Wednesday, June 25, 2008

MORE HATE: LASER PRINTING YOUR OWN MONEY

The way I see it, this is the only way to make buying new toner for a personal laser printer worthwhile.

Ok, let's take a step back. I'm looking to buy a color laser printer because my Oh Brother Inkjet takes 2 hours to print anything that's bigger than a monochrome Word file and I'm just sick of it. Entry-level color lasers cost around €150 right now. With that you get four toner cartridges (CYMB) that should last for something like 1,000 pages depending on your usage, then you need to buy more toner! I've been pricing this a bit and many consumer brands (Epson, Canon) price the four cartridges of toner at a little less than the printer itself (maybe 10% below the cost). Today I got a brochure from Dell and figured I'd check it out. The printer with 4 cartridges is €169. Replacement cartridges (normal capacity) €33 Black, €49 each CYM! So a little math tells us...€180. Hmm. Here's the thing, when it's more economical to throw out the printer when the toner is done, something isn't working.

I know that they bundle and all that shit, but do they think that people are that stupid? It's fucking ridiculous that it costs more money to buy the fucking toner than it does to buy the printer that is bundled with the toner. I know, I know economies of scale...Fuck that, computer chips and plastic and metal that are used in the printer costs money too. If a computer company respects you this much about a printer, imagine how much they're going to respect you when you have a problem with your system ('of course we can fix your computer, it will only be 112% of your purchase cost'). I'm pretty happy, over all, with Dell, but come on Mikey....That's fucking stupid.

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