In my opinion, although HP was once "king of the printers," their products are now crap; certainly their Customer Support is the worst I have ever experienced. No other manufacturer has ever told me I would have to pay US$25 to get the location of the drivers for a printer on their unnavigable Web site!

Now they're trying to put third-party ink dealers out of business. Well, with an 8000% markup on toner and ink, I can understand (but not condone) why they'd be trying to kill the competition - but the *right* way to do it is with excellence of your products, not the expensiveness of your lawyers.

Best wishes to Pelikan, and my advice to HP owners is, when the printer needs replacement, get a different brand.

I am also tired of being ripped off by HP. Can readers recommend an alternative, ethical, economical supplier of PC printer tech?

I have used Epson in the past and currently have a Canon Multi-Function Device (printer / fax / scanner / copier) and I swear by it. The ink is reasonably priced although I do use non-Canon products as I'm a tightwad anyway, but if you were to buy the genuine article I think they're about half the price of most Epson inks and even they are reasonable compared to HP.

HP = Higher Price

PS. My wife had a HP and I nearly feinted when I tried to get a replacement ink cartridge (which seemed to almost be a printer in it's own right)!

Probably a user problem. Yes, sorry to say.

Recently I find more and more printers with ever lower page count per ink filling.

Used to be a fan of Samsung 2551N: 10.000 pages per filling. The successor, 3051N, is down to a meagre 8.000; with a low-yield cartridge as well, at 4.000.

The buyers seem to get ever twittier and buy on printer price only.

This is what you get if you expect to be able to buy a printer for £30 - expensive carts and a company that is pissed off when someone undercuts their profits. It's just the same as buying games for a console the licence that the game manufacturers pay to produce the games covers the console R&D and the subsidy you get on the hardware. This is why MS/Nintendo et al get so shirty when you hack consoles to run your own OS.

Incidentally - HPs web site is not ideal, but I find that if you go to the 'Software and Drivers' section, linked from the homepage, then use the find a product search, you are fine. If this doesn't work you can drill down through the printing & multifunction -> printers... links. Easy.