The HP K550 ink jet printer may be a new option for those looking for low TCO.

[Zepper]

Cloned ink tanks are about to become available (per Aziz at SwiftInk) for the HP K550 ink jet printer. Works best for text and graphics. According to a recent PC Mag review, its photo output isn't as good as others - but to be fair, it's a new printer and a firmware or driver patch may improve the photo output. Nearly as fast as the iP3k/4k. Has a pretty high duty cycle for a low priced ink jet too at 7500 pages per month. I don't care for U-shaped paper paths - riffle your paper well and often! Possibly nice and low TCO due to the use of passive, separate ink tanks. So now there are HP and Brother offering passive tanks in a reasonable price range.

.bh.

 

[Lemon law]

To Zepper,

A somewhat cursory look at the HP K550 reveals it uses four cartridges---a black test cartridge with 58.5 Ml of ink for $40. list-----and three different color cartridgesthat contain 17 Ml of ink each in cyan, magenta, and yellow for
a $25.00 list price. What is not yet clear to me is the question if the printhead is on the cartridge or not---and the question of it being a chipped printer. But did find a claimed page yield for black at 2300 pages and a claimed color yield of 1200 pages.

Do you have any data on the last two questions regarding the printhead and any chips.?--or for that matter the cost of third party cartridges.

 

[Zepper]

AFAIK, they are unchipped and the tanks are 4 (separate). You can get large and standard sizes of all the tanks. It has two print heads: one for black and yellow (most often used, likely to wear out first) and the other is for magenta and cyan. I have no idea what the cost on the clone tanks will be. (this is correct per the spec sheet but not 100% on no chips).

I was just carefully re-reading the specs and it looks more comparable to the iP3000 as black is strictly for text and CMY are mixed for graphics/photo black. The black is "self-reactive" pigmented. Whatever that means.

.bh.

 

[Lemon law]

Thanks for the prompt reply Zepper--but somewhat embarrassed to confess I have no idea on what
AFAIK means. But it is somewhat intreaging information on the K550--which I agree seems similar color wise to the Canon ip3000.

But two items I failed to mention from my limited examination on the HP website.

1. HP seems to bill the printer as a somewhat answer to a color Laser printer--rather than just another inkjet.

2. That the dpi rating seemed awful low for an inkjet---which might inply--even with a better driver,
that the printer may fall short in the area of being a photoprinter or in having small font excellent text printing.

But the 58.5 ML #88 black text cartridge is huge by any inkjet standards and so is the rated monthly duty cycle. In an era where ever smaller cartridges seem to be the norm, its Kudos to Zepper for pointing this printer out and something worth a look.

 

[Zepper]

I got a message back from HP saying they are passive tanks - AFAIK (as far as I know)... Well, HP doesn't call it a photo printer, they call it an office printer.

.bh.

 

[Lemon law]

Still rates a thanks Zepper---and an office printer just might be accurate descriptor.

 

[Pretty Cool]

Probably the more important question is whether HP 88's expire. Other HP tanks without a printhead actually were of no-use once they reached a certain date. Though HP gave you about 1.5 years, this might be an issue for non-commercial users who do not print that much. Seems to me that that cartridges that expire must have some sort of chip on them. So if HP still utilizes date-stamp carts, you would need to know how generics deal with this issue. Is it like those new generic Canon's where you must swap your old chip, or did they find some workaround where you can bypass the timer on the cartridge completely?

 

[Zepper]

I doubt there is any machine readable date code in the tanks. Probably some way the driver keeps track of the date when tanks were changed. I'd say if you aren't changing tanks more often than every year and a half, then you should be changing tanks anyway regardless of brand.

.bh.

 

[Lemon law]

Its probale that Zepper is correct---its sound similar to the chipping scheme in other HP printers---with a N or two or four--with N+1= the number of empty cartridges with unique serial numbers one must shuttle through
the printer before the register forgets the previous cartridge data.

But at least with OEM cartridge and OEM ink prices, HP still is not competitive with Canon OEM cartridges---the Canon CLI-5 large text black lists at $16.25 and has 26 Ml of ink---the HP#88 black text lists at $40. and contains 58.5 Ml of ink---so HP charges 68.4 cents/ML and Canon only 62.5 cents per ML---in the CLI-8 colors Canon charges $1.096/ML and HP is charging $1.47/ML in the #88 colors.------any non chipped Canoms using the BCI-3&6
are even cheaper using full OEM list price------coming in at 51.9 cents/ML text black and 81.7 cents/ ML of color ink.

But using Zepper's Swift ink prices for a totally third party Canon BCI-3&6 Cartridges, one can divide those figures with a factor of 4 or so with list prices and maybe by a factor of 5 on sale.

The question is and remains, are the third party cartridges for the K-550 that will supposedly become available totally third party-- as in 100% non-HP---or some remanufactered cartridge that has some actual HP parts. Because if the HP K-550 has some non-passive chipping scheme--anything non-HP that clones the chip may involve patient law violations possibly making the cartridge legally sellable in some locations--but likely not in the US. And without a price and actual amount of ink in a cartridge figures, its impossible at present to compute how a third party cartridge for the K-550 stacks up on costs per ML of ink.

But at this point I should confess that there is another joker in the deck---when one gets a inkjet cartridge---any cartridge--and runs that cartridge to the point where it quits printing---there is a substantial amount of ink still retained in the sponge--in the case of a Canon BCI-3&6 I do have the figures which is something on the order of 25% of cartridge capacity--I have no reliable figures on HP's but suspect its somewhat similar--but I also have reiable
figures that suggest certain third party non-canon prefilled Cartridges do retain substantially more ink in the sponge---so the sponge material chosen is an added joker.

 

[Zepper]

Just like razor blades and film it is illegal here for printer mfrs. to block the mfr. of replacement ink tanks or cartridges as long as a white-room approach was taken to reproduce the technology rather than a simple, side-by-side reverse engineering.

Right now Epson is sending their lawyers after the clone ink tank makers that may not have used a scrupulous technique in cloning their tanks.

.bh.