Would you pay a monthly tariff for prints?

My HP wireless printer (obviously a different model since the coloured ink is in separate cartridges) does work with cartridges refilled by Cartridge World though the ink level is not shown. I bought HP cartridges from Internet Ink until they offered cheap compatible cartridges. These work fine and the ink level is displayed.

For many years I bought genuine HP cartridges but like other printer manufacturers they are being rather greedy.

I have had a Brother duplexing laser printer for over 9 years and this I use for pretty much everything. My wife has a large Epson all in one ink-jet which uses 35ml cartridges for her printing needs. Laser printers are very practical and long lived.

I do print out some documents where they are lengthy and require serious reading – that is the ability to quickly reference back to previous statements or tables or diagrams – or to annotate.

There is also the matter of eye strain from reading too much on the computer. I have an A4 size e-reader with e-ink screen to provide a better reading experience. Even this , with a screen roughly 3 times a normal e-reader is not as flexible[!] as paper.

I have had great success with b/w laser printers, both at work and at home. If you have the room it’s worth buying one with a decent sized toner cartridge, which will be cheaper to run.

I print some documents for the same reasons as Dieseltaylor, but eye strain is not an issue because I just expand the text with the trackpad on my laptop, which works in the same way as a smartphone or tablet but better because there is no need to touch the screen. No need for reading glasses when using a computer. I wish I could say the same for small printed text.

Malcolm – You could save a lot of time and effort by saving your files as pdfs and keeping backups. If there is a problem with the computer, the documents will be accessible on an old computer or replacement.

Apart from cost and the space taken to file printed paperwork it is very easy to locate information by searching. I have just been looking for an important issue that was discussed over ten years ago. Knowing the document mentioned a figure of £5000 allowed me to find the relevant set of minutes in seconds, which related to a meeting in 2002.

Good points, Wavechange.
We use our printer less and less, it’s main use now is as a scanner. I convert as much as I can to pdf and view via OneDrive on my phone or tablet.
QR codes for ticketing, boarding passes etc are a development that is helping to minimise paper.
There is a long way to go as anybody who has bought a railway ticket – or should I say tickets – can testify.

I have scanned many documents to pdf but I’m not using the scanner often these days. Unless it’s something important I just take photos because it is quick and easy.

QR codes need a bit more promotion since many people still don’t know what they are.

Yes, so much stuff that we are expected to download and have with us [like travel insurance documents] is not formatted for economical reproduction ar even for easy reading on the screen especially if it is printed in columns]. Mostly, some clerk has been given the job of scanning an in-house master copy and putting in a link to it. We recently found that some passes we had to download were rejected at the entrance because the QR codes had not been printed with sufficient resolution. So we all have to have state-of-the-art high-resolution scanners/printers nowadays do we? In my experience the company’s access machinery or system fails more often than our domestic equipment – it’s just so annoying when they blame a customer for holding everybody up.

An A4 colour photo will obviously use a lot more ink than printing an envelope, so the concept of charging effectively the same for each seems quite flawed. I’d rather take my chances and buy ink when I need it; I’m then paying the true cost of the print. I simply don’t trust “convenience” schemes like this one. Likely to work in the supplier’s favour, not mine.

As Katie has pointed out, unused pages are rolled over to the next month. It’s not a service I am interested in but it’s better than zeroing the credit at the end of the month.

Yes, but even with rollovers, it results in wastage and problems. For example, what if you want to print 60 pages in one month and 20 the next month? The pricing is rigid and inflexible.

I don’t like this scheme and I hope it doesn’t gain traction. We don’t want Andrex getting any silly ideas.

It would make sense to maintain a reasonable page credit in case you need to do a lot of printing – just like keeping a decent amount of credit on a PAYG phone.

At least you know what the running costs per page will be. As many have pointed out, some inkjet printers use a lot of ink keeping their heads clean. HP may be successful with this scheme, particularly if other companies offer similar arrangements. Those of us who are not keen can just carry on as before.

I have to ask if John is still using one of the old fashioned roll printers.

Not now Wavechange. It’s one sheet at a time.

My Brother is brilliant but it has one annoying habit: it waits until I am using it before it tells me it’s run out of paper; why can’t it look first?

If you get a printer from Big Brother it will probably order another ream of paper for you.

Thanks Alex. I am still not receiving email updates on comments so have only just seen yours. Sorry. Look forward to Which?’s review.
For a low to medium user this printer’s ink will clearly take a long time to be used. I wonder how you can assess whether the unused ink will stay viable for that long, and how well the printer is built to last long enough to recover its cost?

Thanks for the warning.

I did not have any difficulty in finding details of the HP Instant Ink scheme. It does not make good reading: https://instantink.hpconnected.com/uk/en/terms

I cannot see anyone wanting to use the service after reading the NO WARRANTY section. It would be good to lawyer look at that because I expect that our statutory rights will provide some remedies.

As Enquirer 123 says, the number of pages that can be rolled over is no more than permitted in the current month. When pages are rolled over from the previous month, these can only be used when the current month’s pages have been used and cannot be rolled over again.

The T&Cs look very much biased in favour of HP. The way to get best value would be to use the Instant Ink printer just for A4 photos and do the rest of the printing on another printer that is not under the Instant Ink scheme.

Oh, and if you don’t want to print colour and photos, and don’t want a scanner/copier, then a laser printer is a much better bet in my view.

Laser printer manufacturers sometimes quote a page life based on 5% coverage per page, which backs up what you say.

I don’t understand why the amount of toner used does vary with page coverage. Laser printers work by coating a drum with toner powder and when little gets printed on the page, most of the toner goes into the waste collector – either in the cartridge or a separate container.

Please can someone explain why I’m wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toner

Less than 20-25% is wasted according to Wiki. Dependent on the make and type obviously.

One thing I had not realised was that there is a certain amount of lubrication provided by the toner aswell as simply fine particles. Quite an interesting subject and the hacks to get the most from your cartridge shows human ingenuity at its best : )

As to its dangers etc:
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/productdata/Countries/us/lj_92274a_us_eng_v08.pdf

Carcogenic, and with the newly released research on nano-particles this seems to be straying to the same area – that tiny particles can damage our lungs and perhaps we need to be more interested in testing regimes and long term exposure..

The same danger applies to photocopiers, which work on the same principle – using toners and photoconductive drums. Copiers and laser printers should be in a well ventilated area. There might be additional dangers in coloured toners. I made a point of leaving my office when my colour laser printer was running.

I notice that iron oxide is shown as a non-hazardous component. In the form of rust it can affect some asthmatics. I am one of them.

Routine head cleaning is a necessary part of keeping an inkjet printer working. If this has to be done because if there is a blockage, the printer will use a lot of ink attempting to sort out the problem.

It’s ridiculous that printers commonly go through routine head cleaning every time they are switched on, which discourages users from switching them off to save power. It would be easy to limit the cleaning to once a week or however long the manufacturer believes is necessary to keep the heads clean. Presumably the manufacturers prefer to have frequent cleaning to minimise blockages and make more money if we are using their ink cartridges.

My Canon printer costs around 1p a day in standby mode. Probably significantly cheaper than switching on and off and using ink regularly in a cleaning cycle. Your manual should give the standby power consumption.

I have measured the power consumption of my wireless inkjet printer and it is low. I keep it on more for convenience than to minimise ink use. The laser printer is old and is connected to an old router to allow wireless printing. This takes a fair amount of power so is turned off when not in use.

It’s often easy to print a colour document in black and white but the printer will still use coloured ink to clean the print heads to prevent them blocking. I have even seen printers that refuse to print in black and white when the coloured ink has run out. 🙁

That was never the case in printers I had before. You could clean the print heads without colour. It just wouldn’t be as good. It’s only the last 8 years that I have had new printers and this new way of so called cleaning. In any case i’m talking about printing. Surely cleaning and printing are two different things. The old days you could still print in black ink no matter if you had colour or not. I was still able to clean the printer heads when I got colour ink eventually.
In any case my printer still works without much colour but I see through all the excuses or why printers need this or that.
Having a partner who is an IT engineer helps!

It’s well known about Planned obsolescence. In many cases, it’s cheaper to buy a basic printer that comes with an a black colour cartridge than buying the black and colour for your original printer.
I don’t believe people at home have to worry about cleaning print heads as much as a business doing it day in day out or an office have to.

I don’t buy the excuse about cleaning the print heads. The same goes with computers. back in the day there were things you could do yourself. What with the dumbing down of everything, they have taken away options those of us more experienced were well used to doing.
I didn’t grow up with a mobile and I only got my first computer in 1999 so I am no tech *young* person here.
I have no problem printers and IT equipment being more accessible to those who are not so techy, but to push excuses on consumers is another thing entirely.

Those on lower incomes are also greatly affected. Particularly those who cannot buy in bulk or up front costs.

This printing package as I said above is a good idea for those in that situation as I happen to be, but I think it’s naive to think we aren’t being lied to and I highly doubt the terms and conditions and the service will benefit the customer as much as any business says it will.

I may not be a total techy in printers or the total workings, but I do know that previous printers were able to be cleaned or at least print in black without the need for colour ink and that those printed papers were just as good as what my new printer prints now.
What a business or office says doesn’t matter to me. What matters is my printer at home.
Printing photos is another matter and maybe where my argument stops.

If you don’t need to print in colour, a laser printer is a much better option, as others have said.

I’m sure that inkjet printers ‘waste’ more ink than is needed to keep their heads working, but I know from experience that blocked print heads can be difficult to clean. There is often a warning about how much ink can be used cleaning a blocked head.

That’s interesting. In the days of the HP Deskjet 500 series, HP sometimes provided a storage container that could be used to store part-used ink cartridges without the in-built print head drying out.

Empty cartridges should be left in place if the print head is part of the printer. There is the danger of print heads blocking irretrievably if left for any length of time without ink in a cartridge. Obviously that is irrelevant if the printhead is part of the cartridge, like the old HPs. All the recent HPs I have seen have the printheads in the machine rather than the cartridge.

Rob-I had a read of their “instant ink” literature , no flies on their sales departments some sales exec. must have got a bonus. Your absolutely right most people have no conception of what is programmed now into the firmware of printers , yes they now copy Microsoft exactly -phone home -constantly .They know the lot —use of ink , how many sheets you use , who you are all your computer hardware details , how often you use your computer and much more. So much more that the NSA is using them to spy on you -along with all other devices, I wont go into detail as some people take offense to it. As HP is now gone OTT I am considering posting a way for users who are blocked from third party inks by their machines non-functioning as their grasping attitude is annoying me . For those buying a new machine FIRST block any update programming in the INITIAL set up and block MS from updating it as well , beware of tricky wording !