Just looking for some updates.....

[Fish Chris]

been a while since I stopped by last, and I was just curious.....

Are there any "new" models (or, old models which are still in production) of Canon printers (preferably which use bci-6 carts, since I always have quite a few on hand) available ?

If not, then how about any brand of good printer, which uses non-chipped carts, which can be bought from an after market cart place, like InkGrabber ?

If these printer companies think they are going to force me into buying there stupidly priced ink, they are quite simply mistaken. If worst came to worst, I'd sooner quit doing my own printing. Heck, why should I, if the ink costs me more, than if I had my photos printed for me ? Sure, "printing is fun" for me..... but so is fishing.... less printing = more fishing ;-)

Oh, and one more thing; I have asked about after market print heads before, and the conclusion was always, that the print heads cost so much, that I might as well buy a new printer..... Uh... Okay fine "if I can still buy it" ! But what if my iP6000D dies (like my i960 did) and I can't find one anywhere ?
I'd sure rather pay $100 for a print head, than to just be flat without of a good printer !

Thank you,
Fish

 

[Tin Ho]

Unfortunately Canon printers with BCI-6 are disappearing from the market in highway speed. Buying another identical printer strategy will not work for you. If I like my printer I will buy a couple of them and put all of them into storage but one that I use daily. Or pay for new print head if I ever need one.

Out of E, H and C brands it seems only the C brand ever made chipless printers but no more. C brand printers are still the most refill friendly brand. The chip needs no reset and you can refill. You may lose warranty if you refill. That's not that bad. The chipped cartridges are still easy to refill as easy as BCI-6 was. But you can't buy off brand compatibles any more. At least not for now.

I am hoping someday, some US judge would come out and ordered EHC brands of priners to make all ink cartridges refillable. You know we have allowed out sourcing of just about everything but medicines and health care in this country. Why would we allow cartridges to be chipped to prevent them from being refilled? Certain industries have been allowed cheap competitions in the name of lower cost and out sourcing why would we allow ink cartridges to be use only once?

After market print head is unlikely to appear in the market any time in the next few years. All EPC brands protect the market by hundreds, if not thousands, of patents. Anyone dares to roll out a competition without billions of dollar of corporate power to back it up will be quicky swamped and drown by litigations brought by the EPC corporates in the name of patent infringement, which is a law we set up to let them to rip us off.

Oh, well. At least the C brand is still refillable without much hassle unlike E and H brands are. Let's keep buying C brand printers and leave the E and H brands behind. If we all use C brands only I am sure we would not need any judge to order anything. The EH brands would abandon their chipped TECHNOLOGY to join the competition with C brand.

Anyway, you will find stocking up a few ip4300 (no more 4200) at the price between $70 and $80 is actually a very right strategy now. If they ever allow refurb'ed units to come out it would be even better to fill your garage with it. The C brand is by far the only brand that makes good justification of the money.

 

[AlienSteve]

I had the same worries about my BJC 6000. Then I started seeing them turning up at thrift stores for about $25 each, usually with full (I mean, really full) cartridges. So I bought a bunch of them, cleaned them up, and now have stacks of backup printers. The ink alone would have cost twice that (all Canon OEM ink).

In each case, the problem was badly clogged heads. The previous owner had apparently bought new cartridges thinking that would fix it. They were all quite goopy on the park pad and bottom of the head, and all cleaned up nicely.

This came in very handy when a few months later the color head in my BJC 6000 failed! I just dropped one of the other cleaned up heads in and away I went.

I did the same with a bunch of other Canons: 4200, 4300, 5000, 5100. One head was bad (cross ink leakage) and the rest cleaned up nicely. I sold a few of them and got back what I'd spent on all of them.