From: Peter Marshall (petermarshall@cix.co.uk)
Date: 07/09/03-02:35:48 PM Z
> Dear List,
> This week the dutch consumers' organization 'CONSUMENTENBOND' gives
> an advice to all her customers not to buy Epson printers anymore;
> they detected a chip used by Epson which indicates that the
> cartridges were to be replaced but the cartridges were not empty at
> all!! It seems to be that this chip will force the user to replace
> non-empty cartridges. It sounds unbelievable, but before a consumers
> organization comes out with such an advice, one can be sure there is
> really something wrong!
> cheers,
> Henk
> --
> Henk Thijs
> member F68 photography : http://www.f68.nl
> webmaster : http://www.luca-antiek.nl
>
>
>
I think it is sensible to avoid printers with chipped carts if you can,
though there are devices that get round them. The EU has actually ruled
chips because they prevent competition, and without looking up the details
I think they have to be phased out in Europe by 2006.
However, it will surprise few inkjet printer users that the chip often
reports wrongly. I think that like the status monitor software it
basically counts the number of dots that are printed. This is a pretty
crude measure of ink use, so a safety factor has to be included. This
means that usually there will be a small amount of ink left when the cart
is reported empty. The alternative would be to allow carts to run out of
ink in mid-print. For those of us who use paper at perhaps a pound a
sheet, this would be less acceptable than wasting a few pence worth of
ink.
It would be possible to make printers which accurately reported the amount
of ink remaining in a cart, but only by adding relatively expensive
hardware to the printer.
Peter Marshall
Photography Guide at About http://photography.about.com/
email: photography.guide@about.com
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