In the event of a breakdown of one or another equipment, many wondered which service center to choose. Now the list of companies that are engaged in repair is quite large and does not cease to grow. Therefore, the choice is quite large.

In this article I will try to give some tips on what you need (or do not need) to pay attention to when handing over equipment for repair. After all, the amount of money, time and nerves spent by you directly depends on the right choice.

1. Do not pay attention to the respectability of the premises for receiving equipment, the number of personnel and other trifles. You have to pay rent for the extra square meters, and the reception girls have to pay a salary. So the prices for services need to be somewhat overestimated. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are few. I do not urge to give your favorite laptop or printer to the basement to an incomprehensible person who is both a master, an inspector and a director of a company. But a small firm, in which one, but an intelligent person works at the acceptance, does not need to be swept aside immediately.

2. Specify whether you pay for diagnostics if the master could not repair the device or if you refused to repair it. The requirement to pay for diagnostics in case of failure is quite normal, the master spent his time working with your equipment. For example, I do not charge for diagnostics only if I cannot repair the device or the repair costs more than half the price of a new one.

3. Specify whether you pay for the spare parts ordered by the master in case the item could not be repaired. If yes - run from this service. You should not pay for the errors of the master, just because he did not correctly identify the breakdown and ordered the wrong spare part.

4. It will not be superfluous to inquire about the maximum repair time. Also stipulate that you would be contacted and announced the full cost before the start of the repair. Otherwise, you risk getting a bill, for example, 80% of the price of a new device. And, since the repair is over, it will be very difficult to prove anything.

5. Carefully read the receipt for acceptance for repair. If you have stipulated some conditions, but others are indicated in the receipt, your verbal agreements have no force. Also pay attention to the description of the defect, the appearance and configuration of the device. If something is indicated incorrectly, this will enable the service center to return the device not in the configuration in which you handed it over, with mechanical damage or with another defect. For example, you gave a laptop with a defect "No sound", and the receipt says "Not working". The service center can give you your laptop, which no longer turns on.

6. It will not be superfluous to ask for a list of spare parts and their cost before the repair begins and compare with prices on the net. In this case, a markup of up to 40 percent is allowed. Many parts come out of warranty or may be damaged during installation. You also need to consider shipping costs. Therefore, some margin for the cost of the SC must be left. But if prices differ by 2-3 times - it's worth considering.

You can also look at reviews on the Internet about a particular service or find out what service centers are in your area. For example, drive into the search "Repair of printers in Minsk." Just do not forget, the negative will be necessary. It is necessary to evaluate not the presence of negativity, but its quantity.

In any case - make the right choice and good luck to you!

Greetings, dear visitors. Quite often I am asked how to extend the life of a Canon cartridge or print head.

I’ll make a reservation right away, first of all, we are talking about inkjet cartridges for Canon printers. Such as CL-511, PG-510, CL-446, PG-445, CL-441, PG-440 and others. That is, we are talking about conventional inkjet printers and MFPs that have two cartridges. For example MP280, MP230, MG2440, E404, MG3540 and others. But this also applies to Canon printers using a print head and ink tanks.

Let's see how these printers print. I immediately warn you, I will state the principle of printing in a very simplified way.

The cartridge has an absorber - a sponge in which the ink is located. From this sponge, they are fed into nozzles (nozzles). Nozzles are tubes of very small diameter. Each tube contains one or more thermocouples. During printing, the thermal elements heat up, the ink boils (an air bubble is obtained) and “shoots” onto the paper. Again, I have described very simplistically.

What happens if there is no ink in the nozzles? Thermocouples will still get hot. And the ink in the nozzles is still used as a coolant. Overheating will occur - the tubes (nozzles) are deformed and / or part of the thermoelements will fail.

After that, the cartridge will print poorly in some colors, or will not print at all.

I think the answer to the question "How to extend the life of the cartridge?" obvious - it is necessary to ensure that there is always ink in it.

But what about those who refill cartridges? After all, after the first refueling, it no longer shows the ink level. There is a simple rule. If you need to print something, but you are not sure that you have enough ink - . It will not be worse. And, perhaps, this will save him.

If you expect that thanks to this advice, your cartridge will work forever - then you are mistaken. It will definitely burn. Why? Yes, because, according to the manufacturer, it is disposable (the statement does not apply to printheads using ink tanks). The main task of the manufacturer is to make sure that he is guaranteed to print the ink filled from the factory, and then, as quickly as possible, fails. Yes, the manufacturer wants to do business on consumables, he also wants to eat :)

But hopefully this article will help your cartridge last longer :)

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classmates

These days, a set of original laser cartridges costs almost as much as the laser printer itself. The cost of purchasing consumables can be reduced several times by using compatible cartridges instead of original cartridges, but OEMs say that non-genuine consumables have a short life and poor print quality, besides, their use causes damage to printers and leads to the termination of the warranty service. maintenance of the printer. In this review, we will try to prove that this is not entirely true.

Let's start with the fact that the fact of using non-original cartridges cannot be established and proved by any service center, unless, of course, you yourself inform its staff about this. Therefore, with a light heart, forget that the use of compatible consumables is fraught with the loss of the guarantee for the printing device.

Second. It is impossible to damage a laser printer with compatible toner. Unless, after a long search, you buy in a remote Chinese province an insidious printer-killer toner made by the naughty hands of a drunken uncle Liao. But to find such an artifact in Russia, you need to try very hard. So we dismiss the second myth just as decisively.

Only the last two myths remain - about the overestimated resource of compatible consumables and their low quality. To confirm or debunk these myths, we decided to conduct a comparative test of X80 cartridges released under the brands , NV Print , , Cactus and Solution Print .

Packaging of cartridges - participants of our testing

Package

The least logistically advantageous are Solution Print cartridges, which have the largest packaging and take up more space during transportation than their competitors. The most advantageous in terms of logistics are NV Print cartridges in a compact package.

Inside the packaging for Cactus, NV Print and T2 cartridges there are comfortable inflatable polyethylene inserts that protect consumables from mechanical damage and in which empty print cassettes can be stored. HP, Cactus, and Solution Print had paper instructions in their boxes on how to prepare a cartridge for use.

Inflatable polyethylene packaging that protects the cartridge from mechanical damage

Frame

Outwardly, the cartridges are similar to each other like drops of water, with the exception of some minor details. It seems that their cases were made on the same conveyor. The plastic from which the cases of consumables are made has no roughness, irregularities and foreign inclusions.

Instructions on the surface of the Cactus cartridge

Same instruction, close-up

On the surface of the cartridges there is a step-by-step instruction that will tell you how to use this product. A plastic instruction, unlike a paper one, will not be lost or torn, it will always be in front of the operator's eyes at the time of installing the cartridge in the printer.

Structural elements

Gears, drum drives and other structural elements of all cartridges repeat the original ones, with the exception of Cactus consumables. Cactus has improved the photoconductor drive design and patented it.

Cactus cartridge with patented photoconductor drive

Another difference between Cactus cartridges and original HP cassettes is the presence of a plastic cap, which is not on the original consumables. The following photo shows a genuine HP cartridge.

Original HP cartridge

Note that the original HP toner cartridge has a dangling toner shaft, while the Cactus cassettes have it fixed in place. The rest of the cartridge manufacturers did not bother and exactly copied the original design. Consequently, all manufacturers of compatible cartridges other than Cactus could be in legal trouble with Hewlett-Packard because they stole its legally protected intellectual property. Cactus, in turn, can provide documents confirming that its products differ from the original. This is a very important point for both sellers and buyers of consumables, since not a single check can convict the user of purchasing illegal products, which means that he will not have to defend his rights in court.

Resource testing

The resource of the original cartridge HP X80, declared by the manufacturer, is 6900 standard pages. At the same time, the manufacturer refers to the international standard ISO / IEC 19752, developed to assess the resource of black and white laser printers. Having carefully studied the requirements of this standard, we came to the conclusion that it is possible to reproduce the testing conditions prescribed by it only in special test laboratories. For example, the standard prescribes testing in a room with a relative humidity of 40% to 60% and a temperature of 21 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius. The developers of the standard indicate that without a reflective densitometer it is impossible to determine the difference between the density of the fill from 1.45 to 1.50. Consequently, any claims to the cartridge resource or its print quality cannot be considered objective without examination by special devices in special conditions, and therefore it makes no sense to print 6900 test pages, trying to bring unscrupulous manufacturers to clean water. Below is an image of a test page recommended by ISO.

We went the other way and took a reference copy, which allowed us not only to evaluate the quality of printing, but also to compare the resources of compatible and original products.

The test page that was used in the testing process

The page we have chosen has different graphics and fills, so it will require significantly more toner to print than the previous ISO-recommended test page. Therefore, we do not have to spend 35,000 sheets of paper to empty all the cartridges during testing.

During testing, we printed test pages until the first signs indicating the end of the toner in the cartridge appeared. Then we took out the cartridge, gave it a good shake, and continued to print. When shaking the cartridge didn't work and the pages came out streaked or defective, we acknowledged that the toner had run out and proceeded to test the next sample.

To estimate yield, we used an HP LaserJet Pro 400 M401dn laser printer with default settings.

HP LaserJet Pro 400 M401dn

Resource testing results

First place. The absolute record of 1280 pages belongs to the Solution Print cartridge. After the appearance of print defects and the first shaking, the cartridge printed another 23 quality test pages, after repeated shaking, another 4 pages. A fly in the ointment in a barrel of honey was the spilling of powder, which was discovered while shaking the cartridge. In addition, fresh sheets that came out of the printer stuck together, and after separating them from each other, the ink remained on the back of the page, and in some cases even completely moved away from the surface of the sheet. Having discovered this unpleasant defect, we were forced to disqualify the Solution Print cartridge as a consumable product that poses a threat to the human body. The fact is that the toner is harmful to the lungs, because it settles on the mucous membrane of the internal organs and covers them with an impenetrable black film. Therefore, we do not recommend using cartridges from Solution Print.

Second place. In second place was an original HP cartridge, which printed the same 1,280 pages, plus another 18 pages after the first shake and 3 pages after the second. At the same time, the toner from the cartridge did not crumble, and the pages that came out of the printer did not stick together, although in terms of the total number of printed pages, taking into account all the shakes (1301 pages), the original cartridge gave way to the consumables from Solution Print (1307 pages).

Third place. The honorable third place rightfully belongs to the Cactus cartridge, which was enough to print 1170 pages before shaking and as much as 40 pages after. Repeated shaking allowed 3 more sheets to be squeezed out of the printer, after which persistent defects appeared on the prints. Thus, the total result of Cactus is 1213 sheets.

Fourth place. In fourth place was the T2 cartridge with very modest results: 900 pages in the first stage of testing, then another 9 pages and 2 pages in the subsequent stages after shaking. At the same time, there were no problems with spilling the cartridge or gluing sheets in the T2.

Fifth place. Last place goes to NT Print, which printed only 780 pages in the first round of testing. The first shaking allowed to get another 23 pages, the second one added as many as 18 pages to the resource. But this did not save him from a crushing defeat in our "battle of cartridges".

Print quality

All cartridges, with the exception of the adhesive and flowable Solution Print, performed exactly the same as our benchmark, the original HP cartridge. We evaluated the print quality by eye, without the use of special devices and equipment. This is how the consumer sees and evaluates the printed pages, who, by and large, should judge the properties of the product.

Printing cost

The following table shows the print cost data of our contestants. We made calculations based on the average prices obtained on Yandex-Market.

The cost of printing cartridges that took part in the test

Indicators			NV Print	Solution Print
Full resource, p.
Cartridge cost, rub.
Page cost, rub.

The HP LaserJet Pro 400 M401dn printer, according to the same Yandex Market, costs 12 thousand rubles. And the manufacturer estimated the original cartridge for this model at 5,500 rubles, that is, 45.8% of the cost of the printer itself. For comparison: NV Print cartridges can be bought for 590 rubles, their price is only 4.9% of the cost of the printer. Comments are unnecessary here. On the other hand, if we take the resource of an HP cartridge as a reference, it turns out that the resource of NV Print and T2 consumables is only 35% of its value. Not thick, right?

Output

In our independent testing, the Cactus branded CS-CF280X print cassette performed best. This cartridge is not very inferior to the original in terms of print resource, and is quite comparable to the latter in terms of print quality. Unlike other cartridges, the Cacuts CS-CF280X has a patented photoconductor drive, the presence of which saves the buyer and seller from accusations of violating HP license rights. In addition, the cost of prints produced using Cactus cartridges is five times lower than the original, and does not differ much from other competitors.

Cartridge Cactus CS-CF280X

It is with great satisfaction that we give the Cactus CS-CF280X first place for best value for money and recommend it for use in HP laser printers.

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The American brand HP and the Japanese corporation Canon are two world-famous companies that have been delighting their customers with high-quality office equipment and consumables for many years. And for the entire time of existence, many have noticed a certain similarity between the products of these organizations. But not many people decide to combine two different products. Since there is a lot of unconfirmed information on the Internet regarding the compatibility of Canon cartridges with Hewlett-Packard peripherals, and vice versa. However, this is all, pure, true. Such a possibility actually exists.

Why are HP and Canon cartridges compatible?

Fortunately, the answer to this question is much simpler than many people think. The fact is that the factories of the Japanese brand "Canon" produce about 70% of the parts from which printers, MFPs and other HP copiers are created. Thus, these two powerful firms entered into an agreement on innovation between themselves. Which says that Canon can use the same technologies as HP, only a year after its announcement. As a result, some of the consumables are suitable for office equipment from both manufacturers. See the table below for details.

Cartridge Compatibility Chart

Printer Model	Cartridge Models		Printer Model
			LBP 3010/3020/3100
M 1120/1120n/1522/1522n/1522nf, P 1505/1505n
M 1132/1210/1212/1214/1217, P 1102/1102w			LBP 6000/6020, MF 3010
M 1530/1536, P 1560/1566/1600/1606			MF 4400/4410/4430/4450/4550/4570/ 4580/4730/4780/4870/4890, FAX L170
1010/1012/1015/1018/1020/1022/ 3010/3015/3020/3030/3050/3052/3055, M1005/1319
1160/1320/3390/3392
P 2014/2015, M 2727
P 2030/2035/2050/2055			LBP 6650/6680/6300/6310, MF 5840/5880/5940/5980
P 3010/3011/3015, Pro 500 M 521/525
			LBP 800/810/1120
			LBP 32/470/1000/1310
1000/1005/1200/1220/3300/3320/
			LBP 5200, MF 8180
1600/2600/2605, CM 1015/1017
3600/3800, CP 3505
CM 1312, CP 1210/1215/1515/1518			LBP 5050, MF 8030/8050
CM 2320, CP 2025			LBP 7200/7680, MF8330/8380
CP 3525, CM 3530
Pro 200 color M 251/276			LBP 7100/7110, MF8230/8280

Attention: At the moment, the American company Hewlett-Packard is actively fighting to ensure that their peripheral devices do not accept analog consumables and cartridges of other models. It is also worth considering that not all cartridges are 100% suitable for office equipment of another brand. Some printing accessories require modification or minor design changes, such as HP C4096A and CANON cartridge M. Therefore, in order to exclude possible incompatibility, carefully discuss all aspects with our company's consultants before purchasing one or another consumable.