Lake Neuron

The black print on my Kodak printer has stopped working. Happily, it’s still under warranty, and after walking through the troubleshooting on the web site, I was promised that they would ship out a new replacement printhead. I had to laugh, though, at this message:

Thank you for using our online form to request a replacement printhead. Your new printhead will arrive within two to five business days. You will not receive another confirmation for this request, so please print this page and save it for future reference.

That’s right. I’m supposed to use my printer — which isn’t working — to print out the confirmation number for my new printhead.

I actually have been quite happy with this printer — a Kodak 5100 All-In-One. It’s a copier, scanner, plain paper printer and print-size photo printer. The nice thing about it is that it uses Kodak’s new ink technology, so the ink cartridges cost literally half as much as the ones for my old HP inkjet printer. I can literally buy new Kodak cartridges for less than I was paying at Walgreens to refill the HP cartridges.The cost-per-print is supposed to be significantly less than other brands; the exact margin depends on whether you’re talking about black and white, color or photo-quality printing.

This is really the first problem I’ve had with the thing, and I had no grief whatsoever about getting a new printhead sent out.