Samsung
| sold the division to HP. It's almost 10 years old, and can
| easily live for a decade more, but finding toners and imaging
| units become harder and harder.
|
| If these kind pf printers take off with much longer lives
| (and HP claims 50K pages with a single drum), the companies
| can support all their fleets with a single sack, indefinitely
| (in theory). Since there is less electronics, precious metals
| and plastics to produce and ship, it'll be also cheaper.
|
| I don't want to change devices because they are old. I want
| to use them as long as they run, and with global warming and
| pollution, everybody is moving to less-waste methods.
|
| I also run a HP 4515 "Web printer". All web services are
| deprecated, but it has mDNS, and everything can print
| wirelessly with no drivers. HP app enables me to print my
| photos after cropping them or scan directly to my phone.
| Otherwise it behaves like an old USB MFP which works with all
| desktop apps pat.
|
| Addenda: The unit is not used frequently, so I change toners
| really rarely now. Because of that, I want to stick with OEM
| refills as far as I can go. Knowing a little about inks and
| toners, their quality shows them on the long run. So, I don't
| trust an aftermarket toner to print archival documents. Same
| for the inkjet.
| Wistar wrote:
| I, too, am fond of the Samsung laser printers of yore. They
| are one of the very few laser printers that have a simple
| paper path and the built-in provisions to print on heavy
| stock. At the time, perhaps 4-5 years ago, the toner
| cartridges were about $35-$40 and lasted a good long time.
| About two years ago, I went to buy toner and the price was
| $135 and they were out of stock.
|
| I ended up replacing it with a Brother.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Honestly, seing printers like this over the years and
| everything getting worse and worse makes me feel good about
| having an old Brother laser printer.
|
| It's monochrome, it's now 20 years old, but it's good enough
| for me.
|
| It keeps running and running, and the toner is dirt-cheap on
| the market. No internet, no spyware and no IoT-secured (tm) app
| required.
|
| Manufacturers like Epson and HP kind of force me into keeping
| this old thing alive when it eventually breaks down.
|
| I'm so glad we got CUPS and SANE as libraries. Without them, I
| would have to buy a newer model with current Windows support.
|
| The only thing that was missing in daily use is smartphone
| support, but an mDNS-SD service running on a little raspberry
| pi that shares the printer can fix that.
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