Lexmark Sues 24 Companies Over Toner-Cartridge Patents 294
eldavojohn writes "Remember back in 2003, when Lexmark tried to use the DMCA to stop aftermarket toner cartridges from being produced? Well, they're now suing 24 companies for infringing on 15 patents they have on toner cartridges. The article also notes that Lexmark has been filing lawsuits over patent infringement on formulas for their inks."
Lexmark still sells printers? (Score:3, Interesting)
JE
A nice advertisement... (Score:3, Interesting)
A nice advertisement for what not to buy, thanks Lexmark.
Anyway, for those looking for alternatives, Brother doesn't chip their cartridges, and the ink is not criminally expensive. Anyone know of other brands?
Another option is to buy a continuous ink system; often these include compatible chips so you can bypass the manufacturer. Though, finding good CIS and quality inks may be somewhat troublesome. Any suggestions here?
Re:A nice advertisement... (Score:4, Interesting)
Morons (Score:1, Interesting)
While I agree that it sucks that Lexmark (and most other printer manufacturers) put chips in their printers and discourage 3rd party consumables, I will say this: there is a good reason for it. I can count on one hand the number of Branded ink/toner cartridges I've ever seen go bad. When someone buys easter egg coloring ink for $3 a gallon and puts it in their Lexmark printer, or a "remanufactured" cartridge that has 3 million pages on it and is filled with shredded tires by blind people in China, guess who gets blamed when the print quality gets messed up? Certainly not "ch3ap1nk4le$$" on ebay. No, it's Lexmark. Shitty toner cartridges have caused more problems with printers than manufacturing defects, probably by 10x or so. Lexmark (and the rest of them) have a real reason for wanting to do this. What they should do is drop the prices on the consumables and sell the Total Cost of Ownership, not the retail price. Then nobody would need to make remanufactured carts.
They should also sell the carts with a "core charge". Send back your carts, get a $50 credit.
Hint: when you buy a printer, look at the cost of consumables per page BEFORE you buy it. That $99 color laser printer probably isn't a deal when you factor in the $500 it will take to replace the toner. But the $250 printer just might be.
(Also, all printers are crap these days. Nobody competes on quality anymore, just on specs. There is a reason those old Laserjets were $2500, and that's because they were made of cast iron.)
(Although I will say the Lexmark C53x series is pretty damned good.)
Re:Lexmark on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Please... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's with all the printing? (Score:1, Interesting)
I haven't printed _anything_ since I got a smart phone 3 years ago lol.
You can save a lot of money by getting a smart phone and ditching the printer. Just sayin...
People bring me printed crap all the time at work. I just don't understand it. You can take a screen shot and email the crap. You can even email the document or a link to it.
I used to work with lawyers that would take an electronic document (which THEY wrote in the first place), print it, mark it up with red pen, then interoffice me the printed corrected copy, so I could correct the electronic original. I'm a developer, not a paralegal, so I told them to fuck off, but what kind of idiot wouldn't just edit the fucking electronic document and send it back. Why print it? You can't tell me "Oh I work on stuff on the train" This was a doc that got sent to them, and inter-officed back to me the same fucking day. Aren't lawyers supposed to be smart? Why would they do something so fucking stupid? It boggles the mind, especially with electronic signing and revision history.
People need to learn to lay off the fucking print button. It generates and unbelievable amount of waste. My desk is filled with paper that other people printed and brought to me. All of it is 100% unnecessary. What a fucking crime.
Bitching about lousy printers and cartridges is pointless. You don't need them. Stop fucking buying them.
Crap like this (Score:3, Interesting)
Crap like this is why my family doesn't even -have- a working printer. Instead we print the natural way; bring the file to work and print it there. Plus it's free!
Seriously though, once tablets are more or less ubiquitous in a professional office it will trickle down to the point where they're giving the ink away for free just to sell a printer again.
Re:Please... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are basically two kinds of ink used in inkjet printers. Solvent-based and water-based.
Solvent-based inks are generally used for the kind of inkjet printers where some resistive element heats up the ink to make a tiny bubble of gas to push out the ink. Water-based inks are typically used where some mechanical device is used to push out the ink, such as a piezoelectric element. Since the majority of printers are of the resistive variety, most third-party inks are solvent based.
Epson printers are of the piezoelectric variety and using the wrong kind of ink can cause permanent damage to the print head. Solvents and acids attack the piezoelectric elements. The solvents also dry up quicker and clog the nozzles. A new piezoelectric print head usually can be purchased for the more expensive Epson printers but they are somewhat pricey.
Years ago, I examined some cheap off-brand Epson ink replacements and the ink was the same kind of solvent ink used for other ink jets. When you get the better off-brand cartridges, some did have the right kind of ink but the price difference meant it was pointless to buy them because the real Epson cartridges was practically the same price. The _only_ time where the off-brand made sense for Epson was the printer mods which used 1 pint bottles with silicone pipes for the ink but I doubt that a typical user would ever need to print that much.