Frank’s ink cartridge, toner cartridge, printer & photo paper news!

Toner is primarily plastic (usually acrylic or polyester resin), colourants (purified carbon black, iron oxide and pigments), and a smaller amount of special additives (for electrical charge, powder flow control and fusing properties).

Each toner is precisely formulated, specified and controlled to ensure the toner performance characteristics match the specific laser printer, ensuring the highest quality print.

All toners are not alike!

You must match the toner for your printer, you cannot use another printer (or copier, or fax!) toner to refill the cartridge in your printer!

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We get a lot of new customers because we only sell genuine products, and they are unhappy with refilled or generic products for one reason or another.

One customer last week was very adamant that he receive genuine products for his HP laser printer. He had been using remanufactured cartridges for several years and was generally happy with them, apart from the occassional leaking cartridge which he could put up with because he thought he was saving money. One day he needed a cartridge in a hurry, he couldn’t get a remanufactured cartridge from his normal supplier and all he could get was a genuine HP cartridge, much to his chagrin. His cartridges normally lasted a month, so after 3 weeks he got another remanufactured cartridge from his normal supplier, expecting to replace his toner in a week or so.

After a week, the genuine toner was still going strong. Then another week. And another. Finally, the genuine toner lasted twice as long as the remanufactured cartridges used to! He was trying to think why and couldn’t figure it out as he hadn’t changed his print usage. He did a bit of research on the internet and found out that non-genuine toner is coarser than genuine toner so more gets laid onto the page, thus more toner gets used. What he also did was to buy another new genuine HP cartridge, then weighed the empty genuine, the full genuine and the full remanufactured toners. He was shocked! He calculated that the remanufactured toner was just under three quarters full when he bought it! His next step was to count how many pages the genuine and the remanufactured toner would print. All he prints are business letters so he knew the results would be quite accurate. The results - the genuine printed 5,867 pages and the refilled toner printed 3,122 pages.

So, even though the remanufactured toner was nearly three quarters as full, it only printed just over half as many pages! Our new customer will now only buy genuine! Of course, if you are using remanufactured toner you should do your own tests and see what you come up with, but if you take into account the added wear and tear on your machine, print quality and less than great quality of refilled cartridges and we’re sure you’ll agree that genuine is best!

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HP has announced new printheads which will be blisteringly fast, and have 3,900 nozzles per printhead. The new printheads are made using a lithographic process so they do not have to be welded during manufacture, resulting in way more accurate placement of ink drops on the page. It has taken 5 years and US$1.4 billion to produce. Initially the new printheads will only be available in high-end printers but will filter down to low end printers after a couple of years. It would be welcome especially for photo printing, which can be agonisingly slow on some printers. HP will be able to deliver more colours through one printhead with so many nozzles, speeding things up alot.

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When installing a new cartridge it is always wise to double check that it is suitable for your printer. Once the packet is opened it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to return to the place of purchase.

Look at the part number of the cartridge then check your printer manual for the correct part number. If the numbers don’t match, check on the internet at your printer manufacturers site (some links are at right) to see if the part number has been updated or changed.

If you think the cartridge is incorrect contact the place of purchase as soon as possible to clarify the part number. If it is the incorrect cartridge every reputable cartridge supplier will be happy to swap it out for the correct one - but only if the package is unopened and undamaged. You may also need some form of proof of purchase.

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Exciting news! We have had word that Epson will be releasing a brand new colour laser copier printer scanner! The CX11N will have full network capability built in, and will be based on the Aculaser 1100. Consumables such as toners and drums will be interchangeable with the ALC-1100 as well. There will also be another model with built-in fax, the CX11NF. We are very excited, we are sure we will be getting a sneak preview before everyone else and will let you know the results!

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Ricoh have run out of the Ricoh AP206 fuser cleaning rollers. Not sure what the problem is, but they have given us an ETA of early October for these! A lot of people are going to be very cranky about this, no doubt we’ll be getting lots of calls from irate customers!

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Unfortunately the only place you can get Dell cartridges is from Dell. No other retailer is permitted to sell these cartridges. We also had a customer call Dell asking if they could pick up as they lived very close to Dell’s warehouse. Dell wouldn’t permit the customer to pick up, Dell cartridges are delivery only! Our customer worked out that buy buying the similar Lexmark model (Dell printers are rebadged Lexmark printers but the Lexmark cartridges cannot be fitted to the Dell as they are a slightly different design) and Lexmark cartridges she would spend less in a year than buying Dell cartridges alone!

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Have you tried myCartridges? All you do is browse for the items you use and save them to a list. Every time you go shopping you just open the list and add what you need to the shopping cart. What a great time saver! We’re sure you’ll love it!

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Have you been printing an important document and suddenly run out of ink or toner? Here is a neat way to stop that happening. If you know you use a cartridge every three months and you have just bought a new cartridge, write on the calendar on the date 2 and a half months forward that you need to buy new ink or toner! Or, if you prefer, put a Post-It note on the printer with the date you need to buy a new cartridge.

Another method is to work out, on average, how many sheets of paper you use per cartridge and put that quantity aside and only use from that pile to print. When you start getting low on paper, you know you will also be getting low on ink or toner!

It’s easy once you know how!

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Italian company Olivetti is to be brought back from the dead. The company has been resurrected to market a brand new range of ink printers, faxes and business printers. Their new site Olivetti.com lists several new printers including Bluetooth and mobile models. Not too sure if they will be distributed in Australia, that would depend if any distributors pick up the line.

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