Shaquille O’Neal sold me an Epson EcoTank with bottles instead of cartridges.
Ink is a lot more affordable with only problem being if I don’t print something every couple weeks I have to run a couple deep cleaning cycles but that doesn’t appear to use that much ink.
Other than that, I’m happy
Wait… what? Like, directly? 
The cartridge is actually entirely full; but shareholder value doesn’t absorb x-rays.
He obviously didn’t manage his NBA money wisely if he’s working at Best Buy.
How can you say no to Shaq?
There aren’t. I spent about a decade in commercial printing. Several of the machines had clear or translucent toner cartridges. You would get a little settling, particularly for the lower use, higher capacity toners, but nothing like 80%. An empty bottle was exactly what it sounds like, empty.
Because it works, particularly in markets with few competitors.
Their competitors would start marketing a compatible product with similar claims (call it a full jumbo size cartridge, but don’t define full), but lower price they can then use the higher margin to buy/crush the upstart.
Price wars are bad for margins and all of the players know it. 1/3 of a 100 million dollar market is worth more than all of a 10 million dollar one.
In Japan, you can walk into any convenience store and use their printer/scanner/copier/fax machine to print documents from a USB drive for 10 Yen per page (in black and white; it’s more for color).
I would probably need a home printer if I did high-volume printing, but I still feel like I’m getting a pretty good deal at the convenience stores.
Also toner being a solid…
Yeah, about that, I just ran into a bunch of articles about making things flit about as if liquid on surfaces, in small sizes. So besides keeping packing density from being a tough push, you’re not making a lot of sense, but keep going. 
That doesn’t sound great for the pirate chip to just say the cartridge is empty…
And name-brand (APC) UPS batteries via Amazon.ca only deliver ~75% (6.5Ah from a 9Ah battery), at least using my cheap AliExpress load meter.
And legal cannabis 510-threaded cartridges only deliver ~75% of stated capacity (e.g., 1g cart only delivers 0.75g… the remainder is in the glass, in wick, etc.). At least over the 34 samples I have measured on my cheap AliExpress digital scale.
If you warm them up with a hair dryer and let them sit you might get another 0.05g. I’m thinking some sort of centrifuge device would get more.
I get that it’s just the nature of a really sticky substance to be hard to coax out of the mechanisms. Maybe this should be called Heinz Ketchup Anticipation Factor?
But if I lost ~25% of my milk or beer due to “low viscosity sticktion”, there’d be hell to pay. Some jurisdictions force bars to use glasses with a line marking the standard “pint” to prevent a few ml shrinkage. It’s important to get what you paid for!
Shrinkflation in the weirdest places.
You can setup a recurring print job using the Windows “Task Scheduler” to print a test page. Requires too much effort, imho. Likely doable on any other OS, possibly using cron or something.
Now that I go look for how I did it, I realize I’m on my new Windows 11 install, and that task is gone. Now I gotta recall how to do it.
This is a function that should be in every printer’s “Maintenance” menu. Of course, might result in less wasted ink, so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I just ran into a bunch of articles:
Well, I ran into an awful lot of laser printers and their problems as i’ve been working on them for the last ~15 years
making things flit about as if liquid on surfaces, in small sizes:
What things? Some things? All the things? Specific things like pigmented resin dust and iron fillings (and some other crap) on the cheapest possible ABS plastic?
Anyway I’m not trying to defent printer companies, just relaying how things work according to my experience.
Well I did my own research on YouTube and… /s
Not be to sound too much like a commercial here but after suffering with those horrible inkjet cartridges for like 20 years I finally got one of the “eco-tank” models and I swear I’ve been using the same ink that came with the machine for like 3 years. Printed maybe 5 reams of prints in that time. I only recently had to refill the black but the other colors are still half full and still works great.
Eco-tank all the way. The little extra it costs up front is 500% worth it.
I bought a Samsung M2026 a few years ago for less than £100 and it is still going strong and has been perfectly reliable. Plays nice with AirPrint and all my portable devices. Cartridges were nice and cheap. HOWEVER, Samsung has sold its printer business to HP, so their corporate shitfuckery can’t be far off.
I’ve heard good things about the cheap Brother laser printers which are also available for <£100.
Can second that, purchased a ~£125 B&W brother laser printer 4 years ago, carts cost about 20 (less if you buy multiples), and I’ve only changed it once, after the starter one ran out.
P.S. I like the Mr Heeler avatar.
This is key. My Brother printer will tell me it needs to be replaced, but a magic key combo found online resets it.
I had to reread that part about developer spill because of course I misread toner spill on empty and…hey what’s the cheapest reasonable printer that requires developer?
I should’ve linked at least a few of the articles about Faraday waves and their recent sendups.
Yeah, that’s the bellwether.
I can’t actually think of a home/small office printer that has the developer module as a separate unit. Some integrate it into the toner cartridge and some in the drum. Some of cheapest laser printers have the biggest cost per print because they have all three (toner,drum and developer) in the same print cartridge, while the big production machines (where cost per print is critical) have everything separate so you only replace the part that needs replacing.
The big production machines also solve the toner management problems by employing extra “tanks” and “toner present” sensors in various places.
These raise the machine’s purchase cost and size and weight.
Making the toner behave as a liquid sounds interesting but I suppose adding the extra mechanism to do so would also make a home printer into a not for home printer by adding cost, weight and size.
