Re: Information on the current state of Epson printers




<tmonego@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1938a9ab-78d9-45ac-8c21-c774f339df60@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 18, 5:44 pm, "Tom Haughton" <THaugh...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I own an Epson Stylus CX5400. The printer has only seen genuine Epson ink
cartridges. I do not do very much printing with this printer and if I do
it
is mostly black and white. Problem is that the printer tells me that my
color ink cartridges are empty when they are not. Searching on the
Internet
I have found that apparently Epson printers such as this one uniquely
identify the ink cartridges that are used in it and then reject them as
being empty after either so many pages printed or by so many days being
lapsed (6 months?) and this is irregardless of how much ink remains in the
cartridges. Apparently the reason for doing this is to prevent people from
refilling the cartridges with after market ink. After successive contacts
with Epson support I had to point out that I had acquired knowledge of
this
from another source. As it was there were wasting my time just saying that
I needed to buy more of there genuine ink cartridges or take my printer to
a
service center (the printer had been working just fine except for this
intentional design flaw) Also, there appears to have been a class action
lawsuit against Epson which has now expired. I feel like that Epson is
like
the Bernie Madoff of printers. They have a reputation as a leader in the
field of ink jet printers and offer one of the better customer supports
for
technology manufacturers but they are doing this at the same time as the
are
ripping you off. I pay for expensive genuine Epson ink cartridges and I
expect to be able to use them but the printers firmware prevents this. I
cannot print in black if any cartridge at all registers as being empty
when
they are clearly not (you can remove and shake them and there is plenty of
ink and they are not dried out). The class action settlement should have
offered a firmware update that corrects this problem.

My question is are they still doing this with their current line of
printers
and how about the other printer manufacturers? For most photo prints I go
to Costco because it is a lot cheaper than buying the photo paper and ink.
Are photo ink jet printers always going to be impractical for cost
conscious
people because of the industry adopting the razor/razor blades profit
strategy? I would at least like to have a photo printer at home that is
not
going to cost me for not using it enough.

Thanks for your input on this.

Tom

Trying to print photos from a letter sized printer, for the most part,
is an exercise in futility. The carts are so small that you get very
few prints for what you pay for ink. In this case Costco is a good
alternative. All inkjet printers have to keep a little ink in the
cartridge to prevent the head from drying out, and in bigger photo
printers to keep the lines from drying. Does your Epson have
individual inks or one color cart?
Bigger, generally starting at 17 inch, greatly reduces costs. Actually
brings them within sight of the cheap photo printers. But it is
understandable that you may not want to go there.
I use a little 6 year old HP for printing home letters etc. Gave up on
small Epson's after having 3 C80-86 irrepairably clog. I print my
photos on a Canon iPF5000. Using reasonably expense considerations
4x6's cost about $.25 each printed on 17 inch wide roll paper, 16x20s
$6-9 depending on the paper used.

Tom

The CX5400 model appears to be at least 5 years old. It uses the same
cartridges that were used in the C82 model. At school I had half a dozen C82
printers running on third party cartridges and never ran into a rejection
just because the cartridges were non-Epson. When I would install a cartridge
I would get a flag from Epson screaming that the cartridges were non-Epson
and, "... would I like to continue using them?" After clicking 'Yes" they
would run fine. However, I did seem to run into the situation where
cartridges once installed, after about 6 months, would suddenly not be
recognized. And even though I felt that the cartridges still had ink in them
I could not get the ink monitor to show me how much. I wound up replacing
them and wallah the printer recognized the new cartridge and we were in
business. It's only occured to me right now that I should have tried
resetting the chip to see what would happen. I guess I got carried away with
paying $5 a cartridge at that time to start sleuthing the thought that Epson
was pulling a fast one on me. Now I know better and really know that Epson
IS pulling a fast one, whenever they can on the consumer to make them use
their own cartridges.

By the way that class action suit from a couple of years ago was for
Epson's incorporation to its firmware of all its printers to stop printing
when the cartridge is somewhere between about 12 - 23% empty. Epson's
printhead design necessitated that the cartridge not run empty or it could
ruin the printhead; but the company never shared with the consumer that up
to more than fifth of the ink in the cartridge might be wasted through this
design at the time.
When I became aware of the suit we had 80 Epson inkjet printers running at
school and I filled out a form for each, scavanging up each one's serial
number and somehow finding out where we purchased each one. I got the
information right for 78 of them and qualified for $1560 cash, and $1170
Epson store credit for the school. It gave me a charge knowing that I hadn't
been using Epson ink for many years and they (Epson 740, 880, C80, C82)
models were running fine.
Only the Epson C84 models were dieing off no matter what I ran in
them, as the Durabrite ink Epson designed was actually killing off everyone
of them because the ink dried up within the printhead whether one ran it or
not within a two year period. I used to call the Durabrite ink 'Epson poison
'. Eventually I was able to solve the C84 suicide problem for the remaining
10 unopened C84 Epsons we had by switching to a dye base ink and filling
spongeless cartridges and transfering the cartridge chips to the spongeless
cartridges. Since then (almost 3 years, until I retired) we never had a C84
die. As much as I love Epson's printers for their output I loathe their
deliberate and clandestine tactics to make us use their ink. And the
Dura-brite ink fiasco is an additional stab in the back that anyone buying
Epson should be aware.

--
Jan Alter
bearpuf@xxxxxxxxxxx


.

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