Common sense isn't.
. . . or, "The Care and Feeding of Printers."
The inkjet printers we deploy at work will take two different black ink cartridges: an HP 21 and an HP 27. I was recently informed by the user of one such that she was always careful to order the 21s, because they were cheaper.
To my thinking, this is like being offered, say, two apparently-identical chocolate easter bunnies. One costs a dollar and one costs eighty-five cents, and they're both made by the same company and sold at the same store. Before buying the one that costs eighty-five cents, I would ask: Why? Maybe it's just me, but I would find it to be an obvious question.
In this case, the answer is that the the chocolate bunny is hollow. That 21 cartridge holds half the ink that the 27 does at 5/6 of the price. But it never occurred to her to wonder, let alone ask.
I know that not everyone's been lucky enough to be taught the critical thinking skills that I have. But . . . isn't there a line here that's just common sense?
The inkjet printers we deploy at work will take two different black ink cartridges: an HP 21 and an HP 27. I was recently informed by the user of one such that she was always careful to order the 21s, because they were cheaper.
To my thinking, this is like being offered, say, two apparently-identical chocolate easter bunnies. One costs a dollar and one costs eighty-five cents, and they're both made by the same company and sold at the same store. Before buying the one that costs eighty-five cents, I would ask: Why? Maybe it's just me, but I would find it to be an obvious question.
In this case, the answer is that the the chocolate bunny is hollow. That 21 cartridge holds half the ink that the 27 does at 5/6 of the price. But it never occurred to her to wonder, let alone ask.
I know that not everyone's been lucky enough to be taught the critical thinking skills that I have. But . . . isn't there a line here that's just common sense?
posted by Journey | 1:15 PM
2 Comments:
Same situation here but up in the 90's (HP 95 vs. 93 or something... ah I'm too lazy to go and look up the real numbers).
And then there's the question of refilled vs. generic replacement... far cheaper but of course HP has dire warnings about only using *their* cartridges.
[visiting via Wyldwoods]
And either we've had really bad luck with refills and generics or HP is right. I suspect it's a matter of design, in the case of refills--the design and construction of the print heads may just not be made to last more than a set number of pages. I guess I can't speak to generics, but the couple I've seen may have been refills that are then rebranded.
And of course, it's also fun to explain to the end-user why we can't have them use the refilled or generic cartridges. "You may use them at home and never run into a problem, but we have 200 of these units in the field, and we see the problem all the time."
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