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my paper it's due in 3

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hours and that's how he learned the hard way to never trust a fart and

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print wait a minute it's present year I

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don't even own a printer and I'm not alone since 2008 the printer Market has

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been steadily shrinking but while we don't need them nearly as often as our

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ancestors did they are still legitimately useful when they work

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properly you can cut down on screen time and eye fatigue by printing out

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documents for markup you can make notes and Q cards that work without a battery

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and you can even use them for classic pranks AMD is going to announce a new

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chip and this chip trust me this chip is good what what the what what's that what

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but the question is has the printer industry finally figured out how to be

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less terrible or are they still treating ink like it's Chanel Number Five infused

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with scorpion venom what about the units themselves do you need to spend $400 to

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get reasonable quality what if you bought something secondhand for $4 or 40

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could it still print out this segue to

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the end of this

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video These Days sealed ink cartridges are out and refillable tanks are in

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especially if you print a lot and that's where something like the Epson ecotank

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ET 4850 comes in it's about $400 brand

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new packed with features and sips ink straight from the bottle saving on both

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cost and on plastic waste now this was my first time using a tank style printer

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so I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of setup but it ended up being

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very simple squeeze the ink into the tanks plug it into whatever type of

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computer you've got and print as for refills it seems like the industry has

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yielded somewhat to customer demands and 20 bucks is going to get you a big old

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bottle of genuine black Epson ink drop from drop it is still roughly a tenth

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the price of Chanel Number 5 but that still puts the cost per sheet down to

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around a qu of a cent we're going to have it linked down below of course you

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also don't need to buy this stuff unlike HP who as recently as a couple of months

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ago was trying to force you to buy a subscription to print more than a few

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pages a month Epson does no genuine ink

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checks the print quality is crisp vibrant and reasonably quick we averaged

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around seven pages per minute in our 600 DPI test run and you can connect to it

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however you want including asking Alexa to print off a sheet of graph paper it

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even includes a scanner with fax functionality so at this point you can

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build yourself a DIY continuous ink system but if your budget allows a

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system like this is pretty much endgame for most people's needs as for the

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competition Canon has some really nice options as well even though we didn't

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get them for this video and brother they have their ink vestment tank line but

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seem to have lost the plot a little bit it's kind of convoluted now with that

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said even a non-con convoluted tank system is not for everyone a big caveat

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here is that ink tanks are full of well Liquid Ink and liquid has a tendency to

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dry up so if you only print one document every few months there's a solid

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chance that you'll that you'll go to use it only to

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find out that one or more of your colors won't print because Inky goo is gummed

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up the print head if this happens and the printer selfcleaning cycle doesn't

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unstick everything you're going to have to either do the dirty job of manually

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cleaning it or you'll have to replace the print head or ink dampers all

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together while Epson has made spare parts available they only have four

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distributors throughout America with very limited stock meaning once the

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thing hits end of life it could be challenging to find those parts again

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the other issue with these systems is The Upfront price of $400 so without

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further Ado may I introduce my $40 model

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haha the the pantom p2500w we found this monochrome laser

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printer on Craigslist but we could have picked up a similar openbox model for a

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pretty similar price from our local reliable supplier Facebook Marketplace

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or wherever the case may be in terms of features it's a printer no scan no facts

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manual duplexing only and it will not listen when you talk to it it does have

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Wi-Fi but only using 2.4 GHz and at the

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back you'll find power USB type B and a little cutout suggesting that they were

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thinking of adding networking but never did initial setup was a little tougher

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this time Windows 11 recognized it but could only print out a garbled page but

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then when we tried it on Linux it worked fine and then after that we plugged it

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into our Windows 11 machine and it suddenly worked why we're not quite sure

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but it works now and while the print quality isn't perfect it's a little

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streaky for text documents it is perfectly serviceable and it still

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shines when it comes to the big advantages of laser like shelf stability

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because toner is a dry powder there's no urgency to keep the ink flowing it can

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sit idly for months sometimes even years without degrading to the point of

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becoming unusable and when you do eventually decide to use your printer

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you will almost certainly appreciate the speed in spite of being on the uh older

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side it advertises 22 pages per minute

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and hit that number almost dead on during our longer print run this thing

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is so fast f it practically smokes by the 10th page wait wait that actually

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does look like smoke but as it turns out

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it steamed Laser Printers work through heat and paper usually contains small

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amounts of moisture and well heat plus moisture makes steam add in a bit of

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toner or dust and it can look a bit like smoke but don't worry about it now this

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is far from the only option as I alluded to before there are plenty of budget

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secondhand Laser Printers out there from the likes of Samsung SLP or from brother

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and as long as you verify that there's driver support for your operating system

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they tend to be extremely longlasting machines I think my old Samsung unit has

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been in service for over 10 years and like still works like the day we got it

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the reason we chose to highlight a pantom model though was because we

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thought it was a little more interesting than those other brands despite this

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printer being released over a decade ago most North Americans probably wouldn't

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recognize the brand but their history is extremely interesting Phantom's parent

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company ninestar originally specialized in making bootleg lockout chips for

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third-party ink and toner refills in 2010 they launched the first pantom

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product China's first domestic laser printer followed by a global rollout

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over the next months then in 2016 they bought lexark and in 2023 they were

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added to the banned Imports list by the US government on accusations of using

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forced labor at $50 the official toner

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refills would cost us more than the printer did third party on the other hand can be had

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for around $18 that puts this printer at

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about 3 cents and 1 cent per page respectively now that might sound more

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expensive than epson's quarter Cent pages and it is but the cost of

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ownership doesn't even out until you've printed 7,000 sheets on that tank system

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so if you've got 60 bucks to your name and you absolutely need to print some

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documents this is going to get the job done but wait what if you don't have 6 $

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enter the Canon

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s200 listed on Craigslist for 10 Canadian Shillings we talked them down

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to the maple leaf equivalent of four Freedom bucks it wasn't our first pick

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but buying a used printer comes with some risks and having your time wasted

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is definitely one of them we had dozens of other listings either ghost Us sell

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the printer from under us or otherwise just refuse to sell us their printer but

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hey can released this bubble jet printer in February of 2002 and apparently they

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didn't have much love for this particular model because 2 months later

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they released the PowerShot s200 digital camera and I know I've said a lot about

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other brands naming schemes but at least they mostly bother to use different

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letters and numbers for their different products despite the slight from Canon

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though they did make several other printers that used the same form factor

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software and even ink so finding compatible cartridges all the these

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years later is still pretty easy from our local reliable supplier a thirdparty

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combo pack of black and color ink was actually less than the price we paid for

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this printer even today unfortunately

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bubble Jets were notorious for clogging and as far as we can tell this printer

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may have been sitting unused since as early as

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2004 even after buying new ink and making a quick attempt to clean the

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printer it's still just printing blank pages something we got in common buddy

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there may be hope though it just so happened that when we were starting this

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project a few months ago lgr posted a half hourong Saga trying to get a

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compatible printer working properly how'd that go Clint never buy an old

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inkjet printer this is all a complete

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waste of time and everything is

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stupid oh well too late so we ordered a

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replacement print head and oh wait is this the one oh the script says it

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didn't arrive yet cuz it hadn't when we reviewed this but I guess it has now are

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we just going to try it now let's do

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it the troubles Sho is never going to work hey this this could be the first

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time how long have you been doing this give feedback on the trou trou to

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crash ah

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ah

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it all right we'll have to fil the

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tomorrow hey you got it yep wow and all

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it took was installing the new print head spending several hours trying to

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force some truly ancient drivers onto Windows 11 and macOS showing up late

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for the company softball game getting in a solid 6 hours of sleep and then first

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thing in the morning putting together a Linux test bench adding the guten print

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drivers connecting the printer tracking down a random printer test page website

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he voila not bad actually I mean not

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great but not bad taking some of the joy out of this is the fact that we are now

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at $34 including that new print head

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plus the new ink that we bought earlier plus paying people to do the troubleshooting and whatever the test

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bench Hardware cost but I have this now in fact compared to our Epson the colors

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are more vibrant and our text is more legible there are a few additional

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drawbacks though it leaves big streaks in the print occasionally the yellow

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seems to pick up lots of tiny specks of cyan and magenta for some reason and the

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ink cartridges while costing mere Pocket Change only hold enough ink for up to

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170 pages of text so be prepared to swap

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them out frequently also it's slow the

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manual claims that in a text only best case scenario it can do five pages per

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minute and for full color you could be looking at several minutes per page so

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if you're printing off a high quality photo make sure to bring some reading materials with you to pass the time uh

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what you could also do to pass the time is check out this message from our

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like this video maybe you'll also enjoy the time we looked at a $95 3D printer

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how bad was it

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well not you just watch it