What's a DeskJet 500K?
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From: TJ on 7 Dec 2009 09:18 William R. Walsh wrote: > Hi! > >> When one can buy a new HP printer at Walmart for less than >> the $40 this dinosaur gulps down at one feeding, what one >> would *really* think is that it's a miracle cartridges for it are >> still being sold, let alone being bought by anyone. > > Perhaps this is a dinosaur, perhaps the others I have are as well. > However, they are very solid and well made dinosaurs at that--and they > meet my needs perfectly. I'd be willing to keep it on the road for > that reason alone, and out of the landfill. > > There can be no question that this and other similar printers have > already outlived countless other $40 printers. I'm not going to *buy* > a $40 printer so I could say HP might as well try to sell me the ink > cartridge. (Although they aren't doing such a great job at that > because I'm using reman cartridges which are a good deal cheaper and > work fine by all indications.) > > Oh, and you can still buy brand new black ink for the HP ThinkJet, in > case you were wondering. If I ever run out, maybe I will. (I've got > what has to be a lifetime supply of ink that expired in Dec 1991 but > still works perfectly. Operating cost has been virtually nil as the > pinfeed paper comes to me by the *ream* these days.) > > These old DeskJet printers seem to run almost forever on a black ink > cartridge. HP quotes ~790 pages (black) and 167 (color). Black is > $37.99 and color is $38.99. > > By comparison, a $30 (!!) DeskJet D1660 that I looked up on the spur > of the moment is said to print approximately 200 pages (black) and 150 > (color), although the cartridges are priced lower. Randomly sampling > reviews on the 'net suggests that this isn't so--yield falls far short > of the published specs. (This probably also happens with the DJ500 and > its ink. Yields will vary.) > > The price per page (warning: rough back of envelope calculations > coming!) for the D1660 is 10 cents/page for black and 24 cents/page > for the regular color cartridge. (There is an XL cartridge that I did > not study, as well as a combo pack that is cheaper.) > > Now for the DJ500: Black print comes at a cost of $0.05 (rounded up) > per page. Color comes at a cost of 23 cents per page. I don't print > color with these and therefore do not bear the cost. Outside of my > DJ560C, I don't even have to *buy* a color cartridge to let the > printer work. > > The Staples black cartridge cost me around $24, so it works out to a > whopping *three* cents per B&W page. > >> I'd lay odds that whoever set the printer out at the curb >> for you did so after going through a similar cost/benefit >> analysis. > > I don't know. If they did, it sure seems odd that they'd repack it so > nicely instead of just tossing it. > > William (I'll take my dinosaur, but thanks for offering...) The printer could have been packed for a garage/lawn sale, and didn't sell. You see old printers a lot on those sales. As long as it works and does what you need done, there's no reason to get rid of it. However, don't expect HP to produce those new carts forever. And those carts can only be "remanufactured" so many times, so eventually you won't be able to feed that dinosaur any more. But if you, like me, are an experienced bottom-feeder, then you already knew that. TJ
From: William R. Walsh on 8 Dec 2009 14:59 Hi! > What's the SKU on the back or bottom of the printer? C2114A FCC ID B94C2114X1 S/N US37R1T0JY Manufactured July 27th, 1993 Oh, and uh... http://greyghost.mooo.com/dj500k/ (link leads to an index page showing two pictures, total ~750KB in size) > There were other "500" variants, some which speak no PCL at all. Which ones were those? I thought PCL was *the* language of choice for early HP printers. > Given that superior IJ printers are today given away in boxes > of breakfast cereal Superior? If you mean print quality, you are undoubtedly correct. I wouldn't make any kind of a bet that today's nearly-free inkjet printer will even still *exist* in the 16 years that have gone by since this printer was made. I'm not even sure some more expensive ones will last that long! Per page costs are actually not bad (see above) for black and white printing and I don't care about the color aspect. > on a cartridge to discover that the ink wick is full It appears to be fine. I've never heard of an HP ink "wick" filling up. > the rollers dried out, it pick-fails on every page, Nope. It picks up perfectly every time. > and Windows 7 assigns an incorrect driver :). That one I don't know about. I don't have anything other than the evaluation RC of Windows 7 to even try it with. (And I'm running it on a Pentium III for extra points.) Now you're going to make me try it? :-) William
From: William R. Walsh on 8 Dec 2009 15:36 Hi! > The printer could have been packed for a garage/lawn sale That's a good theory, and one I hadn't considered. I haven't known the people that live there to have garage sales, but it's down the street a ways so I can't readily tell unless I walk down there. And I'm not *that* nosy. > You see old printers a lot on those sales. I had a few turn up in my yard. (People in town know who I am and what I do. So a lot of homeless computer gear turns up at times. I can put a lot of it to use, and the rest gets recycled or stripped for parts. Depends upon how interesting it is.) > However, don't expect HP to produce those new carts > forever. I don't know when or if they will stop. You can still buy ThinkJet ink in new packages from HP, after all. I know they had planned to stop making some form of LaserJet toner or another, but I don't know that they did. The backlash may have been enormous--there are a LOT of old LaserJets out there still plugging along. I think it will be a long time coming. By then who knows if this printer will still work. Out of the DeskJet printers I have, one of the original DeskJets has seemingly resigned itself to having a continual out of mind experience. All it does when powered on is to leave all of its control panel LEDs illuminated. William
From: rjn on 9 Dec 2009 06:44 "William R. Walsh" <newsgrou...(a)idontwantjunqueemail.walshcomptech.com> wrote: > >> There were other "500" variants, some which speak no PCL at all. > Which ones were those? For example, the DeskJet 500J, which apparently spoke only EscP. > I thought PCL was *the* language of choice for early HP printers. Nope. The early DeskWriters, for example, spoke only QuickDraw. Other PDLs offered included APL and GB2312, whatever those were. -- Regards, Bob Niland mailto:name(a)ispname.tld http://www.access-one.com/rjn email4rjn AT yahoo DOT com NOT speaking for any employer, client or Internet Service Provider.
From: William R. Walsh on 15 Dec 2009 14:57
Hi! > > and Windows 7 assigns an incorrect driver :). > (And I'm running it on a Pentium III for extra points.) Now you're going > to make me try it? :-) http://greyghost.mooo.com/dj500k/dj500kwin7.pdf There you go. You didn't really ask, but now you know. A DeskJet 500 works fine on Windows 7. And yes, that machine has a *real* parallel port to which the printer was connected. William |