Today we take the laser printer for granted.

In this fascinating 80 minute 1997 video, the late Gary Starkweather, inventor of the laser printer, chronicles the long and difficult process involved in getting the Xerox product to market, with experimental work starting in the late 1960s.

Gary has some 50 patents to his name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZFaQiItckU&t=284s

Has anyone tried to buy a laser printer lately ?

I tried at Officeworks but could not find any. I asked a staff member whom assured me that they did.
Still no luck.

We are being forced to buy expensive ink.
I will limp along with my old laser printer with toner cartridges.

Wayne.

Has anyone tried to buy a laser printer lately ? I tried at Officeworks but could not find any.

Plenty here: https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/c/technology/printers/laser-printers-multifunctions

My current printer is HP Laserjet Pro M426fdn ... now superseded.

I don't like ink printers. I have little need for colour and when I do I use Officeworks self service printers.

They no longer use lasers, they use LEDs

Be careful buying printers from Officeworks.
They have models which will only work with chipped ink cartridges sourced from Officeworks.
They initially seem very attractive price wise but there a sting in the tail.

They have models which will only work with chipped ink cartridges sourced from Officeworks.

I think you'll find that it is the printer manufacturers who try to force owners to buy "genuine" cartridges.

They operate on the razor blade marketing model: give away the razor and hit 'em for the blades.

My HP laser printer, not purchased from Officworks, notices that I'm using a refilled cartridge but it still operates fine.

Yes, a printer ink cartridge costs about 23c to make, and a lot of $ to buy. It's one of the world's most expensive fluids.

Interesting there is not much of a choice of late. I have a 1986 360 column dot Matrix that still works but I recently bought another Epson printer. Epson used to be good, this one put used to be at the forefront by packing up before it used two cartridges.

The new Canon which gets a workout printing a few Club newsletters monthly has tanks. That should reduce the wilful wastage caused by cartridges.

I have a Brother HL3040CN colour network printer. (LED, laser, whatever)

The first time it told me I'd need to replace all 4 toner cartridges (after what seemed like not that many copies and nothing that demanded lots of toner) I did a web search and found that it just counts the number of pages printed to work out when to replace the toner.

But, using the printer's LCD screen and keys, you can tell it to ignore the Low Toner condition.

So I did that. It then continued to work perfectly for years.

However, I recently needed to eventually replace them as the print quality was slipping. Very expensive! The guy at Officeworks suggested that, since they were out of stock of the Cyan cartridge I look at buying non-genuine on-line.

So I ordered what I thought was one set of 4 cartridges for a very good price.

When they arrived I had 4 sets of 4 cartridges! Enough to last us for the rest of our lives!

One other thing to remember with laser printers (and as I serve as the IT & Communications Officer where I work, it is a long-standing bone of contention I have with HP) is that when you buy a printer you either get smaller cartridges or standard ones that are only 1/3 full.

In many e-mails between myself and HP, I have repeatedly said to them that sending us new printers with these useless smaller capacity cartridges is a useless and bone-headed exercise because our printers are a high-volume resource and many of them print more than 1,000 pages a week. Their 'intro' cartridges only last for 1,000 pages at an average of 5% page coverage.

Now, under HP's MPS agreements, their leased printers are programmed to poll HP when the cartridge is down to a certain level. When that communication is sent by the printer to HP, they automatically send a replacement cartridge to the customer. I ask the installing technicians to set this threshold to 20% as anything lower will see the cartridge empty out before the replacement arrives.

These smaller cartridges are empty in two weeks in most cases and in higher-volume settings such as the admissions and billings desks, less than a week. So one may well ask, why does HP insist on sending these useless small cartridges to business customers? They won't answer that question and simply state that it is the company policy and it won't change.

In other words, stuff the customer, we'll waste all these extra resources on having a separate production line to manufacture a printer cartridge in a useless size, of which only one is ever supplied to each printer they make, as all replacements are in the bigger size. Bear in mind that different models have different cartridge sizes too as some printers are designed for higher volumes of printing than others.

Whilst there are several printing companies, HP pretty much owns the game, so they can afford to be wasteful and they can afford to be cavalier with their customers. GM made this mistake and went from being the world's largest company to a much smaller one with a presence only in Nth America. No company is too big to fail and HP needs to wake up and smell the roses.

Making a good product is not a customer's only expectation in the real world.

It's not just HP that sells new printers with low volume cartridges.
They sell the printers at very attractive prices to get you hooked.
The cartridges are where they make their money.