The little printer is less than $30.00 and the DAMN ink cartridges cost

[TheBlackAdder]

40. The black cartridges on my Pro905 cost $5 for an XL. **Disable color printing, Watch out w/lasers!**

Last edited Sun Jul 31, 2016, 12:15 PM - Edit history (1)

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When you print, your printer defaults to using all colors, even when printing black, so you slowly burn through them.

Even if you set the printer to print in black, your PC software will override it, so you have to disable it in 2 places.

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If you get a newer printer, get a Brother or one that has separate cartridges, not the integrated single color ones. This way, if you burn through a color, you don't have to throw out half of the other unused ink colors. The Pro905 has separate color cartridges too, but it's now a relic. TomsHardware, CNET, ComputerShopper all do cheapest cartridge tests.

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The real ripoff is with color laser printers.

When you have a corporate HP printer account, HP has the toner cartridges set to print until the cartridge is completely dumped. When streaks appear, remove the cartridge and give it a shake to distribute the toner evenly and you'll be good to go for some more. Years ago, you used to run the cartridges out on non-contract laser printers, but not anymore.

Who gets effed are the residential and small business laser users, without a corporate contract. Each of the cartridges, just like with little inkjets, have chips in them that record the click charges. It's not how much ink in in the cartridge or if it is empty, but how many times the cartridge was referenced. This, again, is where you get burned when printing in B&W with the "Use all colors" setting enabled.

Just one pixel counts as a click charge against the cartridge... but what's worse is that is also counts as a drum charge... the really expensive thing.

If you print using only black, you'll get 2 drum charges. If you are printing anything in color, the yellow will automatically gets used as part of a government micro-tracking system built into almost every color laser printer to identify the printer that printed the document... hence, the owner since they are registered and tracked online by the vendor. This is to track people printing money or threatening letters, etc..

If you print a Black + CYM document, you get 1 drum charge and you will get one for each color used: B, C, Y & M. That's 5 click charges against the drum for a full color page. There are issues with the way HP and other vendors charge the clicks (before the software disables the not empty ink cartridge). That's right, you could print 1,000 sheets with one pixel on them and it will count as just as much as 1,000 sheets of full color. It's a SWAG. Most people don't really print using that much color so many times people will complain that they can feel the toner in the cartridge, but the printer says it is empty and will not use it. The contract printers have this chip limitation removed, but non-contract owners have it enabled. To get around this, you'll see on eBay and other places people selling replacement chips, that you remove from your toner cartridge and replace with these new ones, so you can continue printing on the 75% full cartridge that was flagged as empty by the software.


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