HP’s Greedy Color Laser Jet Printers – Caveat Emptor
February 22nd, 2011
I have an HP Color LaserJet (CM 1015MFP) Printer and it’s bankrupting me. The black toner cartridges cost $100 for 2500 pages, which is reasonable. The devil-in-the-details are the three (cyan, yellow, and magenta) color cartridges, which together cost $300 for 2000 pages. (If you do the math, that’s $.04 per page for black and $ .15 per page for color).
Even if you do all your printing in black and white, the toner level in the color cartridges mysteriously, but inexorably, declines. And when the toner in the three color cartridges runs out, the printer stops printing, even if you are only using black. To restart the printer, you must buy another $ 300 pack of the three color cartridges.
I called HP about this problem and their advice was to go to the printer properties dialogue box and under advanced preferences enable the option to print all text as black. I did this, but it still doesn’t prevent the printer from sucking out the $.15 per page color toner even when I am printing text in black.I bought the printer because, even though I print mostly documents, I wanted to have the option to occasionally print in color for the kids. Big mistake! I had thought that if I did that the color cartridge would last several years. The longest a color cartridge seems to last, even if I do all my printing in black, is 6 months.
I would advise anyone reading this – and I hope there are many people who do – that HP color laser jet printers are designed to force you to use the really expensive color toner even if you don’t want to. I would never buy another one, and I urge you not to make my mistake.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 1:40 am
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Graham
February 25th, 2011 at 4:28 am
wha? really? it means that we will pay more expensive to get black and white printing result? this is very useful info, thanks
Wilson
May 4th, 2011 at 1:03 am
In this age of disposable consumer items, it is often cheaper to buy a new printer than to purchase replacement cartridges. However, be warned that new printers often come with a lower yield “starter” cartridge/toner.
Just be glad you bought a laser printer instead of an archaic inkjet printer – now those are a rip off!
In the past decade, I must have gone through 3 inkjets, and 3 laser printer. If you’re environmentally friendly (or money conscious like me), you can get your cartridges refilled at a store or do-it-yourself if you’re handy. I’ve performed the refill operation several times (both ink and toner). It is fairly easy process, but can get messy if you’re not careful. The quality of the prints will deteriorate over time, but if it’s for the kids, I’m sure they won’t mind. When purchasing a new printer, one should consider if the cartridges can be refilled easily.