HP's Jeckyll and Hyde Printer

This is really about two printers - one being a fantastic color laser printer that does not cost a lot of money initially and the other is the money sucking monster that HP hopes you never realize exists.

We purchased this printer about 3 months ago. It was selected over monochrome HP LaserJet printers because of its relatively low cost and the option of printing color when needed. The other key feature that attracted us was its built network card which made operating it in our office environment a snap. All monochrome options required the additional expense of an added network card option.

The printer was simple to set up. The HP Software makes installing on a network a breeze. The print quality was fantastic although there was eventually a problem with the fuser where images ghosted on printed pages. HP replaced the printer under warranty and that problem never appeared again.

For a business printer, the speed is decent. Faster than a color inkjet, it worked pretty well for the volume we printed each day. On the whole, the print quality is excellent. Blacks are very crisp, half-tones are smooth, and color is rich and vivid.

Everything about this printer would be perfect if HP didn’t engineer it to force us to spend a small fortune on consumables.

Here’s the first clue – the replacement toner cartridges (4 of them) cost more than the printer does. OK, you say. That’s the way the industry works. HP is intent on recovering its R&D costs by selling replacement toner cartridges. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem except that the toner cartridges all needed replacement within 3 months. The black cartridge was first to go after about 2,000 print jobs. Not bad I suppose. What really alarmed us was that the color cartridges appeared to be consumed despite our not printing in color except for the odd job. Maximum color printing was maybe 2 or 3 times a day with just partial color – all other print jobs were monochrome.

So, after 3 months, the HP printer display screamed at us that the color cartridges needed to be replaced. We could not override the message. No shaking of the cartridges could trick the printer into thinking that we had installed new ones. We simply could not print until fresh, factory sealed cartridges were installed.

It seems HP has engineered computer chips into each cartridge complete with their own unique serial numbers. Once the chip calculates how many pages have been printed, it sends a message that the cartridge has been “consumed.” There is no manual tuning, no calibration of toner used per page, no way for the operator to force the printer to continue printing.

We had an HP rep inspect our “consumed” color cartridges and he confirmed that they contained about 80% of their original volume! In other words, the printer uses an arbitrary calculation to determine its life expectancy, not the actual volume of toner used.

HP is forcing the consumer to replace cartridges after a fixed period of time whether they need to be replaced or not. With the high dollars they charge for consumables, it seems apparent that making profits is a higher priority than advancing printer technologies. Their new marketing strategy looks more and more like “sell printers low, soak ‘em on the consumables.”

We are now arranging for a new, monochrome printer to replace this one. We simply can’t afford to keep paying for color toner we are not using. We will be certain to select a printer that can use third-party re-built cartridges too.