INKJET PRINTERS ARE FILTHY,LYING THIEVES

[Anonymous]

Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves
A
new study says that on average, more than half of the ink from inkjet
cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. Why is that
interesting? According to the study, users are tossing the cartridges
when their printers are telling them they’re out of ink, not when they
necessarily are out of ink.The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet
efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned
the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the
efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon’s printers
were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using
single-ink cartridges. Kodak’s Easyhare 5300 was panned as the worst
printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland
measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when
printers reported that they were out of ink.

That’s the first
problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when
they aren’t, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth
of ink left.The second issue is a familiar one: multi-ink cartridges
can be rendered “empty” when only one color runs low. Multi-ink
cartridges store three to five colors in a single cartridge. Printing
too many photos from the air show will kill your cartridge faster than
you can say “blue skies,” as dominant colors (say, “blue”) are used
faster than the others. Therein lies the reason Epson backed the study:
the company is singing the praises of its single-ink cartridge
approach, an approach which is necessarily more efficient in terms of
wasted ink because there’s only one color per cartridge, and thus only
one cartridge to replace when that color runs out.Single ink cartridges
aren’t exactly perfect, however. Such cartridges still were reported as
empty with an average of 20 percent of their ink left, which means that
an entire cartridge worth of ink is wasted for every five which are
used. Given the sky-high prices of ink, this is an alarming find.
Epson’s own R360 posted the best numbers, with only 9 percent wasted.
Yet again, Epson commissioned the tests, so we must ask what’s missing.

The
study did not measure how much ink is lost due to lack of use, or
through cleaning processes. Inkjet cartridges are known to suffer from
quality problems if they are not used for long periods of time,
sometimes “drying up.” This problem has been addressed in recent years,
but it has not been eliminated.The study also did not calculate the
total cost per page, which arguably is more important than efficiency.
If Epson’s multicartridge approach is more efficient, it could
nonetheless still be more expensive per page than multi-ink cartridge
systems. In its defense, Epson and TÜV Rheinland said that their study
focused on the ecological impact of inkjet printing. This is a familiar
argument: hybrid cars have also been criticized for their supposed
efficiency, with debates raging as to whether or not your average
driver will ever see cost savings from better miles-per-gallon given
the relative expensive of hybrid engines.As such, anyone in the market
for an inkjet printer still needs to compare specific models to one
another to get a feel for efficiency, and Epson’s efficiency claims
needs to be weighed next to the comparative cost of competing inkjet
solutions.Still, the unintended result of this study is that regardless
of the battle between single- and multi-ink cartridges, inkjet printers
themselves are significantly off the mark when it comes to reporting
the fullness of their cartridges. As the Eagles would say, you’re best
off when you “take it, to the limit.” (Or with a laser printer, one can
always do the toner cartridge cha-cha.) 

[Author]

June 26, 2007 at 11:30 AM