B**** computer printers RANT

[Cozzer]

But they'd happily sell you a new scanner.

Indeed.
Bloody infuriating.
On the face of it, a perfectly usable piece of kit rendered to the scrap bin because of (1) MS stopping support for whichever Windows version it was, and "forcing" you into another updated and "better" version, and (2) Epson being unable/unwilling/both to update a required file.

 

[Drifter2406]

I had a HP with the pay monthly ink, it nearly doubled in price and because of the amount I was using it, it was costing quite a lot of money to run, when I cancelled it they wanted me to send the ink back, they only ever sent me one replacement in about three years and I was out of ink for about 3 weeks.

 

[stuart little]

I've had HP printers for over 20 years and my current ALL IN ONE for 3 years. It is still working well and for the last 3 years I've been signed up for Instant Ink now paying £1.50 per month. The printer orders a new cartridge automatically and it arrives the next day or so in the post at the price above.
I like my HP printer.... Just sayin''

HP are being hauled over the coals for forcing owners to use their ink, by controlling their printers. I believe Epson to be guilty also. I bought some 'own brand' from 'The People who Sell Cartridges', guaranteed. I tried one in my XP, despite selecting 'other brand', it would not print, so I loaded a genuine one, & it printed. On informing 'The People', they refunded me & said to keep the cartridges, (they're still in a drawer never to see the light of day, again. So now I stick to using Epson 'Elephant' cartridges

 

[imageel]

I can't remember whether this was changing from Win7 to 8, or 8 to 10, but I discovered that my flatbed Epson scanner would no longer work. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it : small footprint, little bigger than an A4 sheet, was recognised by the two different graphic design prog's I used, and produced OK results.
The reason it wouldn't work?
Driver file. Epson decided not to produce one.
What a waste.
I looked at the prices of the then-new scanners, only to find they'd gone through the roof. I didn't use one that often to substantiate the expense, so ended up buying a bloody old thing off eBay which was designed to work with Win95, but the driver file still works to this day!

One option that might work and is free to try is Vuescan - it natively supports a huge range of scanners and is very well supported and cheap if you buy

 

[Rhossydd]

One option that might work and is free to try is Vuescan - it natively supports a huge range of scanners and is very well supported and cheap if you buy

You beat me to mentioning Vuescan.
To explain further; Vuescan uses it's own custom hardware drivers. These can also allow manufacturer's own software to use a scanner on an unsupported system.
For me that allows an old, but exceptionally good, old Minolta film scanner to work on 64biut OSs when it hasn't had any driver updates for about 15 years. It's own scanning software drives the scanner slightly better than Vuescan, so I still use that.

 

[imageel]

You beat me to mentioning Vuescan.
To explain further; Vuescan uses it's own custom hardware drivers. These can also allow manufacturer's own software to use a scanner on an unsupported system.
For me that allows an old, but exceptionally good, old Minolta film scanner to work on 64biut OSs when it hasn't had any driver updates for about 15 years. It's own scanning software drives the scanner slightly better than Vuescan, so I still use that.

I agree!! A lot of folks buy film scanners to scan the box-full of family photos one typically inherits when your parents pass away, and what most don't realise is that scanning these will take forever, and also -depending on their vintage the neg quality is pretty poor by todays camera standards, so often quite good machines pop up on Ebay and the like!
If you do the math you'll find that a half decent DLSR can out-resolve most negatives especially with a macro lens/extension tubes if necessary and using one of the open source tethered camera drivers you can scan box-fulls of negatives in as fast a time as you can position the negatives on a suitable light box.
Cleaning up and colour neg reversal is pretty simple to automate in Photoshop or similar so a swift workflow can result in getting the job done PDQ!!
For sure as you mention Vuescan is good but doesn't support some of the bespoke functions some manufacturers have baked-in to their scanners, but for most uses it works great and as you say their support of legacy scanners is brilliant!!

 

[McAldo]

I got a WiFI brothers colour laser printer many years ago and I never looked back.
It works well with all family devices.
The only thing that it does not do well are photographs.
But any online printing service which I can get printer profiles for will do well enough for that, and more cheaply than using an ink printer.

 

[Yorkieguy]

For some years I had an Epson SX535 ink-jet.

I don't know how well aware people are, but printer software has a 'page-counter' installed and when the printer gets to a predetermined number of pages, it will stop printing and say 'printer error - return the printer to a service agent'. Each time you print, worse still if you run 'print-head cleaning', some ink goes into pads in a 'waste ink' container. The software assumes that when the preordained number of pages that have been printed, the pads will be saturated.

Cynics will see this as a 'con' to get you to buy a new printer. Well fine - just pay for resetting software & password, and try your luck. There are lots of videos on YouTube telling you how to reset the counter. But it's no use just resetting to counter without changing the pads. My pads were saturated and new ones unobtainable, so I just scrapped the printer:



Scrapping the printer (Sept 2021) turned out to be a good decision because I replaced it with an Epson 'Ecotank' (Model ET-2720). Why a good decision? Because like most printers which use ink cartridges, the SX365 used cartridges which contain just 11 mL (two teaspoons) of ink. and they soon ran out of ink. The present cost of a set of four Epson carts for that printer is £65.00, (8 teaspoonfuls - dearer than the finest champagne!), so I always used compatible ones, which are currently £16.00 a set. Ecotank printers uses 65ml bottles of ink which you use to top up the ink tanks, which you can view to see the ink levels. A full set of four genuine Epson 65ml bottles costs £36.00, or compatible ones, £22.00.

So far, in about two and a half years, I've printed 6,900 pages (14 reams). I've got a spare set of ink bottles, but they're still threequarters full. So, 250ml of genuine Epson Ink 260ml = 52 teaspoonfuls = 69p per teaspoon compared to £8.00 per teaspoon with cartridges for the SX535 printer. (Even compatible cartridges for that printer worked out at £2.00 per teaspoon).

The printer works fine from my desktop PC or my i-pad via wi-fi. (Scanning and copying works fine too).

The only criticism I have with it is the small LCD display on the printer, the viewable area of which is just 25mm square.

Hope that might help.

 

[Rhossydd]

Cleaning up and colour neg reversal is pretty simple to automate in Photoshop or similar

I think that's makes it sound a LOT easier than it is in practice.
Getting high quality results from film scans actually takes a lot of experience and time.
With good scanners you might get IR dust removal which can take a load off, but usually is tediously slow.
Using digital cameras means you have to be rigorous about dust cleaning and then deal with colour issues and spot removal. I've never come across anything that reliably handles dust removal.
It's one of those tasks that AI could help with, but I doubt there's a big enough market to justify the investment.

 

[D7er]

We usually buy HP printers, must be on our sixth now, our last one was about 4 or 5 years old and we constantly had to update it to keep it working, the final; straw was when we got a notice saying there were no more software updates available for it, so eventually had to renew, there was nothing physically wrong with it as far as I could make out, it was an all in one model, it seems that HP couldn't be bothered to give it Windows 11 updates? Shocking state of affairs I think.

 

[imageel]

I think that's makes it sound a LOT easier than it is in practice.
Getting high quality results from film scans actually takes a lot of experience and time.
With good scanners you might get IR dust removal which can take a load off, but usually is tediously slow.
Using digital cameras means you have to be rigorous about dust cleaning and then deal with colour issues and spot removal. I've never come across anything that reliably handles dust removal.
It's one of those tasks that AI could help with, but I doubt there's a big enough market to justify the investment.

I entirely agree, however I suspect most folks who undertake this task are doing it for sentimental reasons and not the image quality aspects - which tbh is incredibly subjective.
When I last did a batch of literally two bin sacks full of negatives covering negs from 1914-1998 -over 5k images, the neg quality was very poor even for later 35mm colour stuff and tbh some of the early colour negs - Kodachrome stuff the grain was horrendous - quite how we looked at these projected onto a huge screen at family gatherings and thought they were great beggars belief - truly a case of 'rose tinted glasses' and an example of how far digital cameras have advanced our perception of what looks 'good'
WRT colour reversal I developed a technique that involved finding an unexposed frame and using that as a grey-point reference and that pretty much nailed getting a good colour balance automatically, albeit once again it exposed processing faults typical of that era!
As you say, horses for courses - just sayin if you have lots to process it's a way that is way faster than conventional scanning and ok if you have the time and skills to touch up the odd 'treasured' shot..!
WRT dust removal - I never found this an issue - my last camera was a full frame 24MP D3x and good primes like the 85mm F1.4 and the old 24-35 F2.8 and it got heavily used so lots of cleaning etc, and as said that could easily outresolve the grain on most negatives from that era.

 

[Rhossydd]

WRT dust removal - I never found this an issue - my last camera was a full frame 24MP

I was referring to dust/muck on the film itself.
4th channel IR scanning can be very successful and time saving, but isn't possible when using a digital camera to capture the image.
Of course a lot depends on how negs and slides have been stored. Negs never removed from packaging might be quite clean, transparencies on the other hands can get pretty filthy and are awkward to clean when in frames.

 

[imageel]

I was referring to dust/muck on the film itself.

Ah -my bad - I suspect that some scanners exacerbate any surface contaminants esp if the light source is not perpendicular to the plane of the film and by the fact (I'm guessing) they are likely near-point light LED sources.
I made a simple jig to photo negs which used a 45° mounted white card below the neg onto which I bounced a flash to even out the edge-to-edge illumination and ensure perpendicularity of the incident light and didn't find dust to be a huge issue, and whilst one may wipe clean with some care negatives, I agree mounted slides are a royal pain!

 

[gmgmgm]

We usually buy HP printers, must be on our sixth now, our last one was about 4 or 5 years old and we constantly had to update it to keep it working, the final; straw was when we got a notice saying there were no more software updates available for it, so eventually had to renew, there was nothing physically wrong with it as far as I could make out, it was an all in one model, it seems that HP couldn't be bothered to give it Windows 11 updates? Shocking state of affairs I think.

HP Laser printers ("laserjets") are generally very good quality, but their inkjet printers are much more "consumer-grade".

Colour laser printers (e.g. Brother) are now so cheap - most people with normal needs don't need to buy another HP Deskjet/inkjet.

 

[RogerS]

I've had HP printers for over 20 years and my current ALL IN ONE for 3 years. It is still working well and for the last 3 years I've been signed up for Instant Ink now paying £1.50 per month. The printer orders a new cartridge automatically and it arrives the next day or so in the post at the price above.
I like my HP printer.... Just sayin''

So do I. Our trusty HP 1200 has been working away for donkeys. I see it's done over 30000 pages during its lifetime.

 

[throbscottle]

Much as I hate HP (over-engineered which just makes it heavier, not better) I have a HP colour laser/scanner (wife's choice) at home and it's fairly good. In common with most other laser printers, it's doesn't print great photos. The printer it replaced was a Konica-Minolta colour laser that someone gave me, which was fantastic, I loved it. But Mrs wanted a new one ..
We had a Canon 810 something inkjet, which was superb, but it dried up from lack of use whilst we had the KM going, then when it was dragged out to print some photos after we got the HP, trying to get the head clean eventually destroyed it. So off it went to printer heaven...
Software has never been an issue. My wife is a Mac girl and never has any problems, I'm a Linux boy so I never have any problems I can't fix (assuming there's a driver for it - one big plus for HP there) with a bit of tinkering.
My other printer is an ancient Microline dot matrix printer, got second hand long ago. I occasionally get it out of its box (with USB-parallel adapter) to print something on listing paper if I want to write things and highlighter on it.
Oh and one more, an HP inkjet someone had left in the street, I rescued it and found it to work fine. Very pricey ink though. I'm saving it to print decals...
Oh and another one! Canon that Mrs inherited from her mum, that she uses to print photos.
How do I have so many printers? This is insane!