My Brother, although it ran fine for several years, has two problems. The red has stopped printing and the cleaning routine Brother suggests had no effect. But just in the past few weeks, it has started to put nagware on my computer. Every hour or so a popup appears to tell me to replace the cartridges. Despite the fact that it still prints fine. I was thinking of getting an Epson, but the post above about problems with Wi-Fi gives me pause. My computer is not in the same room as the printer and, right now, neither is my wife’s. She normally uses the guest room where the printer is, but we are expecting guests. The Brother, at least, had a straightforward Wi-Fi setup and has given no trouble on that score. My router password is all lower case roman letters, although 15 letters long.
My Epson nags me after I print a couple of pages. Very aggravating!
One trick that has worked for me in the past when one of my color ink cartridges has run out: in the print dialog box there is usually a checkbox somewhere for “Print B&W Only”, which seems to bypass the color cartridges and only uses the black one.
Update: I just needed to scan a document, and it worked very nicely. The second thing I tried worked perfectly, and a couple minutes after I realized I needed to sign and document, I had signed it, scanned it, and emailed it to the appropriate party. Happy camper.
I would be livid. I’ ma little worried about running into something like that “you have no magenta toner, so we can’t scan”. I suppose I’ll find out in due time.
And… since I had a lot of trouble finding this thread, and it’s now mostly about printers, I updated the title.
Disclaimer: I posted a link for a nose hair trimmer review site as a joke, only to find just now that there’s an actual website with that name. I have no knowledge of the legitimacy of that site.
On the other hand, bestdigitalunderarmshaverswithflashinglightsensorsreviews.com doesn’t seem to exist (yet) so take that as my example of dubious review sites.
Gotta agree here. The ecotank printers are pretty awesome.
There’s a line of them for different needs, I have the 2750, pretty much the same as the 2760, from what I can see.
Bit higher on the upfront cost, but the cost of printing is a whole lot less.
We have an HP all-in-one color inkjet printer which we bought three or four years ago. The issue we have with it is that its software seems to have some sort of glitch in interacting with Windows 10 – at first, we had no problems printing in both B/W and color, but somewhere along the line, both my computer and my wife’s computer lost the ability to print in color on it; in the Printer Options menu, there is no option for selecting color, and repeated reinstalling of the printer drivers (which is what is apparently recommended) does nothing to solve the problem.
Well, I’ve given up and just ordered another Epson Eco-Tank. This one is the 2760 mentioned above. My old one goes in the landfill.
One thing about infrequent use inkjets that one of IT Gods pointed out to me is to turn it off until you need it. By leaving it in standby it keeps the print heads warmed up and between that and cleaning cycles uses up and dries out your carts. I’ve been doing it with my clearance sale HP all in one and no issues so far. It is a pain to remember to turn it on but I only print one or two items a month usually.
You learned wrongly. HP has worked very well for me for many years. I’m currently on a Deskjet printer that’s about 4 years old, and still going strong.
I have an HP notebook from work. It’s… quite good actually.
Right now there is a business manager at a printer manufacturer desperate to know if it is their firmware which has this design flaw so it can be corrected immediately.
I’ve pulled apart several inkjet printers. Their dirty secret is the huge sponge filled tray in the base where they pour all the ink so you have to buy more. Pardon me, I mean where the ink used for head cleaning goes.
I bought an HP LaserJet 4P in the mid 1990s.
It’s still going strong. Never had the slightest problem with it.
Well, that’s back when HP printers were the standard. Nowadays not so much. I have an HP laptop which works just fine, but I don’t think I’d buy one of their printers.
The Wikipedia page does note that the printer is known for longevity. Also that it was introduced in 1993, so before USB. Are you using in on a network? I can’t really imagine using serial or parallel cables these days, but if I had a great printer maybe the adaptors would be worth it.
That’s the one thing about the Eco-Tanks that I am not a fan of, something I only learned about recently. And it’s not that it uses ink, ink for the Eco-tank is cheap, it’s that once the sponge become saturated, it will shut down your printer until it is serviced, and it’s really easier just to buy a new one.
Still lasted almost 5 years of some pretty heavy printing, including several hundred full color Christmas cards each year, and still has some life left in it, but it’s been showing me a warning that it will need servicing relatively soon.
I bought a “USB parallel” adapter cable. One end of the cable is a 25 pin parallel connector that plugs into the 25 pin connector on the back of the printer. The other end is a standard USB connector and plugs in to the computer. There’s electronics inside the parallel connector to convert the parallel data to USB serial data, and vice-versa.
My bold.
Buy a new Eco-tank, a new “sponge,” or a new printer?