Beware Canon printers

I have been a Canon devotee for yonks, and indeed have only recently bought the highly recommended Pixma MG 6650 for my wife's kit. However I'm beginning to have second thoughts.

My own IP 4600 now reports 'Ink absorber nearly full'. The net reveals that this means 95% full, and that at 100% the machine will be locked up - unusable. Contrary to what Canon's site says, although 'mature' it has not been heavily used, and (following a previous disaster with Epson kit) I have always paid sillymoney for genuine Canon carts.

It appears that the counter can be reset but highly inadvisable without delving into the guts and extracting the pads for cleaning. Not a DIY job apparently. There are seemingly only two options:
(i) find a service guy you trust (hen's teeth come to mind), or
(ii) bin the machine and replace it. What?
Because this seems to me to be c**p engineering, if I have to do this latter the replacement won't be Canon branded..

Any suggestions welcomed!

You won't find anything different no matter what manufacturer you choose. There are vids on YouTube that show you how to fit an external waste ink bottle to your printer. Then you can reset it as often as you like and just leave the spent ink pad in the printer. You can get bulk ink kits for some printers. I bought one for my Epson 2100. It was an absolute pain and a complete waste of money. I should have just bought third-party ink carts.

I suspect that the problem is that, as you say, it is mature but not heavily used. As with cars, this sort of usage is not ideal. It means the print heads will be cleaning themselves frequently and that ink has to go somewhere.

Yes, perhaps you are right. It aggrannoys me that whenever I want to print something in a hurry (well almost), the printer goes into a long cycle which of course is using ink.

How many times when you log into your bank account statement, on-line gas bill, etc do they suggest not printing, consider the environment, bla, bla, bla.

So here is Canon doing its bit for the environment (not) by arranging for a big complex chunk of metal and plastic to become useless. I think they call it planned obsolescence.

Google turns up lots of interventions, but says they are not for the faint-hearted. In the circs it looks as if a cheapo replacement, with cheapo carts, may be my answer.

Edited by deleted (Sat 12-Mar-16 10:33:35)

A cheap mono laser perhaps?

I wonder how many times people print with their colour printer and really only need monochrome.

Could be, could be. As we also have the 6650 a b/w printer may well be the answer.

I was thinking of getting a laser, but I think I would miss colour, you can bet your bottom dollar that if I got rid of my Canon inkjet and got a laser I would need to print in colour.

TBH, my printer is fine, my old Canon was fine until the print head gave up in it.

I agree. I have a USB mono laser for 95+% of my print needs; and an inexpensive colour wireless Epson inkjet for the occasional colour print need.

When I was running the IT for a very small company I persuaded them to get a decent mono laser for most needs, the colour printer - much more expensive to run as well as being more trouble - was only used occasionally. After a few weeks the staff there found they didn't actually need colour for the vast majority of their printing.

If you are printing in colour only occasionally, I would recommend getting a colour laser printer. They are quite reasonably priced these days.

This one - Brother HL3140CW - is a very good printer: