What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[fuzzi]

Congratulations. Hope you make the best of your retirement years.

Thank you. I've got plans, both yard and house.

 

[gtaus]

Update on Inkjet Printer Repair

Fixing the laser printer encouraged me to try to fix my old Brother MFC-J430W all-in-one inkjet printer/scanner/copier/fax. I had not used that printer for a long time and the printhead jets were dried up and clogged. I mainly have been using it as a scanner for the past ~4 years. It still worked great for that.

I was so excited that I was able to clean up and get my old Brother inkjet printer working again. Everything looked like it was coming up roses. The print quality was fantastic, and I had 4 new ink cartridges loaded up. I thought I was set.

The next morning, I wanted to print some stuff out on the inkjet printer, and it was not working! I looked at the LCD display, and it had an error code "Cannot detect" and was pointing to the Cyan cartridge. How does that happen? It was working perfectly the night before?

I swear, these printers just find a way to die....

I spent the next several days trying to clear that error code with no success. I ordered new ink cartridges on the chance I had a defective Cyan cartridge. That was no better with the new order. No matter what I tried, the printer would not detect that Cyan cartridge.

I went online to look up the error code, and a number of people reported the same problem with that printer model. Actually, it's a problem with a number of Brother printers. There was no solution. The printer is now officially dead.

Well, there was one video from India that shows how to disassemble the printer and clean the light sensor that is failing, but it's like a 2-hour job with no guarantee that it can be fixed. Any, by the way, you might muck up the cables as you take it apart and that will kill it as well. Not worth my time or effort on my inexpensive 14-year-old printer.

I'm not going to say I wasted my time trying to initially clean the printhead and getting the printer working again. But I only ended up getting 3 test sheets printed and one actual page of something I needed to print out. Then, the next morning, the printer was in that error condition and won't print anything anymore.

Mine also has a copy function that I use as much or more than printing pages.

The scanner part of it still works fine. That's all I used it for the past couple of years. So, I guess I'll keep it for the scanner function until I get a replacement printer. Most of my printing is in black and white, so my laser printer is fine for that.

The more I read up on the reviews of all these inkjet printers, the less I like to see what I'm reading. It's not very encouraging to me to read the tech reviews on these printers.

Almost all the tech reviews state that these inkjet printers are designed to last only a few years. I was considering getting a bulk ink printer because the cost per page is the lowest, but then I found out that they require all kinds of maintenance and if you don't use them a lot, the printheads will indeed dry up. In any case, the expected life of a bulk ink printer is only 2-3 years according to many.

In fact, some of the bulk ink printers boast that they can print out 5000-7000 pages on a bulk ink fill. That sounds pretty good. But what the tech reviews tell me is that waste ink pad in the printer fills up as early as 4000 pages. Some models have maintenance kits you can buy and replace, other models just shut down and that's all folks! In either case, it's a form of planned obsolescence to get you to buy a new printer in a couple of years. Pox on all of them!

Yup. Another vote for an inexpensive AIO (all-in-one) laser printer. Does scanning, copying and printing if color isn't a priority and/or you print such low volume that ink dry out/clogging is a problem. I've had my Brother AIO for about 5 years now and it has been great. The cartridges last forever.

Would you tell me which inexpensive AIO laser printer you bought? Since I don't really print that much, I have lost a number of ink jet printers due to ink drying up and/or printheads getting clogged. I have had my B&W Samsung ML-2510 laser printer for about 20 years and it's still working fine. In that same time, I think I have trashed at least 6 inkjet printers. I'm more inclined to go color laser if I can find one that is inexpensive. Thanks.

The color laser printers I have been looking at are more expensive upfront than the inkjet printers, but they have an expected life of many years. I guess if you look at the price of the printer for the years of service you can expect to get out of it - especially for someone like me who does not print much anymore - the laser printers which don't dry up are the better choice.

 

[TooCheep]

Would you tell me which inexpensive AIO laser printer you bought? Since I don't really print that much, I have lost a number of ink jet printers due to ink drying up and/or printheads getting clogged. I have had my B&W Samsung ML-2510 laser printer for about 20 years and it's still working fine. In that same time, I think I have trashed at least 6 inkjet printers. I'm more inclined to go color laser if I can find one that is inexpensive. Thanks.

The color laser printers I have been looking at are more expensive upfront than the inkjet printers, but they have an expected life of many years. I guess if you look at the price of the printer for the years of service you can expect to get out of it - especially for someone like me who does not print much anymore - the laser printers which don't dry up are the better choice.

Mine is a black & white Brother model HL-2280DW. I doubt that exact model is available any more. The reason lasers last so much longer than ink-jets is that they use a dry powder for ink rather than liquid. The powder doesn't dry up and clog and is very reliable.

Sorry, I can't comment much on color lasers other than that they are more expensive than BW. You'll have to do some searching and see if you can find one that works for you.

Minor educational point: Pretty much all retail printers (ink-jet and laser) give you a sub-capacity cartridge to start with (maybe 40% full). That is to force you to buy a full replacement cartridge at retail sooner. This allows them to discount the original printer purchase and make their real money on cartridge sales. This is similar to how many razors work.

 

[fuzzi]

I had a bubblejet printer for years, YEARS. I'd probably still be using it but computer software upgrades eventially made it unusable, it couldn't communicate anymore.