Epson heralds death of ink cartridge with EcoTank printers

Epson heralds death of ink cartridge with EcoTank printers - Telegraph

Never thought i would see this from a printer manufacture, it`s like the proverbial turkeys voting for Christmas because Ink Cartridges are where they make there money.

They must have some way so you can only use OEM ink.

John.

EDIT : IF YOU USE CHROME BROWSER TRY THE HP SMART PRINT ADDON TO ONLY PRINT THE PARTS OF WEBPAGES YOU WANT, WORK WITH ANY BRAND OF PRINTER.

http://h41112.www4.hp.com/smartprin...x_r602_uk/en/hho/ipg/xx-mu-aw_chev/smartprint

 

Those kind of injector printers have existed for years and years in my country. The main downside to this injection system is that they get clogged if you don't use it daily, wonder if Epson will fix that.

 

continuous ink systems have been around for 15-20 years for many printers, normally an aftermarket kit though.

just a few examples. I use one in an Epson and an HP Officejet pro.
Continuous Ink System For Epson, Canon, HP and Brother Printers
http://123refills.ca/cic/category.php?category=Continuous+Ink+Systems

 

Well, the printer's themselves are over 3x more expensive. So we might finally be seeing their true cost (again), sidestepping the ' lose-money-on-hardware-regain-on-ink' business model. It's a tough market, after all, considering the number of compatible, continuous-ink and refillable cartridges.

Use those transparent refill thingies myself ( legal, too), saves 4x over original. But that's for a consumer product. Made a compare for work's large-format printers; original HP is 20x that of a refill ! Company users are all squeamish about voiding warranty, so most of them won't go for that, but with any decent use a $4,000 printer can be offset in ~4 years.

 

"Epson's new EcoTank printers come with enough ink to print around two years' worth of documents, the company has claimed It says you get enough ink for 2 years of printing."

When that amount of ink is used the printer most likely will need to be recycled and replaced so no need for aftermarket ink.

I've used only mono and color laser printers for years;I just got tired of inkjet tiny expensive chipped cartridges and the clogging.

I have my Samsung Color Lazer calibrated and made custom ICC profiles using a i1 Display 2.

 

They are not happy cause the Chinese toke all the profit for non-oem continuous ink.

Espon is one of the easiest to mod also.

 

been using on my old hp and canon, just syringe some ink into the cartridge from a bottle and done... hear new ones (friend has one of these new improved ones) don't even print after cartridge declares it is empty... doesn't matter if its full of ink, so needs a whole after market cartridge... or some way to reset... so much more bother than worth really.

4 100ml bottles of each color laster me a good good while... a very good while... considering they cost me 7£ or so, compared to stuffing new cartridges every time... quite a saving. if cartridges cost a sensible amount, this wouldn't be such an issue...

 

un4tural which brand does not print when the cartridge is empty?

John.

 

Pretty sure it was an Epson, one of the colored inks was out, it refused to print plain black, anything really. Basically the chip in cartridge says it's empty, it doesn't even try to print. My mind was blown

 

Many brand do that now, they put a chip thing on the cartridge~

 

i've seen china made "resetable" cartridges now though too on ebay and various websites, so its not that big a deal, just a bit of a nuisance to hunt one down... plus you never know how the quality is, printing head being on the cartridge and what not?

 

I bought the empty see-though cartridges for my epson that have a reset button that you press when you refill it with ink, the ink looks almost as good, but it will fade quicker and may run more when wet or take slightly longer to dry, but it`s only a fraction of the price and i am quite happy with it.

John.

 

to be fair i've seen quite a few different ones... heck some of them seem to use something similar to food dye advertising it being "edible" in case you really want to eat that PDF and make it part of you i guess... from what i've seen quality varies quite a lot of the ink...

for example
EDIBLE INK REFILL SET FOR CANON PRINTERS - 4 x 100ml | eBay
HP 301 XL Black and Colour Ink Cartridge Refill Kit | eBay (had one of these, or at least very similar, worked pretty much just as good as genuine hp ink)

if you search of ebay for printer refill ink, you can see yourself, some even in identical looking bottles, at a clearly different shade of yellow/blue etc. though probably most of them will work perfectly fine for normal prints.

 

I have been buying the refilled HP300XL cartridges for £3.44 each and they are supposed to have 50% more ink than a standard XL 18ml, I bought the last of the stock and some refill ink to fill them my self for my HP Envy 120e , If you have an HP Ink-jet get the XL size it is much better value than the standard size joke 200 pages at 5% cartridges the XL is 600 pages.

John.

 

With edible ink, you can print it on edible paper and put that paper on top of a cake or something.

 

Some years ago when I had Epson Inkjets I used the SSC Service Utility program to reset the chips without the need to remove the cartridges from the printers.

With the large format Pro Printers I had to use a resetter for the 220ml cartridges and the waste ink tank until I switched to aftermarket clear refillibles.

 

did not know you could use software to reset those, who would've thought. makes sense i guess, but to allow them to be reset via software...

would've thought it'd need a custom piece of hardware, or shorting some pins out. no clue on how those silly chips on cartridges work.

good to know for the future, just in case

 

I doubt you can do that on new printers, you would have to find an older model and if you do find a new model that does, beware automatic firmware upgrades blocking the feature

John

 

well i wouldn't even think of looking for software for it, just straight assume memory on cartridges is read-only, printer only has read-only functionality, doesn't have the pin needed to write data connected, at the very least blocked in firmware as you say, among many other methods of blocking user from changing that data... especially since that is what makes them money, user buying a new cartridge when old one refuses to print, even though it is full of ink.

 

My HP Envy 120e Inkjet can download apps from the HP website without using any PC

HP ENVY 120 e-All-in-One Printer | HP® Official Store

John.

 

Well they should be unhappy when the printers are priced to sell ink.

I'm not sure which method works better these days - but on balance, selling the printer at a cost that generates profit in selling the printer with enough ink to last a long time might work better for the makers since we do so little printing these days on average.

Take me for example: I decided not to replace my home printer with another Officejet as I've been doing for years but bought a 2510, which is like the second least expensive AIO in their lineup then shared it from one of my always-on PC's - and I'm still on the starter tanks (and probably will be for a while). My last OJ literally sat there doing almost nothing for a couple of years but it still went wrong. If that's the situation I'm just replacing it with the cheapest thing that'll do its job and just buy a new one when it breaks, and I won't mind the small inconvenience of not being able to control everything from the front panel.