They should create a government body to oversee printers for the populace. We are getting so screwed. Don't believe me, take apart an ink cartridge and you will see it hold about a quarter of the ink it could and should hold. And the ink itself... is cheap to make so we are being WAY overcharged. How much so? Three years ago I could buy printer ink for my small printer at $75 a toner cartridge, now it is $102. There are four of them to buy! So for my small printer, ink replacement is over $400. For my plotter, it is well over $800 for new ink.
But it gets worse.
I can only buy from the printer companies and not third party ink suppliers because they put chips in the ink cartridges. When the ink runs dry it has code that only THEIR new ink cartridges can override. No refilling the cartridges with dry powder or bottle of ink on your own, nor will buying third party ink from other suppliers like Ink Farm who refill and recondition ink cartridges... nope they no longer work. But if you think you can just add ink before they run low and outsmart the printer? Nope, because they put software in that calculates ink usage to page percentages that activates that same out of ink shut down in your printer that only THEIR new cartridges can override.
But it gets worse...
Far and away black is the most used color so if you think you can just buy black ink and forget the rest and always print in black and white you would be wrong. They program the printer to even use yellow and cyan colors in making black and white prints so that all your colored ink cartridges are being used to some degree, that way if your cyan or yellow runs out and you chose to print in black and white.... nope, you are shut down until you replace those color cartridges too.
But it gets worse...
Now the printers have firmware upgrades. That just means if they ever decided not to "support" your printer, you have been what is called "bricked". It is a term that means your printer is now as worthless as a brick because it just will no longer print. Not because it is broken. Not because you cannot buy ink for it. It won't print because the printer company just decided it is not going to keep sending that particular printer firmware updates anymore. But all you have to do is buy a new printer of course!
I use my printer a lot because I print out the novels that I write. I prefer to read physical paper and ink books and not online reading so I use my printers a lot. The smaller laser printer ($500) churns out the book block, and the ink jet plotter ($3500) prints out the covers and dust jackets for the hard cover books since they are much bigger and the image quality is better. And that matters because people really do judge a book by its cover!
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