Need a new printer !
- Thread starter Rohloffboy
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Does it come with a lifetime supply of free ink? 
I had my first colour printer in 1989 (QMS ColorScript 300) it cost the price of a BMW car but the ink was reasonably priced. My next colour printer was an Epson inkjet and the ink I put in it could have bought me a Fiat Panda but the printer only cost about 130€. Can you see a theme here?
I have a print bureau up the street and she charges xx€ cents for an A3 colour print. She is the one who worries about printer, ink, etc... not me.
I had my first colour printer in 1989 (QMS ColorScript 300) it cost the price of a BMW car but the ink was reasonably priced. My next colour printer was an Epson inkjet and the ink I put in it could have bought me a Fiat Panda but the printer only cost about 130€. Can you see a theme here?
I have a print bureau up the street and she charges xx€ cents for an A3 colour print. She is the one who worries about printer, ink, etc... not me.
I understand that non-commercial inkjet printers are generally sold at a loss by the big manufacturers, because they then hold their customers to ransom with the ludicrous prices of the ink cartridges.
Hence they even regularly update the chips in them, to try to keep ahead of the clone cartridge suppliers.
I'm very relieved that I found out the delights of the third party "CISS" systems several years ago. Third party manufactured "continuous ink supply systems" produced quite cheaply for major brand printers that replace the cartridges with much larger remote tanks and small bore tubing to the print heads.
These are then topped up with the coloured inks before any of them run out, so no paper is wasted, or partial empty colour sets.
My Epson R1800 A3 colour printer has been running on them for several years now, producing hundreds of full colour prints at a fraction of the cost.
I buy the ink in 250cc bottles, and only have to replenish the colours that are running low, wasting none.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CISS-CIS-Continuous-Ink-System-Fits-Epson-Stylus-Photo-R800-R1800-NON-OEM-/261535577226?hash=item3ce4bc348a:g:4y0AAOSwX6VTx-dS
(just a quick ebay example of the current cost of a ciss for my specific printer, not necessarily the cheapest available).
Hence they even regularly update the chips in them, to try to keep ahead of the clone cartridge suppliers.
I'm very relieved that I found out the delights of the third party "CISS" systems several years ago. Third party manufactured "continuous ink supply systems" produced quite cheaply for major brand printers that replace the cartridges with much larger remote tanks and small bore tubing to the print heads.
These are then topped up with the coloured inks before any of them run out, so no paper is wasted, or partial empty colour sets.
My Epson R1800 A3 colour printer has been running on them for several years now, producing hundreds of full colour prints at a fraction of the cost.
I buy the ink in 250cc bottles, and only have to replenish the colours that are running low, wasting none.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CISS-CIS-Continuous-Ink-System-Fits-Epson-Stylus-Photo-R800-R1800-NON-OEM-/261535577226?hash=item3ce4bc348a:g:4y0AAOSwX6VTx-dS
(just a quick ebay example of the current cost of a ciss for my specific printer, not necessarily the cheapest available).
eHomer, glad that works for you, the Epson ET-2550 for info does not use ink cartridges, it is a CISS model, and has four refillable ink tanks, and comes with four 70ml bottles of ink.
Of course fitting a third party CISS system to a new printer of any make of printer would in fact void the warranty, which I guess is quite obvious to anyone.
The 70ml bottles of genuine Epson ink can be bought for around £9 each, or you could in fact choose to use the same ink as eHomer uses, although at such low cost why would you, as with with any make of printer it is best to use the manufacturers genuine ink, to ensure that the manufacturers warranty is not voided, an important factor with the ET-2550 as it comes with 3 years warranty!
Of course fitting a third party CISS system to a new printer of any make of printer would in fact void the warranty, which I guess is quite obvious to anyone.
The 70ml bottles of genuine Epson ink can be bought for around £9 each, or you could in fact choose to use the same ink as eHomer uses, although at such low cost why would you, as with with any make of printer it is best to use the manufacturers genuine ink, to ensure that the manufacturers warranty is not voided, an important factor with the ET-2550 as it comes with 3 years warranty!
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That'll teach me to not realise that things may have changed since my printer researches a few years ago.
It is indeed a very good development for consumers.
I never worry about invalidating guarantees because I buy secondhand wherever possible. IT stuff loses value so quickly that I never try to stay at the cutting edge. My R1800 cost less than half the new price and had been hardly used.
D
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I gave up with ink printers because my very occasional use means that the print heads were always blocked when I wanted to use it. Now I only use laser printers. They're totally reliable and not too expensive.
Yes, and a single black toner cartridge, (costing only about a tenner), will print between 6,000 and 10,000 A4 pages, so much cheaper than inkjets.
As I'm a sucker for these things, I also picked up a secondhand HP laserjet 4000 with double-sided printing functionality for about £30 about 5 years ago, and it's still working perfectly.
I makes it so easy and economic to print downloaded monochrome PDF user manuals, (A4 double sided), which I then bind with a cheap comb binder.
I have the HP laser and the Epson R1800 A3 photo inkjet connected to one of my networked PCs, so I can print anything from any computer or tablet in my house, at virtually just the cost of the paper.
I find I can stop my inkjet from gumming up by just turning it on and off once each week. The default startup purging stops the heads congealing.
You're quite right, if left unused for several months, they can become irreparably clogged, and often the permanent heads themselves, not just the replaceable cartridges.
Things have moved on, genuine toner carts are expensive, and of course on laser units, the photoconductor will at some point need replacing, which on consumer models can cost more than a new machine.
A genuine Epson 70ml bottle of ink for the ET-2550 will produce 4,500 pages not bad for less than £10!
Also the photo prints from the ET-2550 will blow any laser machine out of the water, as is the case for any ink jet printer of course.
A genuine Epson 70ml bottle of ink for the ET-2550 will produce 4,500 pages not bad for less than £10!
Also the photo prints from the ET-2550 will blow any laser machine out of the water, as is the case for any ink jet printer of course.
Yep DC, way to go, I work from home, and have to produce printed reports and contracts etc, and was using loads of ink, as some of the reports required A4 photo prints.
Back in December 2015 the firm sent me an ET-2550, according to the print out I have produced over 2000 pages, and the ink chambers are still past 50% it is definatley the best printer that I have ever used.
My only need is A4 and the ability to copy and scan, the wi-fi works fine, the photo prints are superior to the last 4 colour printer that I had, which is a bonus.
Although ET-2550 is pricey at £200 that's why I did the post, as the Black Friday offer seemed very good, especialy if it works out at £110 tomorrow. I know a few of my friends will be buying one if that's the case as they are all fed up with paying through the nose for ink cartridges, which often contain less than 5ml of ink!
Back in December 2015 the firm sent me an ET-2550, according to the print out I have produced over 2000 pages, and the ink chambers are still past 50% it is definatley the best printer that I have ever used.
My only need is A4 and the ability to copy and scan, the wi-fi works fine, the photo prints are superior to the last 4 colour printer that I had, which is a bonus.
Although ET-2550 is pricey at £200 that's why I did the post, as the Black Friday offer seemed very good, especialy if it works out at £110 tomorrow. I know a few of my friends will be buying one if that's the case as they are all fed up with paying through the nose for ink cartridges, which often contain less than 5ml of ink!
...and are also filled with open cell foam, to avoid the ink sloshing around and aerating with the rapid movement of the print heads, which means they hold far less ink than one would think, even for their small size.....
With inkjet, more ink is used starting up than printing.
I can print many A3 photos without the levels dropping much, but doing the odd postcard it soon goes.
Mine has a double sized black for mono text use I never use but have managed to consume many of these cartridges during the head cleaning routine.
I can print many A3 photos without the levels dropping much, but doing the odd postcard it soon goes.
Mine has a double sized black for mono text use I never use but have managed to consume many of these cartridges during the head cleaning routine.
Yep for cheap A3 (A3+) printing then look no further than the Epson L-1800 (6 colour) and ET-1400 (4 colour) both use the Epson EcoTank (CISS) system and use the cheap 70ml bottles of ink, although differing ink types between the two models.
Of course both of the A3 (A3+) models are single function, similiar to eHomers R-1800 just a pity that he can't get the genuine Epson ink for that model unless he returns to uses the Epson cartridges for it, which means results will always be a compromise, even if very good, which I am sure they are.
The ET-1400 uses the same ink as the ET-2550.
There is an A3 (A3+) AIO copier scanner printer EcoTank model produced by Epson the ET-16500 sadly not available in the UK, if it was I guess the street price would be around £750 going of the U.S. $ price.
At the end of the day, A3 (A3+) printing only takes up small piece of the market, A4 printing of txt and documentation, is by far the largest part of the sector.
In this modern age, fewer folk are printing photos, preferring to view images on there devices, there is no getting away from that fact.
Of course both of the A3 (A3+) models are single function, similiar to eHomers R-1800 just a pity that he can't get the genuine Epson ink for that model unless he returns to uses the Epson cartridges for it, which means results will always be a compromise, even if very good, which I am sure they are.
The ET-1400 uses the same ink as the ET-2550.
There is an A3 (A3+) AIO copier scanner printer EcoTank model produced by Epson the ET-16500 sadly not available in the UK, if it was I guess the street price would be around £750 going of the U.S. $ price.
At the end of the day, A3 (A3+) printing only takes up small piece of the market, A4 printing of txt and documentation, is by far the largest part of the sector.
In this modern age, fewer folk are printing photos, preferring to view images on there devices, there is no getting away from that fact.
My third party inks needed a little "tuning" in the output settings, but the results are now as good as I was getting from the genuine Epson cartridges, (and it is a sophisticated eight drum set, including two different blacks and a "glosser").
I'd always been surprised that A3 inkjet printers are in such a minority.
The additional cost overhead in manufacturing is so small because of the way they work. It only requires a slightly wider casing and slightly longer carriage rod, with all of the moving parts being exactly the same.
A3 opens up so many more possibilities for the home user.
Do these OEM CISS printers also have empty-able waste tanks as well ?
When I retro-fitted the third party CISS tanks to my R1800, that was another unofficial mod that was essential.
Believe it or not, most "consumer" inkjets simply squirt the purged ink (from the startup and head cleaning cycles), into a large block of open cell foam in the bottom of the printer. This gradually fills up until it becomes saturated, and then a counter in the printer stops any further printing, with the advise to "get it serviced", effectively forcing most people to buy a new printer.
The unofficial mod consists simply of extending the existing internal waste tube into an external container, (I use an old small clear sandwich box). You then install a tiny third party application that "resets" the waste counter in the printer.
It's surprising how quickly this "waste" tank fills up during the normal operation of the printer !
(I grabbed this image from Google, as I didn't take a photo of my own waste tank mod, but it's almost identical. Imagine that as a puddle in the foam, congealing away in the base of your printer)......
Some club members had the A2 printers just because the inks cartridges were so much larger and therefore cheaper to run.
But even photo clubs are doing more DPI's than ever the quality home printers will be declining in sales I think.
But even photo clubs are doing more DPI's than ever the quality home printers will be declining in sales I think.
My friends have reported back to me that they got the ET-2550 at £119, so I was not far of the £110 price that I first posted.
They are are happy, as the machine up until this week was £199.99.
A2 and A3 (A3+) machines are fine, but they do take up a lot of space and are often single function only, and most folk would not want to faff around with a third party CISS unit, they certainley don't look pretty that's for sure.
Most consumers just want an A4 AIO printer copier scanner, but are fed up with the high cost of ink cartridges, the ET-2550 solves both those issues without breaking the bank.
They are are happy, as the machine up until this week was £199.99.
A2 and A3 (A3+) machines are fine, but they do take up a lot of space and are often single function only, and most folk would not want to faff around with a third party CISS unit, they certainley don't look pretty that's for sure.
Most consumers just want an A4 AIO printer copier scanner, but are fed up with the high cost of ink cartridges, the ET-2550 solves both those issues without breaking the bank.
Yep, eHomer, as for the ink pad on the ET-2550 it works a little different to the Epson photo printers, in respect that very little waste ink is collected, to long winded for me to explain here, but trust me I know about these things.
What you have to bear in mind is that the print heads are under warranty for 3 years or 30,000 pages (10,000 pages per year) which ever comes first, now that for a consumer printer is a lot of printing, and to put that into perspective the average consumer will print just 600 pages per year.
The rest of the printer hardware comes with the same 3 year warranty, so I would expect that if in 3 years you have not gone beyond 30,000 pages, the ink pads will still have some life left in them.
As for replacement ink pads, I think it could be a case of beyond economical repair, past a certain point, there are of course hacks, that can reset the ink pad counter, and kits to replace the pads, or introduce an external tank whichever suits.
To be fair though, if you get to that point with the ET-2550 you probably should be thinking of getting an Epson Work Force printer that comes with replaceable waste ink tank, Epson supply a kit for around £20 for such models, but then your back to using ink cartridges again, so probably best to dump the ET-2550 and buy another ET-2550.
The price of the ET-2550 will be at £134.99 from tomorrow, and may return to £174.99 during December, usual street price is £199.99
What you have to bear in mind is that the print heads are under warranty for 3 years or 30,000 pages (10,000 pages per year) which ever comes first, now that for a consumer printer is a lot of printing, and to put that into perspective the average consumer will print just 600 pages per year.
The rest of the printer hardware comes with the same 3 year warranty, so I would expect that if in 3 years you have not gone beyond 30,000 pages, the ink pads will still have some life left in them.
As for replacement ink pads, I think it could be a case of beyond economical repair, past a certain point, there are of course hacks, that can reset the ink pad counter, and kits to replace the pads, or introduce an external tank whichever suits.
To be fair though, if you get to that point with the ET-2550 you probably should be thinking of getting an Epson Work Force printer that comes with replaceable waste ink tank, Epson supply a kit for around £20 for such models, but then your back to using ink cartridges again, so probably best to dump the ET-2550 and buy another ET-2550.
The price of the ET-2550 will be at £134.99 from tomorrow, and may return to £174.99 during December, usual street price is £199.99