Re: Skeptical view on 'Blackstar'

On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 17:10:39 -0500, "Scott Hedrick"
<dierandsimbergdie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

ComputerScene magazine was a free rag in Albuquerque that also had an annual
conference. I went to the last one in '97. Attended a seminar on refilling
cartridges. Found it amusing when the lecturer explained how HP "improved
the quality" (can't properly reproduce the guy's sarcastic tone) by moving
the pressure bladder to a place which made it all but impossible to refill
the cartridges without puncturing the bladder.

Yeah it "improved the quality" of HP's profits.

....Ironically, I might have had something to do with that move. Back
when I worked as a test engineer for Summagraphics, I managed to set a
record for refilling the black cartridges for the DJ5XX series and
still get print results within quality tolerances - 103 consecutive
refills. The only reason we stopped was that the cart was left out
over the weekend without resting on the capstan of the SummaJet due to
a power failure, and the nozzles finally clogged beyond repair.

....Apparently, someone at Summa sent HP a report on the cart failure,
and we were told in the spring of '96 that HP was working on
reengineering the bladder arrangement so it would clear stuck nozzles
more efficiently. Truth be told, they saw how many times a cart could
be reused if taken proper care of it, and saw their consumables rape
scam endangered. Bastards.

I have manged to successfully refill some Brother color cartridges, and once
managed to refill a Lexmark black 70. Found a Kodak black cartridge for a
photoprinter that clearly was a Lexmark 70, except that the bumps on the cap
were in a different place. Imagine my surprise when I found out that, while
the caps on the color cartridges were simply glued on, the black cartridges
had a ridge that went into the bottom part. Had to chisel them off, but
couldn't get the Lexmark cap to stay on the Kodak cartridge. WalMart was
selling out the Kodak cartridges, so it was worth risking $5 to save $30.

....This is a common Lexmark scam. The design is the same, but there's
one or two minor physical differences that keep you from using one
cartridge in the other.

Dell printers are clearly Lexmark designs.

....Most are rebranded Lexmark designs, as Dell chose to license them
as opposed to buying Lexmark outright when the opportunity was given
to them. The primary reason for passing on that was that, quite
simply, Dell had already been cornholed by a bunch of ex-IBM middle
management asswipes into laying off a *lot* of their more important
people due to the "downsizing scare", and really didn't want to have
more of them on their permanent payroll if they absorbed Lexmark -
which, as most of you know, was a spinoff from IBM to avoid yet
another antitrust investigation.

My first printer was a Mannesman Tally 5-pin dot matrix. The carbon strike
ribbon that came with it was good for almost 500 pages- the best I could
find after that was good for 125, and most were good for 90. Unfortunately,
there was absolutely nothing on the original ribbon to indicate the
supplier.

....The first printer I ever owned wasn't a printer, but a plotter. To
be specific, the Commodore Plotter:

http://www.romankiste.de/basar/commodore/plo-1520.gif

....This thing used what was essentially cash register tape rolls for
output, and these little hard-to-find felt tip pen cartridges in four
colors - red, blue, green and black. When I got the plotter, it was on
a close-out table at Montgomery Wards in 1985 when they closed out all
the Commode-Door items. It cost me a whopping $19.99 because the box
was damaged, but everything else was intact. I also picked up the one
pack of refills they had for the same exact price, along with the 3K
Graphics Expansion Cart for my VIC-20, which wound up making me a
rather large bar tab for a local bar as I used it to make their
in-house advertising for over three years - it had a TV out that was
decent as opposed to the PC Jr's barely mono output.

....But I digress a bit. The key here was that, after turning in about
80 term papers on the tape roll - several of my profs actually *kept*
those papers because of the absurdity of having something turned in
rolled on an old toilet paper roll! - I finally used up all the pen
refills. Thanks to a little Romulan Engineering, I managed to recycle
the cartridges by removing the felt tip and inserts, and replace them
with clipped Bic pen tips. If I stood the plotter on it's end so the
pens pointed down, I could get about 1/3 of the output I'd get off of
a felt tip, but at the same time I'd actually get a finer point than
with the felt tip. Thanks to that trick, and a cobbled RS-232
interface that let me use it with my first real PC XT, I managed to
nurse that plotter until 1992 when I finally purchased my first Inkjet
and subsequently retired the last bit of Commode-Door equipment I had.

Believe it or not, there's times I really miss that plotter.

I use an HP laser for most of my work, and the Dell all in one for the few
copies and color pictures. The laser costs about 2/3 of the Dell/Lexmark,
and in the quantities I use, that's enough to buy a new printer about twice
a year, if I were so inclined.

....Which brings us to the current adage about refils: when you need a
new cart, just buy a new printer. It's cheaper.

Buying a low end Lexmark is like responding to those offers for free
diabetic testing machines. The cost of the printer may not even cover the
cost of manufacture, but they make up for it with the cartridges.

....Which is why I get my testing strips from a friend so it doesn't
cost me jack ***, natch.

OM
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