Printer broken down

[Yellow Fang]

Annoyingly my Brother printer has broken down, just after I'd bought a new ink cartridge for it. It stopped picking up the paper, and a bit has falled out of it. Can these things be repaired, or isn't it worth it. It was amazingly cheap for a colour printer in the first place. I expect it wasn't exactly built to last. Even so, I was surprised how anyone could make a profit on it. I suspect it was a loss leader with all the real profit made on the ink cartridges, which it got through at an astonishing rate.

 

[Fnaar]

I had one a while ago with a similar problem... can't remember the make I'm afraid... a tiny cog wheel fell off, meaning paper wasn't fed through properly... you could feed it manually, but it was a pain... attempted repair myself, sort of worked, but sort of didn't... so I junked it and got a new one for apout 40 quid.... terrible waste, but it went to recycling bit of local tip, so hopefully someone's cannibalised it for parts.

Having said that, I try to print as little as poss... it's only really the nippers who print stuff at home, me only for essential stuff.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Printers have got to be one of the biggest rip-offs ever - in all my years of home computing I've never owned one that I've ever thought was good value.

 

[mr Mag00]

kodak get a very good reviews as to costs of cartridges is reported to be good. my next one will be kodak. touch wood HP has done well, never buy epson ink dries up v quickly if not used regularly, rip off.

 

[meenaghman]

laser color printer ? -> eg http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166113
was watching a program the other night where it transpires that most printers come with an inbuilt page counter that disables it when page count has been reached. (luckily the russians have got around this with a small piece of code to reset the counter). Also many inkjets just freeze up because of the ink thats wasted and gets squeezed into the sponge underneath the printer. This does nothing apart from stopping the ink from going onto your desk. however if this gets full then again you've got another plastic desktop paperweight. Printers are designed to wear out. This particular program was looking at how products were too successful initially (eg lightbulb / women's nylons) and had to be redesigned to wear out.

 

[dellzeqq]

Brother cartridges are wildly expensive, and, yes, the wretched printers stop working and they cannot be repaired for less than the cost of a new one. Never again.

But.......I worked in an office that used A3 HP Deskjets (sadly no longer available) and they would churn out prints for a couple of years at a ferocious rate. When they broke down we simply chucked it away and got a new one.

 

[beanzontoast]

If you really don't want to change printer, you could try sourcing the same model (possibly, if you shop around, with a guarantee long enough for you to give it a real testing) second-hand from Ebay. I know someone who did this and got a machine for about £30 that was better than the exact same one which had broken!

 

[Night Train]

You can probably buy a printer without ink for so little money that it would be worth looking on Ebay, or even asking on Freecycle, for a matching one or one that uses the same ink.

I gave up on inkjet a while ago* and invested in a HP colour laser printer. It was on end of line sale at PC World. It cost £99 with the four toners even though each toner was about £80 each.
I now use remanufactured toners from Ebay at about £90 for all four plus one extra deals.

It has been fine for the last 5 years, no jams, no break downs, no toner problems and the print is water proof.
Also I can print A5 books with it.



*I still keep a HP A3 size printer for printing A3 sheets or A4 booklets.

 

[cheadle hulme]

Printers are a well known loss leader. I foolishly bought a Lexmark for £40 with colour and bw cartridges.

I then refilled the colour cart at cartridge world only to find that Lexmark has programmed the printer not to accept refilled carts.

 

[fossyant]

Inkjets - then it's the bin. We had a HP colour that lasted years that works a treat, the problem is now, ink is difficult to get, and the thing 'was' big and did not much. = bin.

Bought a new HP all in one that was the business at half price for £100. Ink is still costly at £50 for interweb XL cartridges, but..........

We have an old laserjet 5 that I bought to help a mate out with his accounts. Second hand it was about £60 about 7 years ago. We get it toner via ebay very infrequently...i.e. we need to buy a toner as the rubber cleaners fail on the drum from lack of use rather than the toner running out... just gives a grey line on the outer edge. Cost is a masive £25 for a new/unused/sealed/HP cartridge from ebay (not a copy) that lasts at least 2 years home use..........

I like our new HP inkjet multi whatsit thing - it's great, but the real old laserjet is the dogs danglies for any B&W prints........ cheap as chips...

Oh and the price of a laserjet 5 was silly money 15 years ago........ but it's a big bugger...........

 

[Yellow Fang]

Printers are a well known loss leader. I foolishly bought a Lexmark for £40 with colour and bw cartridges.

I then refilled the colour cart at cartridge world only to find that Lexmark has programmed the printer not to accept refilled carts.

Maybe something similar happened with my Brother. It detected I had put in a cheaper cartridge from another supplier and decided that's it.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Don't register your printer online. They send down software updates that block third party cartridges, there is a constant battle between the ink suppliers to update the chips on the cartridges and the printer manufacturers to keep ahead of them.

When my HP Deskjet packed up recently, still within the guarantee period HP sent me a new one and told me to just bin the faulty unit, they didn't want it back.

 

[meenaghman]

What you should have done is asked for some money to get rid of the original. Or sent it to HP and get them to get rid of it. I believe that we should have cradle to grave on these consumer products. The manufacturer must make sure of proper disposal.. and not have it beached in W Africa or some other 3rd world nation circumventing EU and other rules by labelling it as second hand equipment.

 

[Cheule]

I suppose it depends on what the OP's primary use for the printer is. I have a Samsung ML-2010 mono laser printer, bought it a couple of years ago from ebuyer for £48, and it's been running great ever since. The only thing I've needed to do is buy replacement toner from ebay for £17 for three large bottles of the stuff. Only just finished the first bottle now!

But I suppose if you need colour output or graphics, then a mono laser is not for you.