Monday 23 February 2015

Out of print


Being brought up with post-war rationing (but I don't remember it) by parents who lived through the real thing, I don't really need any lectures on austerity, especially since I have lived my life in almost exactly the same way the Greeks have been living theirs ever since we let them down badly by allowing the Germans to occupy Crete to take their attention away from the mainland.

But we are getting highly conflicting messages from both Europe and our home-grown politicians as to how we get ourselves out of this bloody mess.

I hate waste to the extent that - up until a few years ago - I chucked any unwanted food out of the window to feed the much hated Gulls of our parish, but it eventually got out of hand and I now put the food into the rubbish bin before they bring out a law making it a criminal offence to hand-feed Gulls from your window.

One Gull who I dubbed 'Gullie', became so... er... I wouldn't say 'friendly', but he seemed to have lost most of his fear for us - which is always a little endearing, even in a yellow-eyed, murdering monster - that he would hammer very loudly on the window whenever he was hungry. The first time this happened, I really thought that someone had scaled the 40-foot back wall and was asking for help.

Anyway, here is a little example - one of many I could choose - of how conflicting this/these advice/instructions can be.

My printer ran out of coloured ink. I bet that by now, you know exactly where this is going, but I will carry on anyway.

Yesterday, I decided to just bite the bullet and spend about £28 on a colour cartridge which would have lasted for about 15 A4 pages before turning everything black with bright purple stripes running up the middle, so I braved the rain and went into the John Lewis section of Waitrose, which is more or less next door. Why pay less?

There was the vast rack of Canon cartridges right next to the latest model of printer/copier/fax/scanner, but my type of cartridge was just not there. There were about 30 different forms of Canon cartridge, all a little different and all completely incompatible (I think) to my perfectly good, printer/copier/fax/scanner which is a little old now, the poor thing.

The packaging for these cartridges is designed so that if you open them to check if the contents look as though they could be of any use, you may not return them if they are not, so the only thing left to do is buy the model of printer that they will fit, if you can't sell them on at a loss on eBay and don't want to throw them away.

I know of a place here where you can buy my code-number of cartridge, but it is priced in such a way as to make it unviable to keep buying, when the cartridge costs £28 and the machine was under-priced at £50. That's a hell of a running-cost.

I have a friend - and this is true - who came upon a whole batch of printers for about £30 each, so he bought about 20 of them. Every time the ink runs out, he throws the printer away and uses the next one. To him, this makes economic sense, but is it not utterly and madly wasteful?

The government loves this sort of marketing, because it increases their revenue. One bunch of the bastards are telling us to tighten our belts (when it comes to expenditure from their own coffers - of which they are just the incompetent custodians and administrators) and the other bunch are telling us to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND our way out of the financial downturn.

Let's see how Yannis gets on this week.

20 comments:

  1. We used to buy through Inkredible.co.uk Much cheaper than John Lewis, and just as good.

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  2. I have a lovely man on our Friday market and he knows exactly what my printer wants - all I have to say is yellow, black, magenta or whatever and he hands it over and a reasonable price. Shop around. True for that Greek chappie too.

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    1. Yes - just because they know what you want, it doesn't mean they can give it to you, eh?

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  3. Hello Tom:Ink is too friggin expensive; and yes, I'll admit that once we did buy a new printer which came w/free ink for 30 bucks instead of buying new ink for the old printer.We do have computer-type recycling events over here; and that no-ink printer was donated. Along w/ a ton of old computers that my son would take from the college (they would dump 'old'computers out the back door when they upgraded). He has a computer museum now.
    25 years ago, I had a hand-me down VCR that needed fixing- the repair guy try to tell me that it was cheaper to buy a new one. I insisted that he fix it. He did.
    Glad that I met and married the husband a decade ago - he can fix nearly everything. He recently used a tin can, some clamps and putty to repair our muffler pipe.
    Gah I'm rambling.

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    1. Yes you are, and I'm a bit tired, but I appreciate your ramblings never the less.

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  4. It won't save you any ink but it might save someone buying a new printer. After I'd switched from Canon which gave up the ghost to HP (because HP because I wanted their scanner) I chanced on a video by a Russian guy on YouTube and it was to do with a code he would send by email and you could use to get the Canon printer working again. Could also be a scam though. So beware.

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    1. I used to have HPs, and they are the flavour right now, but - DAMMIT! - I don't want to chuck this Canon.

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    2. I had a Cannon ink jet for years. Ten, twelve years. I bought cartridges on line, off brand. The self cleaning program always worked like a champion, the colors were great. Then, I needed a new computer, and it did not support the printer. Bitterly, I bought an HP. Evil little thing.

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  5. America has got to be the biggest throw -away society on Earth. It almost impossible to find good quality appliances, furniture, clothing, and (especially) electronics. It makes me crazy. You can hardly find people who repair things and it seems that most people just replace their cheap crap with new cheap crap regularly.

    Perfect example, our computer started acting crazy two weeks ago. I got it repaired (blown fuses and memory needed expanding) for around $100. The guys in the shop told me it was old and outdated and I should probably replace it. It's only 5-6 years old! Which I know is ancient in the world of technology, but for my trifling amounts of use it's perfectly ok. Well. Last night it started acting up again the very same way as last time. I called the shop this morning and will be bringing it in again, but if they can't make it right for no charge, then I WILL buy a new computer.....simply because any more money beyond the $100 I already spent won't be worth it. Makes me sick.

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    1. At least with Macs you can upgrade the O.S. for about $100 - if they will deem to sell you the disc.

      I struggled to upgrade to 'Snow Leopard' the last time, because I had skipped one system in between.

      The British 'salesman' said - "You're supposed to buy the other before I sell you Snow Leopard", and I said I had just spend £70 on a fucking Trackpad which would NOT operate on anything less than Snow Leopard, so SELL ME THE FUCKING SYSTEM!

      He sold me the system.

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  6. Oh God …… how true it is about the ink ….. it's so annoying, isn't it ? …. and, they always tell you not to buy those cheaper cartridges that have been re-filled as they can damage your printer !!
    Loved your comment over at Cro's …. do you know that the script for the ' fork handles ' sketch, hand written by Ronnie Barker, sold for £48,500 in 2007 ?!! XXXX

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    1. If I am going to throw away the printer anyway, why should I worry about damaging it?

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  7. Sadly, I am sure that the printers are sold for less than they ought to be as well as the cartridges for more. Someone, somewhere, has to make them both out of materials that have to be created then shaped, and I just cannot believe it can be done so cheaply and the people making them still earn living wage. I heard an expert on developing world politics talk about this on the radio a while ago - he said that our smart phones are being sold for a third of their real cost, if we took into account the real value of the components. Like you and your view of the twisted logic of austerity, I don't understand the twisted logic of consumerism in the face of a planet that cannot keep sustaining our consumption at such a massively unnecessary rate. Bah.

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  8. I hope you can find a shop that will refill your existing ink cartridges. I have refilled mine about three times now for a fraction of the cost of replacement. In my experience, the quality has been the same as the original cartridges.

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  9. I buy my cartridges on Ebay (auction only) at a fraction of the price. There's always someone who's just changed printer and is selling their spares.

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    1. Yes, I have done that before. I also sell my empty cartridges there - they fetch quite a lot of money!

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