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RSS feedsA spokesman for Big Yellow told me at the end of August that “Kodak will be making an announcement”.
I wonder when and how it will be worded? Perhaps: “Thanks to that meddling Barry Fox we now have to tell you that if you bought a Kodak dye sublimation photo printer, played wise virgin and stocked up on expensive ribbon and paper kits, you are out of luck if the printer fails. We have changed our printer design and stopped making anything compatible with what you bought. Sorry, but tough.”
I have long admired Kodak. With the Box Brownie, George Eastman brought snapshot photography to the masses. By developing Photo CD, Kodak’s research centre in Rochester NY crashed the price of blank CDs and made CD music recording affordable.
Deadbeat managers were painfully slow to see the video and electronic photo revolution coming, but when they were taken out and shot, new blood did a terrific job of bringing the best aspects of wet film to dry digital.
After I tried one of Kodak’s SLR-style digital cameras I bought it because it was so much better than the clunks that Kodak’s competitors were offering. When I discovered the picture quality I could get from a Series 3 dye sub printer, I started buying 40 print paper-ink packs at £20 a time. Even at 50p a print it seemed worth it to avoid the hassle of ink smudging and clogged jet heads.
Then a new ribbon jammed in the printer. Getting it out festooned the room with 20 quid’s worth of coloured film. Bits stuck in the rollers, blocked the print path and wasted another £20 pack.
I tried to forget the mistake I had made when my Epson Stylus broke and there was nothing in the new Epson range that would use up my stock of Epson ink cartridges. Epson sold me an older model that was lying around in the company warehouse. I bought more cartridges and then found the Piezo heads needed repeated cleaning. So I used my ink on cleaning clogged heads.
Never again, I vowed. But the thought of throwing away more than £100 worth of Kodak ribbon packs stuck in the craw. So I went out to buy another Series 3 printer.
Photo chains Jessops and Jacobs had no Kodak printers at all. There were none in Argos or specialist photo outlets. In the meantime Kodak had held uncharacteristically low-key launches of completely new inkjet printers.
I smelled rats and asked has Kodak quietly abandoned the dye-sub print market?
“Kodak has made no retreat from the printer dock market,” a Kodak spokesperson replied. “The Printer Dock Series 3 are not available. The consumables you have will unfortunately not be compatible with the new (G600) printer docks.”
Kodak’s website store still promotes S3 paper and ribbon kits at £20 for 40 sheets or £40 for 160 sheets, which is an incentive to bulk buy consumables. If Kodak has discontinued the whole line of S3 printers, it’s a kick in the teeth for Kodak’s loyal customers.
After a month of reminders from me and much ducking and diving from Kodapeople, the only answer I’ve got is that “Kodak will make an announcement”.
The moral is clear; if you use a Kodak printer, don’t stock up on consumables.
That’s a good credo for the crazy world of home printing. The manufacturers keep changing ink, ribbon and toner designs so that this year’s printers can’t use last year’s consumables.
Was last year’s design that bad? Or is it all another planned obsolescence ploy?
Either way we can teach them a lesson by no longer playing wise virgin. Instead we should buy consumables only when we need them.
I have for several years been happy with a Brother laser multifunction printer. It now needs an expensive new drum. Brother confirms that there is no printer in the current range that uses the same drum. I dare not buy the new drum in case the printer dies. So Brother has lost a printer sale and consumable sales.
Which printer company will be first to do the obvious and pledge to keep at least one product in each range that is compatible with the previous range’s consumables?
This article appeared in the December issue of PCW
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