Somehow, the actual reasoning for the yellow ink thing makes me MORE angry than the simple “HP is ripping me off” explanation. Not that they’re mutually exclusive.
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Epson ripped me off on a large-format printer many years ago. I switched to Canon and haven’t looked back.
The 4MV’s are legendary. Like the IBM Selectric II of laser printers.
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What are the roadblocks to designing an open source/open hardware printer? Is it mainly a huge patent minefield, or are there significant technical issues that would need to be resolved? Or would it just be too expensive, kind of like that open GPU I remember reading about years ago?
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My guess is the special parts. Printer heads for inkjet, laser, optics and the drum and toner handling for laser. Get through that and the rest is basically a 3d-printable mechatronics.
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But what if Kinkos could make your prints 9 cents. Because it’s a printing company doing the complaining here. If they can get 20% more from each cart it’s going to help them cut costs and stay open so you don’t have to own a printer.
What? 4MV supplies are no more? Ah, crap.
as a printer I can tell you most copy shops use toner based machines, inkjets on the other hand tend to be wide-format printers used for posters, signs etc. I doubt they could do prints for 9 cents as typically their click cost tends to be around 6cents per click plus the cost of the lease plus paper.
However on the horizon there are large inkjet presses that are a combination of the large sturdy offset type presses that have solid - paper handling ability but print with inkjet technology.
For instance Konica Minolta and Komori.
A drop in ink costs is not going to drop the end user price that much.
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