Travel Technology - HP Print Cartridges- rant (US & UK versions)

rant....

Why do they make so many incompatible print cartridges? The technology isn't that wierd, they could just have a dozen or so and make them fit all their printers. The HP.com USA site lists about 196 different cartridges and print heads. I keep a laptop and printer in Italy; that printer, purchased in Italy less than a year ago, uses the number 343 or 344 tri color cartridges. I wanted to pick up a replacement in the US, since I can generally get that stuff much cheaper here. No luck; they don't sell those here, those are EU only models. So, they sell 196 different US cartridges, plus how many more EU models, plus Asia models, SA models, etc.... And people call Microsoft the evil empire.

What possible excuse can there be for making the EU and US printers incompatible? This is insane; it has to be purely a revenue enhancement thing. In fact, they should give the printers away, heck, they should pay us to take their printers, since they make so much profit on the ink. Whenever I buy ink cartridges I think of the old heroin dealer strategy- they give it away for free at first, until you're hooked.

And no, I won't refill- I've tried that a few times, and jammed/ruined two printers that way. The refill ink isn't the same quality. Also, I need good quality when I print pictures, since that's critical for my work, and generic doesn't cut it.

/rant off

What to say, it is a revenue enhancing thing, and HP is greedy about it.

I wonder if the cell phone companies learned it from HP, sell hardware cheap at low or no profit, and set a high price for a continuing revenue stream for users to continue to use the hardware. Only thing is HP doesn't force you sign a two-year contract to buy all your cartridges from them. Yet.

Too bad competition and good old capitalism do not create alternatives here. In hindsight, they have. 15 years ago when I worked in a corporate data center, this local guy had a copy machine repair business. This was around the time B&W HP laserjet printers became popular for small workgroups and on individual desktops. The copy repair guy switched to being a laser jet cartridge refiller after he saw how lucrative it was. He'd pick up empty cartridges by the pallet load, and deliver them back, refilled, the next week.

He was so inexpensive compared to HP, all the other corporate sites, and there were about eight of them, started to ship their empty cartridges to us to give to him to refill. He used to tell stories how he hired high school/college kids home for the weekend to work Sat and Sun to refill the cartridges. And how two UPS trucks would pull into his driveway on a Friday and unload boxes of empty cartridges to be refilled, ... into his garage.

If a cartridge failed or didn't work right, you'd call him, and in an hour he'd hand deliver a substitute. Try getting that kind of service from HP.

Last I heard, he sold the business and moved to the Caribbean (with a new wife) to live the good life.

In fact, they should give the printers awayPrinters, especially ink cartridge-based printers, are often sold at a loss. Or so I heard when I worked for HP. The cartridges keep changing to keep ahead of the re-fillers. On the plus side, many professional review sites detrmine cost per page when comparing printers. Once I found a fast, network-attached, duplexing laser printer, I never looked back. The "starter" toner lasted me about half a year, the first "real" toner is still fine after 4,000 pages.

Just buy a laser printer. Comes out much cheaper, and much better quality, even at low print volumes. Just bought a Lexmark E330 for EUR 90 all-in, and I am very happy. Even colour lasers retail for less than EUR 200 now.

Yes, I have two network attached lasers, a HP LJ5 and a Minolta MagicColor 2430DL.

They are great in terms of low running cost but they certainly are not photo quality. Good thing is when people see a large 8.5x11 photo, they are not so picky about the laser print quality.

For photos, I would just use a professional print service. Usually a lot cheaper than the ink or toner, and a lot better quality.