Lexmark to dump inkjet printers, cut 1700 jobs

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/2....
Tue Aug 28, 2012

(Reuters) - Printer maker Lexmark International Inc (LXK.N) said it will stop making inkjet printers, cutting about 1,700 jobs, and focus on its more profitable imaging and software businesses....

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Revenue from the company's legacy inkjet hardware business declined 66 percent in the first half of 2012, forcing the company to cut its full-year forecast...

Listening to the local AM radio

Jeff Boat biggest inland ship builder(?)

Anyway, this guy was a welder.

"using Russian steel"

Always thought their inkjets were garbage. You paid for the printer many times over buying the ink. Used to see them given away with PC purchases.

Worked for one of the large printer manufactures for many years writing deal modeling software for the sales force.

The cost of the ink is basically nothing. We used to run into floating point precision issues calculating the margins on the stuff.

I honestly had no idea they did anything other than make crappy inkjets...

They made awesome dot matrix printers, once upon a time.

Okidata made awesome dot-matrix printers once upon a time.

Lexmark? Meh.

so worth shorting here?

Maybe.

We used to run a couple of the Okidatas as invoice printers at MCSNet and they would go through BOXES of paper without a single complaint. They were fast and reliably -- they "just worked" and were ****ing awesome.

Okidata was the last manufacturer that I know of that could still go through 5 part form-feed carbon paper. My family's business used them for years (til about 2005 or so) when we switched to single-page laser invoices when the last of our invoice stock ran out. And we used my old Okidata laser (90's vintage) until the fusor on that died maybe circa ~2008 with about 200-300K pages through it.

Been HP ever since - I've haven't used anything Lexmark since high-school (early 90's).

Trades50 wrote..

Always thought their inkjets were garbage. You paid for the printer many times over buying the ink. Used to see them given away with PC purchases.

This is the HP printer business model too. Give you a plastic piece of crap printer and then charge you $1000 in ink before the plastic piece of crap breaks down. It's weird having such a disposable printer... everything is just use and throw away. There seems to be no quality behind any of this stuff anymore.

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Okidata made awesome dot-matrix printers once upon a time.

The ACE hardware store wear I buy my ammo still uses them.

And as long as they can keep getting ribbons for them they will continue to do so.

Their laser printers sucked too, at least back in the 90s. I loved it, since every time they broke down we got a visit from the Lexmark rep who was a rather attractive babe.

Not as hot as my boss though

I was supporting between 50-100 dot matrix printers (various brands) at 10+ sites remotely. We were printing 3-part SAR forms, variable multiple sheets at some of the workstations, and the Okis didn't cut it as well as the Lexmark 2380/90s.

The older Okis were bulletproof, of course, but they weren't able to hold the paper position for this particular application as well as the Lexmarks. The Lexs were easier to support over the phone, and saved us quite a few hours.

My first job out of college was testing inkjet cartridges at the HP Corvallis R&D lab. Lexmark, Canon & Epson formed our Axis of Evil.

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This is the HP printer business model too. Give you a plastic piece of crap printer and then charge you $1000 in ink before the plastic piece of crap breaks down. It's weird having such a disposable printer... everything is just use and throw away. There seems to be no quality behind any of this stuff anymore.

Yes, this is very true. One of the projects I worked on was a half-fill color cartridge for the 700/800 series deskjet printers. This would be the one included with the printer. The full-weight carts would be sold as replacements. The project was eventually cancelled, but it demonstrates the mindset. It's much the same with those multi-blade razors. The initial purchase is cheap, but the refills are costly.

Compare the build quality of the original Deskjet 500 with the current lineup. The 500's were industrial-grade tanks. Not so much with the more recent models.

are there any inkjets that are NOT garbage?

You can find a color laser printer for under $150. For most consumer uses, it'll be a better choice. Why bother with inkjet, unless you have a specific need for one?

> You can find a color laser printer for under $150

I have a B&W Brother laser that cost $50 and has been working like a champ for several years.

And the print doesn't smear when it gets damp like the damn inkjets.

Soros wrote..

are there any inkjets that are NOT garbage?

Or as I call them, ink****s or desk****s. I try to slander inkjets any time I am able.

$50-$80 lasers FTMFW, Jfedak!

IBM made ****ty laser printers until Lexmark bought them. Then Lexmark made ****ty laser printers.

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The ACE hardware store wear I buy my ammo still uses them

Correction - oops: The ACE hardware store where I buy my ammo still uses them.

Ummm, weren't the first Lexmark-branded printers out in ~1995 or so? The Optra series? The printers prior were IBM-branded.

As for inkjets, good riddance. And as the older generation retires from business and hardware continues to improve, the "paperless office" is actually becoming reality. I remember working with so many 50-year-old types in the 1990s who insisted on a so-called 'hard copy' of literally everything they did on a computer. So much so that the innovation that was designed to free them of paper, actually created multiples of what it was intended to replace.

I use HP inkjets and buy refills off ebay for $5-6 shipped..

I used to buy lexmark printers at Walmart for $19.. when the ink ran out, go buy another printer and donate the old one to Goodwill lol.