A follow up on my experience with Cartridge World.

I don’t plan to buy expensive “new” ink cartridges any more.

Dale

Who said customer service is dead? We have used Cartridge World San Diego in the past to refill our ink toners but this time we needed to have a very important and hard to find drum cartridge replenished in one of our Dell color laser printers. It was month end for our business and the worst possible time for our printer to go down, we needed it ASAP. We communicated this with Cartridge World San Diego and like most good businesses they immediately understood our concerns. Knowing our crunch for time they offered to pick up the old cartridge from our office and deliver the replenished one later in the business day, which they did! Wow, talk about customer service.

Thank you again.

Salvatore Friscia
Owner/Broker
San Diego Premier Property Management
http://www.SDPManagement.com

I purchased my first refurbished printer cartridges from Cartridge World in part because the company’s conscientious commitment to the environment appealed to me. I have been very impressed with the quality of the cartridges – they have produced the same print quality as new cartridges at a substantial cost savings. I also have been very impressed with the responsiveness and personal service provided by the company. I definitely can recommend Cartridge World and its products.

In case you haven’t come by lately, we’re changing the space allocations in the front part of our store. We’ve moved the counter forward, which means you don’t have to walk 30 feet for service and we have a whole lot more room to work in. Our redesign isn’t complete yet, but all the work ahead is on our side of the counter, so you shouldn’t be inconvenienced by that at all.

The other big change is our switch over to a new and better POS (point of sale) register system. This is a major change for us, the software on this system is completely different from our old, Windows 98 based system. We face a steep learning curve, and while we’ve made every effort to educate ourselves on this new system before implementing it, we couldn’t anticipate every possible glitch. As a result we’re learning on the job.

After a week or so we all should be much more proficient with the new register than we are right now. We do apologize for any inconvenience or delay we might cause you as we figure out our new setup. In the end we’ll be able to provide more services to you with this system than we were able to before.

For instance, if you’d like to be included on the mailing list for our monthly newsletter just let us know via email or the next time you stop by the store. We can create a customer profile that includes your email address. Be assured, our customer information goes no further than our own store. We do not share customer information with anyone, not a third party or even Cartridge World USA. It resides solely on our own hard drive. I have been involved with internet security for several years, and I would not assure you of your information’s security if we could not provide it.

I think you’ll enjoy our newsletter. Every month I share changes at CWSanDiego, new cartridges we can fill, I try to find new and interesting stories about printers and printing. Frequently I include tips and tricks you can use to make your home or office printing more economical and efficient and some months you’ll find a coupon for additional savings. Best of all, each issue offers the option to opt-out of future deliveries. We will never spam those who prefer to no longer receive our newsletter.

We agreed on a new look for this website as well. As long as we’re upgrading, let’s do it right. Let us know what you think. Constructive feedback is always welcome.

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This may sound strange coming from someone who makes a living from selling printer cartridges, but there are times when printing isn’t the best storage solution. That’s all printing really is, a means of storing text or images on a paper medium by using a device that imprints that data onto paper using either ink or powdered toner.

Printing as a storage medium is among the oldest concepts in computing. The first printers widely adopted were dot matrix printers. Printers haven’t evolved all that much beyond their origins. Printing isn’t much more than writing on paper done by machine.

As a storage medium ink, and to a slightly lesser extent toner, on standard print paper has a short shelf life. Most printed pages start to yellow and fade within a few years. They are subject to damage from exposure to water, the Sun, high humidity, insects and a host of other common factors in our environment.

For the storage of non-vital images and documents this is usually not a major problem. However, for important personal documents, business documents and treasured photos, a more permanent and less vulnerable means of storage is required.

Currently the most popular media for extended storage are compact disk (CD), digital video disk (DVD) and digital tape. Something to keep in mind; advances in technology will most certainly make CDs and DVDs unusable and unreadable within a couple of decades. Can you imagine what it would be like to have all your important business paperwork stored on 8-track tapes or cassettes?

Some printer manufacturers make the claim that their inks and papers will permit images to be preserved up to 100 years, a bold claim that no one has been able to fully substantiate yet. It is acknowledged that printing on acid-free paper with archival inks, then controlling the environment in which the pictures are stored, provides the best chance that images will survive for years and most likely decades.

In light of all this our recommendations would be:

• For everyday printing of non-essential documents and images, standard ink and regular copy paper/photo paper is completely adequate.
• For important pictures, use archival-quality ink and acid-free paper then store the prints in a controlled environment.
• For important personal and business documents, record them to CD, DVD or data tape. Keep two copies, one on-site and the other off-site. As storage media evolve, transfer the documents to the most current medium.
• Revisit your stored media at least once a year to asses its condition. Signs of wear or discoloration may indicate a need to re-record the data to new media.

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As noted on the sidebar under “Store Information & Hours” we will be closed this coming Sunday, the 4th of July.

However, since all of our suppliers will be closed on Monday, the 5th, we will be working a shorter day. We will be open Monday from 9am to 2pm.

We apologize if this inconveniences you. Should you have an emergency need for a cartridge after 2pm, please call and let us know. If at all possible we’ll stay open for you or deliver it if it meets the criteria for delivery.

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We can also offer the XL version of these, but we need your help. We currently do not have enough empty cores to send to the supplier who refills them and re-chips them for us.

We would appreciate it if you could bring in any empty HP 920XL cartridges you may have laying around so that we can send them in for re-manufacturing. The more of them we receive and the sooner we send them in the sooner we will have them available to you.

Please, help us help you. Recycle your empty cartridges with CW San Diego and we’ll reward your efforts by providing quality cartridges for a substantial savings over the retail cost of originals.

If so, here’s one possible cause and solution from the excellent macosxhints.com website, posted by Tom Neale:

Several models of HP LaserJet printer are known to crash or hang when certain documents are printed from 10.5/Leopard machines. The culprit may be a bad or corrupted font, in particular, version 6 of the Papyrus font. In short: replace the font file with one from a 10.4 installation to stop the printer crashes.

The longer version: I have a Color Laserjet 3800n and also a 2430dtn that crash any time a document that uses the Papyrus font is printed from a machine running Mac OS 10.5.x. They display an Error 49.4 C02 code and the printer must be powered cycled to clear the problem. HP lists this code as ‘A critical firmware error has occurred;’ not particularly useful or informative. The same problem did not occur when printing from 10.4.x machines.

This all led me to look at the font itself. The file always passes the verification tests in Font Book; there is nothing overtly wrong with it. But, it clearly does not get along well with these HP Laserjet printers. The version of the font installed on a 10.5 system is is 6.0d6e1. It contains both Regular and Condensed versions of the font.

I went hunting for a different version of the Papyrus.dfont file and found one on a 10.4.11 machine. It is version 4.0d1e1 and contains only Regular, not Condensed. Replacing the newer font with the older one in the /Library/Fonts folder allowed me to successfully print documents using the Papyrus font. This has fixed the printer crashing problem for me.

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We will be open on Monday, May 31st, for at least 5 hours, 9AM to 2PM.

Most of our vendors will be closed Monday and quite a few of our customers have indicated they will be enjoying the 3-day weekend, so if it proves to be a slow sales day we’ll close at 2PM.

Should you need us to remain open longer or need a delivery on Monday after 2PM, please let us know before Noon on Monday.

We hope you and your loved ones enjoy the Memorial Day weekend. We’ll return to our regular store hours on Tuesday the 1st of June.

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We cannot yet get the XL versions of these.

Our pricing is:

HP 920 black $12.99

HP 920 color $7.99 each

HP 564 black $8.99 (this is the slim black cartridge next to the colors in the image)

HP 564 color $7.99 each

Technology is advancing so fast there doesn’t seem to be a day that goes by without a weird-but-true story making headlines.

Like this one; scientists using inkjet printers to print skin for wounded soldiers.

Researchers at Wake Forest University have found a way to use everyday ink-jet printers to quickly create skin for soldiers with life-threatening burns from the battlefield.

Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine have figured out how to use sterile ink-jet cartridges and printer heads to bioprint skin cells in three-dimensional patterns, building up the tissue in layers, said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the institute said in an interview.

Using modified ink-jet printers has greatly accelerated the method of growing tissues, which in the past has been laboriously done by hand. Burns account for about one in 10 war wounds, so the demand for speed has driven research in skin grafting. The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine funded the Wake Forest project.

The process basically works this way: Different types of skin cells are placed in wells of a sterilized ink cartridge. The printer is programmed to arrange the cells in a specific order, an innovative adaption of technology that allows scientists to precisely arrange multiple cell types and other tissue components into predetermined locations.

The institute has adapted another common piece of office equipment to replicate skin cells: a scanner that when placed on a patient, copies skin much like an office photocopier reproduces documents, Atala said.

To date, the institute only has tested the bioprinting in mice, and will require Food and Drug Administration approval before it can be used in humans, something that could take years, Atala said. (Source-nextgov.com)

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