In message <[log in to unmask]>, Ed Sharpe 
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>even the homeless people know not to steal them  !

(DeskJets with no ink in).

There's a rumour that new inkjet printers ship with reduced-capacity (or 
content) cartridges, so the deal on buying a new printer instead isn't 
so great as it looks.

I always keep a couple of spare cartridges by (one black, one colour), 
so when my trusty Epson Stylus Color 400 went terminally bandy on the 
black (two clogged nozzles that wouldn't Clean), it was a big deal that 
my trusty local store PC World would take back the (still-sealed, well 
in-date) replacements I was holding for the 400.

It was also salutary that while the LexMark something-or-other (Z605?) 
that matched, nominally, the spec of the new Epson C62 I bought was £20 
cheaper or so, by the time you factored in a pair of cartridges as well, 
they were about even again. The replacement cartridges for the LexMark, 
at £37.98 were exactly £1.01 cheaper than a new printer at £38.99, 
before tax....

Same size/capacity, do you think? The Epson claimed that the cartridges 
with their printer were the same as the replacements you buy (and they 
were certainly labelled the same), and only that they would have a 
slightly shorter life as first usage required charging up the ink 
delivery system in the printer.

Ever looked inside an inkjet, BTW? I had the Color 400 apart to see if I 
could fix it (no), and most of the insides below the platen were just a 
huge black rectangular case full of absorbent padding, whose job seemed 
to be to soak up excess ink as it was wicked away from the print head 
(on start-up and on a cleaning cycle, no doubt).

I guess the inkjets are designed so that this reticule can hold several 
times more ink than could be generated within the MTBF of everything 
else in the printer. I think mine was slightly discoloured at the near 
end.....

Coming back to the homeless, I was bemused to see a beggar or derelict - 
what Denys might call a rubby, perhaps - in a doorway on Oxford Street 
with an all-in-one Fax/Copier/Scanner. I thought it might have been the 
last vestige of his failed dot.com perhaps, or a way of staying in touch 
with where the best pitches were.

But I now realise that its cartridge was probably empty, and that 
somebody passing by, and finding that he did not have a few coppers to 
spare, thought it would be a kindness to leave something of about 
equivalent value..... :-)
-- 
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  Wm Morris

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