What's a DeskJet 500K?

[William R. Walsh]

Hello all...

Yes, you read that right. Yesterday I was driving down the road when I saw a
DeskJet box out by the trash--and it clearly was not new. A quick look
revealed the DeskJet to be in said box, so I grabbed it. The box itself
claims the printer to be a DeskJet 500C while the label on the printer says
it is a 500K.

It does have the ability to accept a color cartridge and responds perfectly
to the DeskJet 500/500C drivers. It accepts both serial and parallel I/O, as
well as up to two font cartriges like a regular DJ500C would. HP
acknowledges that the 500K model exists, but says nothing more about it. So
I'm curious as to what the "K" means if anyone knows.

Interestingly, whoever threw it out thought enough of it to include *every*
last little piece, packaged properly in the box. The printer, books,
software, cartridge storage box, little brush for cartridge contacts, power
supply and a (homemade looking and electrically broken) printer cable were
all there and stored in the right compartments. (The box itself has an
repacking/unpacking legend on the flap.)

After finding a new parallel cable, it works fine and doesn't have any
problem picking up paper. I'd guess it wasn't used much. Makes me wonder if
it got tossed because the cable didn't work?

I also found it noteworthy that *everyone* selling the ink cartridges is
trying to get around $40 (USD) each for the black and color cartridges.
Fortunately, I had a recycled Staples black ink cartridge that seems to work
fine. After all of these years and the vast improvement in capabilities, one
would think that HP would practically give these older cartridges away.

William

 

[Jonathan L. Parker]

I also found it noteworthy that *everyone* selling the ink cartridges is
trying to get around $40 (USD) each for the black and color cartridges...
...After all of these years and the vast improvement in capabilities, one
would think that HP would practically give these older cartridges away.

When one can buy a new HP printer at Walmart for less than the $40 this
dinosaur gulps down at one feeding, what one would *really* think is
that it's a miracle cartridges for it are still being sold, let alone
being bought by anyone.

I'd lay odds that whoever set the printer out at the curb for you did so
after going through a similar cost/benefit analysis.

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

When one can buy a new HP printer at Walmart for less than
the $40 this dinosaur gulps down at one feeding, what one
would *really* think is that it's a miracle cartridges for it are
still being sold, let alone being bought by anyone.

Perhaps this is a dinosaur, perhaps the others I have are as well.
However, they are very solid and well made dinosaurs at that--and they
meet my needs perfectly. I'd be willing to keep it on the road for
that reason alone, and out of the landfill.

There can be no question that this and other similar printers have
already outlived countless other $40 printers. I'm not going to *buy*
a $40 printer so I could say HP might as well try to sell me the ink
cartridge. (Although they aren't doing such a great job at that
because I'm using reman cartridges which are a good deal cheaper and
work fine by all indications.)

Oh, and you can still buy brand new black ink for the HP ThinkJet, in
case you were wondering. If I ever run out, maybe I will. (I've got
what has to be a lifetime supply of ink that expired in Dec 1991 but
still works perfectly. Operating cost has been virtually nil as the
pinfeed paper comes to me by the *ream* these days.)

These old DeskJet printers seem to run almost forever on a black ink
cartridge. HP quotes ~790 pages (black) and 167 (color). Black is
$37.99 and color is $38.99.

By comparison, a $30 (!!) DeskJet D1660 that I looked up on the spur
of the moment is said to print approximately 200 pages (black) and 150
(color), although the cartridges are priced lower. Randomly sampling
reviews on the 'net suggests that this isn't so--yield falls far short
of the published specs. (This probably also happens with the DJ500 and
its ink. Yields will vary.)

The price per page (warning: rough back of envelope calculations
coming!) for the D1660 is 10 cents/page for black and 24 cents/page
for the regular color cartridge. (There is an XL cartridge that I did
not study, as well as a combo pack that is cheaper.)

Now for the DJ500: Black print comes at a cost of $0.05 (rounded up)
per page. Color comes at a cost of 23 cents per page. I don't print
color with these and therefore do not bear the cost. Outside of my
DJ560C, I don't even have to *buy* a color cartridge to let the
printer work.

The Staples black cartridge cost me around $24, so it works out to a
whopping *three* cents per B&W page.

I'd lay odds that whoever set the printer out at the curb
for you did so after going through a similar cost/benefit
analysis.

I don't know. If they did, it sure seems odd that they'd repack it so
nicely instead of just tossing it.

William (I'll take my dinosaur, but thanks for offering...)

 

[Al]

Hello all...

Yes, you read that right. Yesterday I was driving down the road when I saw a
DeskJet box out by the trash--and it clearly was not new. A quick look
revealed the DeskJet to be in said box, so I grabbed it. The box itself
claims the printer to be a DeskJet 500C while the label on the printer says
it is a 500K.

It does have the ability to accept a color cartridge and responds perfectly
to the DeskJet 500/500C drivers. It accepts both serial and parallel I/O,as
well as up to two font cartriges like a regular DJ500C would. HP
acknowledges that the 500K model exists, but says nothing more about it. So
I'm curious as to what the "K" means if anyone knows.

Interestingly, whoever threw it out thought enough of it to include *every*
last little piece, packaged properly in the box. The printer, books,
software, cartridge storage box, little brush for cartridge contacts, power
supply and a (homemade looking and electrically broken) printer cable were
all there and stored in the right compartments. (The box itself has an
repacking/unpacking legend on the flap.)

After finding a new parallel cable, it works fine and doesn't have any
problem picking up paper. I'd guess it wasn't used much. Makes me wonder if
it got tossed because the cable didn't work?

I also found it noteworthy that *everyone* selling the ink cartridges is
trying to get around $40 (USD) each for the black and color cartridges.
Fortunately, I had a recycled Staples black ink cartridge that seems to work
fine. After all of these years and the vast improvement in capabilities, one
would think that HP would practically give these older cartridges away.

William

For a preview of your print quality, try setting your screen setting
to 4 or 8 bit color. Then decide whether to invest in ink. Since you
have the black cart, it makes sense to go ahead and use it up as the
black text should be very acceptable. Those old carts held lots of
black ink. Get what you can out of it and move on. Manufacturers are
never going to discount their carts. Refillers will be much cheaper
and DIY refills are even better. Unless you can refill your own, use
it up and then give it up.

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

For a preview of your print quality, try setting your screen setting
to 4 or 8 bit color. Then decide whether to invest in ink.

I am not using nor do I particularly care about the color printing
functionality. Black text print quality and monochrome graphics are
more than good enough.

Use of draft fonts ought to further the print yield.

Get what you can out of it and move on.

I'll keep it. (See my rough calculations in my reply to Jonathan L.
Parker.) For what I want to do, it is perfect. $40 might be a bitter
pill to swallow, but it's unlikely that I will have to do so. Even
then, a very quick and dirty look at HP's current printers shows that
any are likely to reach the output economy of this old DeskJet.

"Never mind the quality, look at the /price/."

I never have had much luck with refilling the HP black cartridges
myself. I've sprayed ink all over my kitchen table, dealt with the
never-ending-leaky-cartridge-of-doom problem and generally never had
much luck.

William

 

[Walter R.]

I am still running a DeskJet 900. By then they switched to USB. The
cartridges were and still are the HP 45. It contains 42 ml of ink, as
opposed to modern cartridges which have only 5 ml or 15 ml for the extra
large cartridge. The page count is about 1000 pages per cartridge. They
don't make them like that any more!

 

[Al]

I am still running a DeskJet 900. By then they switched to USB. The
cartridges were and still are the HP 45. It contains 42 ml of ink, as
opposed to modern cartridges which have only 5 ml or 15 ml for the extra
large cartridge. The page count is about 1000 pages per cartridge. They
don't make them like that any more!

I have three 900 series printers and a stack of used and new carts.
The black especially is so easy to fill and never gives a problem. I
could never get 1000 pages on a fill though. Even HP only rates them
at 385 I believe, not over 500 anyway. It all depends. I admit to
using bold print very often. I would not pay $40 for any ink cart
unless it came with a quart of ink.

 

[rjn]

"William R. Walsh"

The box itself claims the printer to be a DeskJet 500C while
the label on the printer says it is a 500K.

What's the SKU on the back or bottom of the printer?

If C2605A, then it is a DeskJet 500K, a Korean variant
supporting both PCL5 and KS/KSSM PDLs.

There were other "500" variants, some which speak no PCL at all.

Given that superior IJ printers are today given away in boxes
of breakfast cereal, it is likely not worth spending the money
on a cartridge to discover that the ink wick is full, the rollers
dried out, it pick-fails on every page, and Windows 7 assigns
an incorrect driver .

The collateral might have some value on eBay.
Say that the listing includes a "free" printer,
in uncertain working condition.

 

[TJ]

(snip)


Heh ;-) We have an olde HP690C and even XP insists on assigning a
wrong driver. What hope with Win7/HP500 series ....

Well, you could always try Linux. Continuing support for older yet still
functioning hardware is one of its strengths. Everyone's needs are
different, and if experienced hardware still fills a person's needs,
there's no good reason to dump it for a shiny, new bauble.

TJ

 

[TJ]

Hi!


Perhaps this is a dinosaur, perhaps the others I have are as well.
However, they are very solid and well made dinosaurs at that--and they
meet my needs perfectly. I'd be willing to keep it on the road for
that reason alone, and out of the landfill.

There can be no question that this and other similar printers have
already outlived countless other $40 printers. I'm not going to *buy*
a $40 printer so I could say HP might as well try to sell me the ink
cartridge. (Although they aren't doing such a great job at that
because I'm using reman cartridges which are a good deal cheaper and
work fine by all indications.)

Oh, and you can still buy brand new black ink for the HP ThinkJet, in
case you were wondering. If I ever run out, maybe I will. (I've got
what has to be a lifetime supply of ink that expired in Dec 1991 but
still works perfectly. Operating cost has been virtually nil as the
pinfeed paper comes to me by the *ream* these days.)

These old DeskJet printers seem to run almost forever on a black ink
cartridge. HP quotes ~790 pages (black) and 167 (color). Black is
$37.99 and color is $38.99.

By comparison, a $30 (!!) DeskJet D1660 that I looked up on the spur
of the moment is said to print approximately 200 pages (black) and 150
(color), although the cartridges are priced lower. Randomly sampling
reviews on the 'net suggests that this isn't so--yield falls far short
of the published specs. (This probably also happens with the DJ500 and
its ink. Yields will vary.)

The price per page (warning: rough back of envelope calculations
coming!) for the D1660 is 10 cents/page for black and 24 cents/page
for the regular color cartridge. (There is an XL cartridge that I did
not study, as well as a combo pack that is cheaper.)

Now for the DJ500: Black print comes at a cost of $0.05 (rounded up)
per page. Color comes at a cost of 23 cents per page. I don't print
color with these and therefore do not bear the cost. Outside of my
DJ560C, I don't even have to *buy* a color cartridge to let the
printer work.

The Staples black cartridge cost me around $24, so it works out to a
whopping *three* cents per B&W page.


I don't know. If they did, it sure seems odd that they'd repack it so
nicely instead of just tossing it.

William (I'll take my dinosaur, but thanks for offering...)

The printer could have been packed for a garage/lawn sale, and didn't
sell. You see old printers a lot on those sales.

As long as it works and does what you need done, there's no reason to
get rid of it. However, don't expect HP to produce those new carts
forever. And those carts can only be "remanufactured" so many times, so
eventually you won't be able to feed that dinosaur any more.

But if you, like me, are an experienced bottom-feeder, then you already
knew that.

TJ

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

The printer could have been packed for a garage/lawn sale

That's a good theory, and one I hadn't considered. I haven't known the
people that live there to have garage sales, but it's down the street
a ways so I can't readily tell unless I walk down there.

And I'm not *that* nosy.

You see old printers a lot on those sales.

I had a few turn up in my yard. (People in town know who I am and what
I do. So a lot of homeless computer gear turns up at times. I can put
a lot of it to use, and the rest gets recycled or stripped for parts.
Depends upon how interesting it is.)

However, don't expect HP to produce those new carts
forever.

I don't know when or if they will stop. You can still buy ThinkJet ink
in new packages from HP, after all. I know they had planned to stop
making some form of LaserJet toner or another, but I don't know that
they did. The backlash may have been enormous--there are a LOT of old
LaserJets out there still plugging along.

I think it will be a long time coming. By then who knows if this
printer will still work. Out of the DeskJet printers I have, one of
the original DeskJets has seemingly resigned itself to having a
continual out of mind experience. All it does when powered on is to
leave all of its control panel LEDs illuminated.

William

 

[rjn]

"William R. Walsh"

Which ones were those?

For example, the DeskJet 500J, which apparently spoke only EscP.

I thought PCL was *the* language of choice for early HP printers.

Nope. The early DeskWriters, for example, spoke only QuickDraw.
Other PDLs offered included APL and GB2312, whatever those were.