March 8, 2006 by Frank
At the moment these toner cartridges are in short supply, as HP is due to bring in a shipment. The Q2612A cartridges are suitable for HP Laserjet 1010, 1015, 1020, 1022 and 1022N Laser Printers.
If you urgently need a Q2612A, all is not lost. The Canon CART303 is identical and will fit in all of the above HP Laserjets with no loss of quality or reliability issues. The Canon cartridge is suitable for LBP2900 and LBP3000 laser printers.
You can use either the HP cartridge or the HP compatible Canon toner cartridge in any of the above listed HP and Canon printers. Another bonus is that the Canon cartridge can usually be found cheaper than the HP cartridge!
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March 2, 2006 by Frank
HP have released a new ColorLaserJet – the 3600. This printer is aimed at small offices with a street price of around $950. First impressions are very favourable, it is very easy to set up and use.
One of the main features is the printers use of the new HP ColorSphere toners. These toners promise a more glossy print (even on plain paper). You can use glossy paper in this printer as well. Another unique feature is that unlike most other mid-end colour lasers, the HP Color LaserJet 3600 cartridges also include the drum. This means you replace the drum every time you replace the toner, which will result in clear prints every time. Often on color laser printers the drum (or photoconductor unit) can cost as much to replace as the original cost of the printer!
One drawback of the HP Color Laserjet 3600 is that it is a host based printer, which basically means it uses your computers processing power and memory to render the page for printing. This can put a strain on your workstation, so be careful. It is, however, compatible with both Macintosh and Windows. The HP Color Laserjet 3600n and HP Color Laserjet 3600dn also support out of the box networking making them very easy to set up and connect.
All in all a great colour laser for small offices.
Category Printers, Printing Digital Photos, Toners | Tags: | No Comments
February 7, 2006 by Frank
Last month Hewlett Packard announced an across the board price rise of 5% for all HP inks, HP toners and papers. While we have been lucky over the past 2 years with our appreciating dollar causing great price drops in consumables, unfortunately things are now going the other way and we are going to have to start paying more. The vast majority of printer consumables coming into the country are paid with US dollars, so any changes in the exchange rate are reflected in the prices end users pay. With the US dollar rising, this means we will be paying more for consumables.
Category Inks, Photo Paper, Printing Digital Photos, Toners | Tags: | No Comments
February 6, 2006 by Frank
Following on from the post last week about Canon’s lawsuit against a refiller, it seems to me that we are going to see a lot more aggressive legal action from the big four printer manufacturers. Last month Lexmark reported a nearly 50% drop in profit, due mostly to price discounting. Epson has also reported a loss of over $120 million because of poor performance in their LCD division. Epson expects sales in their printing division to be lower this year.
While the companies don’t say that refilling has hurt their businesses, they must be thinking how to get back the 15-20% market share that refilling and compatible cartridges has. In the past both Canon and Epson have for the most part ignored refillers, with HP repeatedly saying it’s the ‘consumers choice, but HP is better’. Lexmark has been aggressive with their actions against toner remanufacturers (see info on their DMCA lawsuit) but has left ink refilllers alone.
Epson has taken action against manufacturers of aftermarket ink cartridges but only on a small scale. With the huge profits at stake these actions will only increase as it makes it worthwile for the printer companies to win back market share and badly needed revenue. With the explosion of digital photo printing expected to take place over the next year or two the market, and potential profits, will get bigger and bigger. The big four will not want to relinquish a bigger piece of the pie to refillers – in fact they will want to make the pie, and their piece, bigger.
It would be far better the big four used the consumer education carrot rather than the litigation stick to increase their market share. Refill inks are cheaper for a reason – refillers do not spend millions of dollars a year on research and development to make better inks, but the printer manufacturers do. Genuine inks last longer, work better and are better for your printer. Refill ink cannot, by it’s very nature (because genuine is patented so cannot be exactly copied), match genuine.
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January 30, 2006 by Frank
It’s not often that you get something for free but Samsung are offering buyers of their new ML-2010 laser printer a free toner cartridge. This is quite generous as these cartridges usually cost around $100-$120. The offer is open until the 31st of March, get the full details here. The offer is also open to buyers of the ML-1610.
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January 20, 2006 by Frank
A new site, www.whatcartridge.com, has been launched which bills itself as the world’s largest free database of printers and supplies. I have to say that this site is huge, although by no means exhaustive. There are printers and brands in there which even I haven’t heard of. Most of the stuff though is very up to date, and with manufacturers bringing out new models so often it can be confusing as to which cartridges go with what printer. I have bookmarked it and am using it every day to look up various cartridges. Try it out yourself and see.
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January 18, 2006 by Frank
Lexmark has introduced new toner cartridges which fit into the new E342 printer but which will also fit into some previous model printers. The 34217HR cartridge with a yield of 2,500 pages also fits into the following printers:
E230, E232, E330 and E332N
The 34217XR has a yield of 6,000 pages and fits into the following printers:
E330 and E332N
They replace the 12A8400 and 12A8405 cartridges in the above printers. Street prices for the 34217HR and 34217XR and the 12A8400 and 12A8405 are the same.
This is obviously another example of the printer companies bringing out a multitude of new cartridges to stay one step ahead of cartridge remanufacturers.
The 12A8302 photoconductor unit remains unchanged across this range of printers.
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July 15, 2005 by Frank
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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July 14, 2005 by Frank
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!
Category Toners | Tags: | 1 Comment
July 12, 2005 by Frank
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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