For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By Dominie
#1725542
Well today my Canon MG2950 stopped printing - Error 5B00. It is fully serviceable but seems to have printed the number of copies that Canon will allow; hence it has reached the end of the road. The problem is that the ink absorber was full (85%) earlier this year and we have now used the remaining 15 %, it seems. This is absolutely disgraceful!

Nothing will bring it back - I have complained on Canon Forum and had no reply; I tried various suggestions online but they don't work. I will never buy a Canon printer again and, for that matter, why should I ever buy any other Canon product?

I am now off to buy a new printer by choosing on the ABC method - Anything But Canon.

I am happy to recommend the same to anyone else - don't buy Canon as you are buying built in obsolescence just to improve their bottom line. I am thoroughly p****d off with Canon and I don't care who knows.
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725547
I'm surprised none of the reset scripts worked. We replaced Canon with Canon not long ago after it finally gave up the ghost after about 10 years, we kept it alive a bit longer by using some of the reset scripts, but it was basically worn out.

I also have a HP colour laser which is great except it won't do borderless printing and it doesn't incorporate a scanner.
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725549
Was that just a rant or do you want some help?

I have a copy of the service tool if you want it which will let you reset the EEPROM (although you shouldn't really do that unless you've actually cleaned it out).
#1725562
My similar early wireless model Canon Prinyer/Scanner did likewise even refused a brand ne cartidge. Got p**ed off so much bought an HP seems to work better and when required which isn't often.
If you live near Horsham Sussex you can have my nominally working Canon and new ink to kick !

FWIW every Canon product I've bought has died and I'll never risk them again when there are plenty of alternatives out there.
By cockney steve
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725638
Epson "Stylus c 42 plus"..same problem, take the case off and locate the pad of absorbent wadding......guess it's located at the end of the print-head track, where the head goes to do it's ink-wasting....sorry, cleaning cycle.......remove pad, wash under running tap until it's clean, squeeze out and dry on a radiator (or whatever) When it's dry, reinstall and run the program to reset the "brain" (which @stevelup has offered you!

Epson went further and put chips in the cartridges as well, fortunately, there were a lot about at handy money, as people upgraded......Print head kept clogging. I eventually dismantled and pressure-flushed it with meths (you can see the flow from individual jets, with a magnifying glass.....worked perfectly until following day. Yep! one "dot" clogged again. Bought a used L@ser all-in -one under £50, with spare toners.....never looked back. can get a refilled, re-chipped black or colour toner for under £12 in my hand . When the transfer-belt, or a drum goes, ditch it and buy another.

Was given a HP industrial one, (firm re-equipped) almost full supplies....done dozens of copies and put in a £10 replacement black, which the "brain" even thinks is genuine HP.....can't do better than that! I said "dozens" but at least 2 packs of paper, so far- that's 1,000 = copies. I would never go back to the ink-jet extortion racket. :twisted:
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By Sir Morley Steven
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725641
Really? You are complaining that a thirty quid printer has died?
Yes it is deliberate. It is the reason why printers are so cheap.
Look much higher up the price chain for one that lasts longer.
By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725645
A Brother £25 laser printer got my wife through her English Masters and PhD. Only thing it needed was cheap, unbranded toner.
It did a lot of printing (I seem to remember 50K+ sheets) especially as she often preferred to work on paper rather than screen.
She donated it to the office of the summer school she ran as the university supplied printers wouldn't work on Macs. Thisbold one was plug and play on anything.

We had an HP all in one ink jet for when we wanted colour. However ink and on cartridge heads were dried up every time we went to use it. When even new, still in their packet cartridges had expired (past the best before date listed) we binned it.

Now have small brother all in one BW laser. Just works.
Didn't go colour laser as most of the toner ends up in toner bin, even when printing black and white.
#1725678
Another Canon hater here. We bought a large format Canon printer to do posters and architectural drawings several years ago. It worked well but was never used much. One day it refused to print. The print head, a £300 item, was over its calendar life and not resettable. Tried everything. Apparently they used to be engineer resettable but that was stopped. One very expensive boat anchor, with rolls of paper and extra ink, sits in the hangar.........
By Dominie
#1725682
Sir Morley Steven wrote:Really? You are complaining that a thirty quid printer has died?
Yes it is deliberate. It is the reason why printers are so cheap.
Look much higher up the price chain for one that lasts longer.

Well, the reason why they are cheap is that the prices they charge for print cartridges are high. I don't see why a printer which has been working perfectly should suddenly die simply because the manufacturer has decreed a maximum number of prints.

I was going to try and fix it by trying more on-line research, but now after following a script from a link above, I have the alarm light on permanently with no other lights on at all - this situation is not covered in the manual and nothing has any affect any longer so it's junk unless anyone has a good idea.
#1725956
I've had a Canon MP180 for many years, though my use is not heavy at all. These days no more than a few dozen pages per year. I couldn't say exactly how long I've had it for - perhaps 10 years at a rough guess.

It's a combination printer, photocopier and scanner, but the scanner aspect of it has been inaccessible to me for a while now as it has no scanning drivers for Windows 10 available. Presumably no-one anticipated any of these still being in service, or more likely just didn't care.

It takes generic cartridges but this kills any meaningful ink level information - it permanently thinks they are low/empty but it still prints.

I'll chuck it when it finally stops printing, and at that point might buy a laser printer.
#1725973
I went for an all singing all dancing Epson printer/scanner from PC World, it came with a guarantee that if anything went wrong you bring it in and they will replace it for new while you wait regardless of whats wrong with it, had it replaced 6 times in 3 years for no charge and no delay :shock:
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By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725990
Got a Lexmark MX 510 de for the church (BW laser /scanner) as cheap, fast and aftermarket consumables also cheap.
1st one wouldn't pick up paper new.
2nd one identical.
Lexmark sent an engineer out to replace paper pickups on second one (apparently a known issue when stored in certain ways) but found front door broken too.
Luckly courier hadn't picked up 1st one yet, so fixed paper pickups on that one instead.
Worked for a while but started getting lines on output.
After 2 replacement imaging units, each lasting 8K pages (should be 50k+) tried using a different after market toner supplier.
No problems since. Now been fine for a year.
No idea what the moral in all that is! I'd say don't buy lexmark, but it is still working out much cheaper than rivals, despite issues, amd now working perfectly.
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1725995
I look after several hundred printers in a retail environment where they do about 10k pages per year. About five years ago we switched to using the HP semi-pro models (so not the cheapest consumer stuff, nor the expensive and bulky enterprise stuff). For example the M201 and M402. No word of a lie, we haven't replaced a single one of these in all that time.

Before we switched, we were using 'consumer' printers and they rarely lasted a year. They would often die before the included toner had even run out. Must point out that this was because of inadequate space for anything better, and not because we were being tight / stupid.

Cheap printers really are a consumable item. If you spend £30 on it, you can expect to get £30 worth of use out of it. It really isn't that difficult to understand!
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