Well hmm, it is going to get more complicated in a short while I
suspect**, but not for these reasons.
Nowadays, we use the ink jets to produce high resolution photos that
rival those the commercial photography shops produce (I am not trying
to step on anyone's toes here with these statements). Since the paper
and the ink is expensive, it is not really the same as throwing out a
half-printed page of text that costs about a nickel to toss; these
pages cost many dollars or more to throw out. So you want to know
before starting a job, if it will finish and finish correctly. Hence
the printer needs to be able to tell you what it is up to. Thus the
smart chip in the printer cartridge.
The ink-jets have what are called smart chips in them to talk to the
computer drivers and tell them various things about how the printer is
doing. The printers by themselves are very in-expensive. Selling the
cartridges are the way the printer companies make money (HP, Epson, all
of them are in this. Those smart chips detect when the cartridge has
been refilled and will refuse to work, so the user has to buy new ones.
A few complete refills and you have paid for a new printer. Really.
Jerry
** It is going to get tricky soon due to environmental regulations that
are working to reduce electronic "waste" materials, such as ink-jet
cartridges. In Europe, it is (or soon will be) illegal to have the
smart chips disallow refills. That type of regulation may soon be in
California, then spread here.
On Wednesday, January 1, 2003, at 10:24 PM, Tony LaFemina wrote:
> Sorry I took so long to respond to this Jerry, but the more you guys
> tell me about Epson printers, the more baffling it gets. I don't know
> why anyone would be concerned about when the printer runs out of ink.
> The worst that could happen is a few sheets of paper have to be thrown
> out if the ink is used up before a run is completed. (At least that's
> what I'm thinking). But, I have a sneaking suspicion there's more to
> it than that.
>
> The thing that bothers me is, if what you say is true, then their
> system for determining fluid levels is probably based on time rather
> than actually measuring fluid levels. If that's the case, they'd do
> better to eliminate the system and reduce the price of their printers.
>
> Tony
>
> Jerry Yeager wrote:
>
>> You can take the cartridges out prematurely, but you generally want
>> to avoid doing that. Epson uses the electromechanical approach to
>> squeezing the ink out. So each time the cartridges are replaced the
>> new ones have to be electrostatic-ally charged. This wastes ink. In
>> addition, with the old versions of OS-X, printer communications were,
>> shall we say a bit tenuous, so sometimes the printer would not report
>> remaining ink levels correctly (this tended to be true with most
>> ink-jet printers), which sometimes would make an old, used cartridge
>> look full when it was on its last legs.
>>
>> Jerry
>>
>> p.s. If you were using this for photos, check into the 2200. It is
>> really good.
>>
>> On Saturday, December 28, 2002, at 09:44 PM, Tony LaFemina wrote:
>>
>>> Bill Rising wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/28/2002 1:09, Tony LaFemina wrote
>>>>
>>>> [snip...]
>>>>
>>>>> Have you tried replacing the cartridges?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I've wanted to avoid that, because epson makes all sorts of dire
>>>> warnings stating that taking a cartridge out makes it unusable
>>>> forever (even if it is still pretty full, as the ones in my printer
>>>> are). So... this'll be the very last step, after I've tried
>>>> everything else.
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Thanks for that bit of information Bill. I've only had 2 H-P
>>> printers, and am not used to that kind of stupidity. Are you allowed
>>> to at least wiggle them to maybe try to reseat them? I'm not
>>> familiar with Epson's setup, but couldn't there be a condition where
>>> the cartridges aren't seated properly? It sounds like these guys
>>> went out of their way to come up with that one.
>>>
>>> I wish you the best.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Tony LaFemina
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
> --
> Tony LaFemina
> Major in Layout & Design Techniques
> Minor in Software Fundamentals
> http://hometown.aol.com/visitmacland/index.html
> mailto:remacs at optonline.net
>
>
>
>
>
> | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will
> | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
>
>
>
| The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will
| be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
