Practical life of a printer

Forums › Desktop computing › Practical life of a printer - inkjet.

rayonline

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#211682 6-Apr-2017 18:41

Just curious. I bought a used A3 photo printer, an Epson 2100 also known as a 2200 in North America. I see that many places don't have the ink cartridges in stock and if they do they may only have a few of the colors not all. B&H website in the USA have said they only ship those to the USA. Epson's website only list paper and not inks under this model. This is a 15yr old printer. I also picked up a used Epson R2880 and that is now a 10yr old printer, while I can get inks for it now, when do printer ink get discontinued?

Not looking at 3rd party inks or refills b/c I print with photographs. I have a b/w laser for usual stuff :)

Also I took apart the printer and found the ink pads that get soaked up with the ink, why do they make it so hard to get access to them. Couldn't they just provide the customer a opening cover or even just a bottle which they could just empty?

Thanks.

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Lias

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#1757779 6-Apr-2017 19:24

Most inkjets get binned after 2-3 years.

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old3eyes

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#1757781 6-Apr-2017 19:35

Lias:

Most inkjets get binned after 2-3 years.

My Canon has done 7 years so far.

Regards,

Old3eyes

cadman

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#1757796 6-Apr-2017 20:35

I've personally owned exactly four inkjets in 25 years. Canon BJC4000, Epson Stylus Photo R210, Epson Stylus R230 Photo and Brother MFC-6490CW (A3 MFC). I still have the last two and use them reasonably regularly without problems - print quality or otherwise (they're never turned off). The R230 is about 9 years old and the Brother not far behind. The Canon was still working but was always total rubbish and I replaced it in about 2002 with R210 which died causing the replacement with the R230.

I expect to get many more years of service from the R230 and 6490CW.

timmmay

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#1757801 6-Apr-2017 20:57

My Canon / Epson inkjets only lasted a couple of years, just printing documents. I gave up and bought a brother color laser, which is much more reliable. I use a pro lab for prints, it's cheaper for me and I don't need prints immediately. By the time you add up the paper, ink, printer, prints thrown away because they're not right, a lab is probably miles cheaper.

Behodar

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#1757803 6-Apr-2017 21:01

My HP is a little over 8 years old and has done maybe 6000 pages and is still going :)

Hammerer

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#1757878 7-Apr-2017 00:15

Printers always have more than one type of life expectancy because the manufacturers phase their products out (discontinue dates) and replace them with new ones and do the same for spare parts and consumables. Then third parties and self-help solutions take over and carry on as long as there are enough people continuing to use them.

The relatively poor stability of inks means that ink jet printers are more likely to enforce the end dates for consumables, e.g. https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01764161

I much prefer laser printers because toner is far more stable and I've never had an instance of degraded printer due to age.

mclean

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#1757955 7-Apr-2017 09:41

We have a Canon BJC-5500 bought in 2005 for A2 plan printing, a real workhorse, still as good as the day we got it, cartridges still available. Only downside is we need to keep a parallel port working.

McLean

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#1758054 7-Apr-2017 11:57

old3eyes:

Lias:

Most inkjets get binned after 2-3 years.

My Canon has done 7 years so far.

and your next canon inkjet will get binned after 2-3 years
My cannon inkets have gotten progressively worse and shorter life on each new model I bought (and not the cheapies either)

I'll now never buy another canon inkjet , after being brand loyal for so many years
My current Canon inkjet is just awefull.
And it stopped working at xmas, its pre-programmed to just stop when it thinks the waste ink pads are full. Despite only having maybe 4 black carts puts through it
Took hours to find the fix to reset the waste ink pad count. Canon dont want you to have that info "take to a service centre"