The inkjet cleaning is a drawback of inkjet technology itself, it does not like storage. I remember in the 90's the printers (at that time very expensive) didnt have any suh function and I really do remember the constant problems with clogged jets, once the printed was not used really daily. So I would be rather happy the automatic cleaning is there. But what still is problem, is the impossibility to replace the waste sponge on many of them.
But the fact is, except the printing head alone, inkjets are extremely simple and low tech machines, there is really nothing worth more than few 10s of dollars, even include all the profit margins of a consumer product distribution chain. The only really technically challenging part is the printing head (the bank of micro pumps and nozzles and the ink distribution from the reservoirs) and its matching with the ink fluid characteristics. But still $70 for few ml of ink is ridiculous and "locking" it by the chips isreally overboard (a knock off ink may give inferior print quality, but it is the customers business if he is satisfied with it for the price or if he uses genuine better quality, but more expensive ink).

With the lasers I observed the prices of genuine new cartridges (drum, toned fill, clean waste compartment in one assembly) did fell down to just very small bit above the prices of the refurbished ones (those are still cheaper, but it is like 30-50% not the tripple or more as it used to be), so the competition is working. I only hope the refurbishing companies wont cheap out (e.g. skip the cleaning,...) too much.

What are you guy's opinions on the mega tank printers they offer today, seems epson and canon have a lot of those. Printers are pricy but the ink is not. Might be a better option there.

I personally prefer colour toner for my everyday printing, I'd go for ink for photos

I generally don't print frequently enough to not have issues with the print head on inkjets clogging up even on printers with a auto cleaning function but the HP colour laser I saved from the e waste bin seems to be going fine. The toner it came with is still good but after it goes I'll probably end up buying generic cartridges for it since my standard for print quality aren't that high. Anything I want nicely printed I'll probably get it professionally done anyway.

Back in the 90's, when consumer inkjet printers were still in infancy, the usually suggested remedy for clogged ink was to print a very large black (or whatever colour gave poor results) rectangle. The unusually high flow of ink was said to unclog the head. I only ever did it once as I usually didn't have that problem. The printer was a Canon Bubblejet rebranded as the Apple StyleWriter II. It used a big, high capacity black ink cartridge (BC-01 if I remember correctly).

Oh, I see. A totally different problem you had there...

Speaking of planned obsolescence, stay FAR, FAR away from printers that have a 'cleaning' function, especially inkjets. These will randomly start cleaning themselves at anytime , especially after powering on. During the cleaning process they will use some ink to clean the print head nozzle and the ink then gets dumped into large block with sponge inside, designed to last the 'expected' life of the pinter, when the sponge is full and starts to leak, printers EOL. I once had a brother copier, fax and printer- scanner combo machine and it would eat through ink fast. I gave up and started putting food colour in it or salvaged ink until it broke.

Also had an epson inkjet printer given to me, when i tried to refill its cartridges, they still said they were empty so must have had an eprom chip in them. This is like those Dell laptop batteries that just stop being detected and die after a certain amount of cycles, even though it worked perfect the day before. It has an eprom chip which locks out the cells. Replacing the cells does not fix the battery

HP inkjets.... I used to refill those and when I would take the cap off the cartridge, the 3 sections for the colours were not even fully utilized! In each colour section, the ink occupied only a bit more than half the space, the rest was an empty unused pit divided by plastic. There was so much unused space in there by design so the unit runs out faster.

Lexmarks, now those were fun, I could fill them up no problem and the spaces inside for each colour were fully occupied.


Today it seems that manufacturers have caught on about the ink scam, so now they sell 'tank' printers, where you pay big bucks for the printers but not so much for the ink bottles to refill the tanks. But im sure theres still little tricks involved to make you spend money

We have an HP 930c from the late 90s that still works perfectly. It had exactly that happen to it - sponge overfilled to the point that ink dripped on the table under the machine + was getting on every printed page. I disassembled it, washed out of it a Tom Riddle's diary worth of ink, and it worked perfectly ever since

Today's HP have some "ink subscription" program - basically reporting your ink use for an online "ink license" sorta scheme that informs your printer how much it can still print - I would very much stay away from something like that !