What's the deal with the ip4600?

  • Thread starter Thread starter IntergalacticExpandingPanda
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Arthur Entlich said:
There is a considerable body of legislation in many so-called
"capitalistic democracies" (possibly an oxymoron) regarding restriction of
trade, anti-monopoly or anti-trust and anti-tying legislation which indeed
does restrict what manufacturers can do. These laws date back to the 16
and 1700s in some cases. The Fair competition act in Europe predates the
US and Canadian legislation. Recent EU legislation specifically prohibits
the sale of printers which do not use refillable cartridges. I suppose in
nearly brain-dead Measekite's mind all those countries are
non-capitalistic. Those laws do restrict what manufacturers can produce.
There are lot of laws that control safety, quality, warranty requirements,
and many other aspects of the sale of goods in the US. Some are federal,
many of under state jurisdiction and the states' attorney generals office
is responsible. Once the sadly lingering Bush administration goes and
hopefully some of the upper judicial branch starts to be replaced in teh
US, hopefully they will have a more balanced legal network to protect both
end users and manufacturers.

The printer industry has abused copyright and patent acts to try to get
around some fundamentals and hopefully as the bad boys of the Whitehouse
are booted out, some sense of fairness and environmental issues will come
to mind and legislation can follow.

As the end of the day, these dinosaurs will be forced to change kicking
and screaming either to change their ways or to deal with a very angry
population as teh consequences become more apparent.

I sense a legal cold wind blowing for printer manufacturers should they
continue to act irresponsibly in terms of high meas or wishing do not
control


Art
Click to expand...

Yes, just what we need, more governmental restrictions on the free market.
 
Arthur Entlich said:
There is a considerable body of legislation in many so-called
"capitalistic democracies" (possibly an oxymoron) regarding restriction of
trade, anti-monopoly or anti-trust and anti-tying legislation which indeed
does restrict what manufacturers can do. These laws date back to the 16
and 1700s in some cases. The Fair competition act in Europe predates the
US and Canadian legislation. Recent EU legislation specifically prohibits
the sale of printers which do not use refillable cartridges. I suppose in
nearly brain-dead Measekite's mind all those countries are
non-capitalistic. Those laws do restrict what manufacturers can produce.
There are lot of laws that control safety, quality, warranty requirements,
and many other aspects of the sale of goods in the US. Some are federal,
many of under state jurisdiction and the states' attorney generals office
is responsible. Once the sadly lingering Bush administration goes and
hopefully some of the upper judicial branch starts to be replaced in teh
US, hopefully they will have a more balanced legal network to protect both
end users and manufacturers.

The printer industry has abused copyright and patent acts to try to get
around some fundamentals and hopefully as the bad boys of the Whitehouse
are booted out, some sense of fairness and environmental issues will come
to mind and legislation can follow.

As the end of the day, these dinosaurs will be forced to change kicking
and screaming either to change their ways or to deal with a very angry
population as teh consequences become more apparent.

I sense a legal cold wind blowing for printer manufacturers should they
continue to act irresponsibly in terms of high meas or wishing do not
control


Art
Click to expand...

Yes, just what we need, more governmental restrictions on the free market.
 
Arthur Entlich said:
There is a considerable body of legislation in many so-called
"capitalistic democracies" (possibly an oxymoron) regarding restriction of
trade, anti-monopoly or anti-trust and anti-tying legislation which indeed
does restrict what manufacturers can do. These laws date back to the 16
and 1700s in some cases. The Fair competition act in Europe predates the
US and Canadian legislation. Recent EU legislation specifically prohibits
the sale of printers which do not use refillable cartridges. I suppose in
nearly brain-dead Measekite's mind all those countries are
non-capitalistic. Those laws do restrict what manufacturers can produce.
There are lot of laws that control safety, quality, warranty requirements,
and many other aspects of the sale of goods in the US. Some are federal,
many of under state jurisdiction and the states' attorney generals office
is responsible. Once the sadly lingering Bush administration goes and
hopefully some of the upper judicial branch starts to be replaced in teh
US, hopefully they will have a more balanced legal network to protect both
end users and manufacturers.

The printer industry has abused copyright and patent acts to try to get
around some fundamentals and hopefully as the bad boys of the Whitehouse
are booted out, some sense of fairness and environmental issues will come
to mind and legislation can follow.

As the end of the day, these dinosaurs will be forced to change kicking
and screaming either to change their ways or to deal with a very angry
population as teh consequences become more apparent.

I sense a legal cold wind blowing for printer manufacturers should they
continue to act irresponsibly in terms of high meas or wishing do not
control


Art
Click to expand...

Yes, just what we need, more governmental restrictions on the free market.
 
Yes, just what we need, more governmental restrictions on the free market.
Click to expand...

Well, in the past it was not an issue getting the estimated yields on
given printers & cartridges. That was often marked on the cartridges
them selves, and websites like Office Depot were more than happy to
publish this information. Now that information is even more difficult
to find.

Given the amount of waste produced, it's pretty reasonable to expect
that the manufacturers include this information on the cartridges and
printers so buyers can make an informed choice. Too often a person
will get seduced into a cheap printer only to be eaten alive by the
cost of consumables. The free lexmark with a dell deal is a prime
example, though Canon started playing this game as well with a whole
series of thimble sized cartridges.

If the manufacturers were willing to play nice, I'd say no regulation
is necessary, but frankly they are not. Home printing of text
shouldn't cost anymore than 5c/page and an estimated yield of a given
cartridge should be at least 500pages, though I'm willing to tolerate
lower yields for portable printers.
 
Yes, it is exactly what we need. You are living is a dream if you think
we don't currently have restricted markets. In this one area alone, the
printer manufactured have successfully manipulated the courts to
interpret copyright and patent protection to include some of the design
elements the printer companies put into their printers to try to limit
the compatibility with 3rd party product, and as such, have made it
impossible for 3rd party cartridges to compete with OEM, by placing
duties and fines on the 3rd party products. That is a corruption of teh
intent of the laws and regulations I indicated.

Had restrictions such as being imposed in the EU been enforced in North
America those patented tricks would never have been allowed. In
general, those "features" simply go against the consumer's ability to
use the product, add cost, and force waste and environmental damage.

Painting all regulation as negative is like painting all traffic laws as
unfair restrictions on freedom of movement. In a functional society
regulations are developed to help prevent chaos and develop social
consensus. Restrictions and regulation which just protect industry and
therefore do not allow for innovation may not be positive, but those
which ensure fairness and safety for a society not only are valuable,
but they work. The Scandinavian countries have some very liberal
attitudes about sexual practices, prostitution, soft drugs, and criminal
rehab, for instance, while having high taxes, very strong laws on
pollution, product safety, protection of children, etc. Those
countries, overall have some of the most stable societies, lowest crime
rates, lowest levels of poverty, and illness, the best lifespans, etc.,
and also very few people leave to immigrate elsewhere, because the
system works well for just about everyone. Those are enlightened cultures.

I'm not going to swallow some one sentence "truism" you posted which
most Americans have been hoodwinked into believing while they've had the
majority of their wealth ripped off by corrupt and wealthy bankers,
stock promoters, real estate agents and yes, politicians. A perfect
example of what happens in a society without regulation is the $700 plus
billion loss the American people are now being asked to cover (so that
it can once again be pocketed by the same people who stole it to begin
with).

Yeah, unregulated industries and services sure have brought the US to a
great place, hasn't it? (Tyco, Enron, to name two).

Art



If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/
 
Don't put words in my mouth, or tell me what I do or don't "realize",
please. It's your view they were bad laws. I may not agree with them in
their entirety, but some areas of these regulations make sense in a
functional society. Kids shouldn't be subjected to racist, sexist
lyrics or gratuitous violence, and since some parents can't seem to
create reasonable boundaries, because they lack childrearing skills
Government came in to protect them.

Your characterizations of the people you mention, as well as your use of
the language (the word is copyright, because it is regarding the
"rights" to copy, not about "writing") doesn't help to persuade me that
your argument holds a lot of veracity.


Art

If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/
 
As people who have read this group for a while know, Bob and I have had
our disagreements about several issues, and in particular about who or
what type of intervention (if any) should be involved in controlling the
printer/consumable business model.

While I think we have some polictical and philosophical differences on
some fundamental bases, I think I could basically accept what Bob states
below, IF (and perhaps that's the stumbling block) the consumer received
an honest portrayal of the consumable costs involved with printers.

If the market "knew" the truth another these things, perhaps it would
respond in a more thoughtful and environmentally aware manner. The
problem is that's a big "if" and one which to date few printer
manufacturers have come to the table to advance. In fact, if anything,
printer manufacturers have become more devious in how they sell their
printers and consumables, and the average consumer must spend a
unreasonable amount of time and energy, if they can even unearth the truth.

Although, if you look carefully, you may find some yield information,
usually based upon a very low percentage coverage area, for most people
who use their printers in other than strict text applications (which is
most of us, especially with color output) have very little idea of the
expectation of output from a set of cartridges.

Just for now, let's ignore the major issue of the massive waste of
materials toxic and otherwise which occur by the inability to refill
cartridges, one which is criminal with laser printers which have full
drum units incorporated, as most do today (and that gets multiplied by 4
with color lasers).

But let's just look at a few issues directly related to how we could be
that "market force" by knowing what we are actually buying:

1) How do the cartridges you receive with the printer compare with the
full versions we find on the shelf when we wish to replace them.

Every dirty trick in the books has been used here. Some companies never
even mention that the printer, when purchased, comes with starter or
partially filled cartridges. Some printers come with filled cartridges,
but there is no standard regulation or do the printer companies
necessarily feel any obligation to state this anywhere on the package.

In some cases, the information is somewhere within the package with the
instructions, or an a CD, but that doesn't help when you are buying a
seal package. In some cases, the company sends you on a wild goose
chase on their website, where the information is buried, if it is even
there. In some cases, as a result of lawsuits, some companies now
offers replacement "starter cartridges" with the same amount as in the
starter cartridge that comes with th printer, so they can claim it is
one of the "regular for sale" cartridges. Often in these cases, these
cartridges are not stocked by retailers because they are poor value
relative to the ink or toner yield (for example, the "starter type
replacement cartridge" will contain half or less ink/toner amount, but
will sell for 75% or more of the cost of the full cartridge which offer
twice the yield. Due to shelf space considerations, or even lack of
availability in spite of these cartridges being "catalog items", those
cartridges simply are not sold at retail, so they only exist (in the
ether) due to the law suits which targetted starter cartridges as being
deceptive, due to their small yield.

As an example, one company sells a color laser printer which, at least
on the box, does not indicate how the cartridges installed differ from
those which one gets off the shelf to replace them, and doesn't even
provide a part number on the provided cartridges, but instead just
indicates "replace this cartridge with #XXXXX" which is the full size
version, implying the one inside is the same, but after a lot of
digging, I discovered those installed cartridges contained half the
toner that the replacement ones did.

As another example, also a color laser printer, I just acquired one
which does indeed come with full cartridges. At original price, that
printer sold for just about the cost of the replacement cartridges.
Since it is being discontinued, I was able to buy it at about 50% off.
My cost for the printer was $260 CAN inclusive of four full cartridges.

Current shelf price for the four replacement cartridges: Over $600! In
other words, I could turn around sell the cartridges at over twice what
they cost me, throw the printer out, and use part of the profit to buy
another printer with full cartridges! For the cost of about one and a
half cartridges they could buy a new printer and 4 full new cartridges.
What is wrong with this picture??

2) The next problem is getting some sense of the real cost of output.

It is all well and good to speak of 5% coverage per color and a yield so
based, but what does that actually look like? Well, it looks like a
typed page with some fair sized margins and a small color graphic in one
corner. Printers have large enough boxes that they could easily show a
series of say, 4 different prints (printed reduced in size from their
real 8.5 x 11") as examples of different printing output, and under each
could be an output number, based upon the starter cartridges enclose (if
that be the case), and the full replacement cartridges. Each image
would represent a typicial and an industry agreed upon output which
would be used by every manufacturer. Call them standard ISO #XXXX
output images. One could be a typed page, another a typed page with a
color logo, yet another with a color graphic and yet a final one showing
a full photographic image. That last one would use equal amounts of all
toner colors, for fairness, and under each image there would be three
numbers: number of these images that would result from the cartridges
installed, and output number that would be based upon a full off the
shelf cartridge. Then under those numbers would be a cost of ink/toner
per print based upon the list price of the OEM cartridges.

Yeah, I know, some printers waste more ink or toner, some images won't
have equal usage of all colors, etc. Nothing is perfect, but it sure
would provide a good start for comparing printers and cartridges, and
once people became aware of how these numbers worked, the consumer
(market) would begin to quickly settle out what it was that the consumer
was looking for.

Today, no one but the most wealthy or most daft (or both) people would
even consider buying a car without knowing the miles per gallon (or
litres per 100KM) for both city and highway travel and the range of the
gas tank. The fact that those numbers, by law, MUST appear on every new
car's window sticker and that those numbers are based upon a standard
system of measurement means they can be compared fairly. Those numbers
have been on cars for decades, and now particularly, they indeed have
changed the attention of nearly all car buyers, and the market has
spoken, especially with gas costing almost 1% of the cost of printer ink
or toner ;-)

So, yes, Bob and I agree, the market 'probably' could dictate the
direction of printers and how manufacturers sell their printers, but
only with easier access to real information to make decisions with. Now,
without any regulations, the market is dictated by deceit and
misinformation. With the system I suggest, it would be dictated by
knowledge and awareness, and although I have to admit that I am
sometimes jaded by the ability of the consumer to see beyond their nose,
I'm sure willing to give it a good college try if the industry will!

Art


If you are interested in issues surrounding e-waste,
I invite you to enter the discussion at my blog:

http://e-trashtalk.spaces.live.com/
 
As people who have read this group for a while know, Bob and I have had
our disagreements about several issues, and in particular about who or
Click to expand...


From my reading you have had disagreements with many posters including all
that have you plonked for not just top posting but your holier than thou
attitude about it.


snip

We do not read to read a dissertation.
 
Actually it should be easier these days, with the adoption of the ISO 24711
standard on page yields by most of the major manufacturers. Before the
standard each manufacturer was on their own in defining page yields, and
there was a lot of gamesmanship involved. One manufacturer defined standard
pages as having 2" margins all the way around. In those days it was
impossible to compare yields with any accuracy between manufacturers due to
the large differences in the pages. While there are still differences,
notably in the area of servicing overhead, the ISO standard provides a more
apples to apples comparison.
Click to expand...

It "should" be easier, but it's not. Firstly, I don't know how ISO
24711 corresponds to percent coverage. Secondly, everyone doesn't use
ISO 24711.

For example, Canon has advertised their head on the cartridge type
inks, PG30, PG40, PG50 as having higher page yields than their larger
PGI-5s. The volume is lower by a fair bit, and little to no change in
the ink. Are they more efficient? No, I believe they are using 1,500
character pattern, as in courier 10 CPI, or at least a relative yield
that would suggest courier 10cpi.

That being said, HP use ISO 24711. It would be handy to know the page
coverage measurement
One of the managers working on the page yield stuff once remarked to me that
"putting page yield on cartridge boxes is like putting mileage numbers on
gas pumps". The point is that a given cartridge will perform differently in
different printer models, depending on the print modes, servicing and a
large number of other factors. Page yield is really a function of the
printer model *and* the cartridge design.
Click to expand...

That's certainly true, however it's no real excuse for not including
that information as standard on the printer it self.

While we don't put mileage numbers on gas pumps, we do put the octane
rating on gas, in the US we use an average of the RON and MON numbers,
which compares how a given fuel knocks in contrast to a solution of
Octane and Heptane.

It's not unreasonable to expect there to be millage on the cartridges
in contrast to a single printer. It's certainly more reasonable now
that cartridges are changing pretty much every 3 years. They can
easily state on the cartridges x pages using x text (iso or 5% page
coverage) using X printer. And Y Z printer can easily state Y yield
on X cartridge.

$0.05/page and 500 pages may fit your particular usage model, others may
have very different needs. For example, there are folks with very limited
printing needs where a 500 page cartridge may sit in a printer long enough
to fail before the ink is used. For these users a 200 page cartridge that
lasts for the full life of the ink may be a better choice, especially at a
reduced price for the cartridge. For my printing needs the large cartridges
are a much better choice; for my parents the small cartridges are a better
fit.
Click to expand...

HP seems to have switched to a separate head. For light users, I
would agree this makes less sense as this would usually mean printer
failure, or head failure if you can replace it. Another reasonable
statement would be cartridge life once installed. Damn useful bit of
information. Ideally a simple dye cartridge has a really long shelf
life. Once opened I'm sure it has a shorter life.

What matters is the final cost of printing, which would include
cartridge idle life. That too should be included on the cartridges.
High yield, low idle would be wasteful if you don't use what you
bought. High yield, high idle like lasers would not.
 
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