If it ain't broke, fix it!

Well, I guess our water is different in Canada.

The Canon marketplace, with good reason, was quite depressed prior to
the development of the i series printers. You'd see very few Canon
inkjet printers on dealer's shelves. Canon admitted to the problems
they had, if not to individual owners, certainly to the trade and media,
and that was the inspiration for the newer printer design.

Since then, at least on the West Coast of Canada, the Canon market share
has improved considerably. Not only the shelf space, which could be
Canon's own doing via payment, but their sales are up. The printers are
moving.

I can't discuss customer service, because, quite honestly, I do not and
never have owned a Canon inkjet printer. But, that aside, and my
concern about the reliability of the new head long-term, I know of many
people who like the print quality and other features of the Canon inkjet
printer line. I am not going to judge a printer I haven't used, but the
output on them is darn nice. I do think ink fading is still an issue,
however.

As to your personal experience, I am not going to challenge it. I
assume you are stating it as it occurred or at least as you perceive it.
And from that, I can see how you may feel you were not treated
properly by the service you received. I can state that I do not believe
you would have received any better treatment by any other major inkjet
company in the same situation. That is not to excuse anything, but to
simply try to put the situation in perspective.

Can you honestly suggest another brand of inkjet printer which you feel
you would have received better service in a similar set of circumstances?

Art
GP wrote:

Arthur Entlich wrote:

What this disagreement proves is that each company has a certain
percentage of bad product.


No. You didn't read what my posts. The BJ-300 is not a bad product. It's
a product where flaws have been voluntarily introduced in the ink
distribution system.

The same goes with the problem I now have. Some Loose Nut here said that
my printer was old and probably nobody remembered how to fix it.

Of course, everybody noticed how ridiculous this opinion was
Companies have databases where new problems are registered so that all
repairmen throughout the world don't go through the same troubleshooting.

Canon has certainly sold thousands of BJ-300 just like mine that have
been put through much heavier use. And certainly the same problem,
whether planned by Canon or not, has occured before and the solution is
in their database. They just refuse to give the solution because they
want you to buy a new printer.

And people do buy new printers. Unfortunately, they don't buy new
/Canon/ printers. I took a ride to Staples this aft and I heard a woman
looking for an inkjet printer say to the salesman she wanted any kind of
printer, just not Canon. I said I agreed and, remembering all the
problems we'd been though with Canon, we laughed.

As I said in my first message, Canon's name, which was everywhere in the
dealers' ads in the Yellow pages have all but disappeared. And this is
not because this Canon product is good, this other one is bad, as you
pretend. It's because Canon has developed a "couldn't care less"
attitude towards the customer.

Dependable computer stores deal as little as they can with those companies.

GP









Certainly even Canon acknowledged the

problems their printers had in reliability, which is why they started
over from scratch and put millions into R&D to come up with the i
series. I think the i series has some good value and good design, and
the tanks are indeed easier to refill, but even Canon seems to be
moving their model toward more costly ink cartridges.

The main weaknesses with Canon's printers a they do not handle
pigment inks well, and have never endorsed pigment inks, to my
knowledge, for these printers. They did some promotion about making
pigment inks but I don't think it ever came out.

Secondly, I warned when they first came out that the idea of a
permanent ink head using a resistance bubble jet or thermal technology
seems like a contradiction of terms. I expected head failures within
18-24 months of purchase for heavier users, and it seems to be now
doing just that.

I very much like the removable head for cleaning and the number of
nozzles makes the printer very fast, as well. I like how they reduced
dot size to allow for elimination of the light dye load inks, as well,
something again I predicted someone would do.

Epson and Canon together would possibly be able to produce a better
than product than either by themselves if they each adopted some
aspects of the others technology. However, in the long run, the two
technologies do not appear to have compatibility.

I still tend to believe the cold piezo head is more durable and
flexible, and with certain modifications, would be even more reliable.

If the clogging issue were better addressed, and it could be, the
piezo would be more reliable, more accurate, and overall allow for
much more variations of ink. There is a reason why the art segment and
the ink manufacturers has mostly looked to Epson piezo technology.

But in terms of image quality, all three majors are close and it comes
down to format wars, which I am not interested in engaging or fanning
the flames.


Art



Tim wrote:

Canon isn't dishonest. At least Canon doesn't use chips in their ink
cartridges like most other companies do to rip their customers off.
And many of the printers in the Canon line use clear tanks so you can
see exactly how much ink is left... unlike their competitors.

My Canon s820 has lasted longer than my previous Epson.

"GP" wrote in message
...

Was: CANON: DESIGNED TO FAIL by a dishonest company

About my old failing Canon BJ-300, I wrote:



It is not a 15 years old printer. It's a three weeks old printer!
I've
seen some Laserjet 4 printers print more in 3 weeks as mine in 14
years. Consequently, when the glitch goes away, it prints perfectly.

I had to face one such planned glitch 8 years ago. (Cf. the little
sponge in the purge unit.) Canon told me the printer was dead.
After I
pressured them into telling me how to fix their planned glitch, a 5
minute job got it working until now.

Comparing a BJ-300 to the plastic ink dispensers that Canon sells
nowadays does prove what kind of fuchhead you are.

It's slow, it doesn't print color, but it still fits my needs. I
wouldn't print in color even I had a color printer and I'm never in
such a rush.



Mickey answered:


How sad you are but there is hope. Maturity comes with age and 21 is
not too far away.



21 not too far away? Oh, this would be the nicest Christmas gift!
Unfortunately for your reasoning, if I was one of those kids who's
been taught ecology instead of how to use a screw driver, I probably
would have declared my printer obsolete soon as it first stopped
working in 1996.

I suppose I got this attitude from one of my uncles, a mechanic who
was still driving his 1947 Chrysler around 1980. Not only did he
keep his car for more then 30 years before he sold it as a vintage
car, but every time a part would fail, he would consider fixing it
before buying a new one. Open the hood, take a look, consider: that
was his attitude.

I still own his mini-dryer. In twenty years, I only had to change a
switch and a fan belt. My only regret is that, though the dryer will
be 40 years old in 2005, I can't any money from it as a vintage
dryer


Are you aware that the HP LaserJet you mentioned is powered by a CANON
printer engine. All LaserJets have used CANON print engines.



"Have used." And now?

What you're saying here just goes to prove my point. The BJ-300 is a
work horse capable of delivering much more than the 12,000 sheets I
got from it. And Loosenut Boogs may rest assured that the stainless
steel shafts are not rusted, the rubber rollers are not degraded and
no ink has spilled on the printed circuits. This printer was
mechanically made to last. So what?

It seems that at the time of manufacture, Canon decided at the last
minute there was more money to be made with ink than printers.
That's when the change occured, Soon thereafter, the new Bubblejets
came out at around 200$. So they had a problem on their hands with
this printer designed the good old way.

There were no one picoliter, or whatever, drops at that time and any
ink would do OK. So, they put a sponge in the purge unit that would
at least eventually block the most off-the-plate non-Canon inks, in
order to sell their 35$, 350 pages, cartridges.

In other words, they ****ed up the ink distribution system. But
because the printer had been costly to produce, they didn't lower
the price. So, the customer -- me , in this case -- ended up with an
expensive unreliable printer.

What was HP's approach with the Deskjet 500 at the same time? As I
already explained, it's one of the most rugged printer of all times,
and it sold at about 50$ less than the BJ-300. Millions of pages
must have gone through some of those printers. And the printhead
being part of the cartridge, it couldn't clog.

Of course, if was impossible, even less than now, to build a
disposable printhead of as good quality as a permanent one. When you
looked at a print made by a Deskjet, you could see minute droplets
of ink around the letters. And, of course, every magazine would
confirm this.

So, I told myself, what was 50$ more to get better quality? Only
later was I to discover that the difference in quality would cost so
much more and so much pain in the ass.

A friend of mine had a Deskjet and used to buy plain Carter's ink,
which still sold in pharmacies at the time, and refilled her
cartridges with a seringe for her drafts.

"It must clog the head", I told her. "Of course, after 4 or 5
refills, it does, she answered. I then have another new empty
cartridge ready to refill."

With the help of magazines, who hardly ever test long-term
reliability, I've been one of those Bozos who've been lured by
Canon's so-called high-technology. Too bad there isn't a law to
forbid printer companies to sell ink. The printers would certainly
be more expensive, but the print would finally come down to a lot
less, with much less trouble.

Of course, I'm neither a printer, nor an industry specialist, and I
couldn't tell how HP is behaving since La Fiorina took control or
how Lexmarks does after IBM decided there was nothing to get out of
it. But I know one thing for su Canon has spearheaded this
/revolution/ were the customer has become the sucker.

And I know that, to this day, Canon has refused to acknowledge they
sold me a printer at yesterday's price with today's flaws. I know
they went as far as refusing to provide the information I needed.
I'm sure they still perfectly know about the flaw I'm experiencing
today and are still refusing to provide the few words of support I
need.

I had only words of praise for Canon before I bought this printer. I
still own a Canon FTB-QL 35 mm camera and, though I haven't used it
for quite some time, it probably still works perfectly. But
sometimes, companies change. They're headed by /more efficient/
administrators invertors learned to luv.

As a customer, I don't peculiarly appreciate Canon's way of
management. As a matter of fact, I now truly abhor this company.
They might send as many trolls they want, whether I tell my story
long or short, it will get more precise each and every time, and
rest assured I'll get the message through. Money talks!

In the meantime, the planet is dying and buying a Prius is really an
indecent way of acquiring an ecologist status. "Cutting-edge
technology", as Motor trend puts it, comes at an expense when repair
time comes.

So here's my advice for the New Year to every sensible citizen of
this world. Stop preaching ecology, get a screwdriver and, if it's
only a glitch, it ain't broke, fix it!

GP