The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

zagubov

Pyxis wrote: »

Do you mean you could only park in a Honda car park if you had a Honda car?

Just so. There are many clever ways of protecting your own industries. bUt I bet they could have done deals with each other to squeeze out foreign cars if they so desired, but I don't know if that's what happened.

I do admire Japan; the requirement to make electronics that will fit in their restricted-size apartments drove miniaturisation that has benefitted us all everywhere in the long run.

Pyxis

Japan is one place I'd really like to visit.

I like some of the mindsets.

It's very expensive, though, and due to jet lag, a short holiday wouldn't work, not for me, anyway!

vivatifosi

DH has visited Japan. The one thing he keeps saying is how beautifully symmetrical Mount Fuji is.

Oh, that and that there are no street signs in Tokyo. Something about they were taken down in WW2 to confuse invaders and never put back again.

GDB2222

zagubov wrote: »

It's ridiculous how it's impossible to find a reasonably priced printer with reasonably priced inks. I know the printer companies aren't an actual cartel but they follow such similar money-gouging policies that you wouldn't be surprised if it turned out they actually were.

It's like every household needs to buy a fridge but they need to run on a specially expensive type of electric current, and if you use ordinary electricity the machine'll warm up or break down.

A colour laser printer is a complex machine with three separate drums, each of which has to be lined up to a really tiny tolerance. There's clearly no money made selling the printers.

Pyxis

vivatifosi wrote: »

DH has visited Japan. The one thing he keeps saying is how beautifully symmetrical Mount Fuji is.

Oh, that and that there are no street signs in Tokyo. Something about they were taken down in WW2 to confuse invaders and never put back again.

So now they just confuse tourists! :rotfl:

Who are a type of invader, I suppose!

So how do people find where to go?

Ok, now everyone probably has built-in satnav, but what happened before that?

Anyway, I would have thought that the Japanese writing would have made it impossible for the ordinary GI to read street names!

GDB2222 wrote: »

A colour laser printer is a complex machine with three separate drums, each of which has to be lined up to a really tiny tolerance. There's clearly no money made selling the printers.

Mine is ink jet, though.
I don't think they are as complicated, are they?

GDB2222

Nope, inkjet are much simpler to make. Still, I would not want to have to make one for £20 or so. They are clearly sold at or below cost in the hope of selling overpriced cartridges.

It's in the hands of consumers. If they were prepared to pay say £100 for an inkjet printer or £300 for a colour laser printer, the consumables could be the correct price. But, whilst everyone knows they should look at the total cost of ownership, it's much easier to focus on the initial cost.

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

Oh, that and that there are no street signs in Tokyo. Something about they were taken down in WW2 to confuse invaders and never put back again.

That's what they did in London for the same reason. Some of the main roads still don't have them put back up.

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

Nope, inkjet are much simpler to make. Still, I would not want to have to make one for £20 or so. They are clearly sold at or below cost in the hope of selling overpriced cartridges.

It's in the hands of consumers. If they were prepared to pay say £100 for an inkjet printer or £300 for a colour laser printer, the consumables could be the correct price. But, whilst everyone knows they should look at the total cost of ownership, it's much easier to focus on the initial cost.

Hmmmm. I paid over £100 for my Epson, (can't remember the exact price, though it is an MFC machine), yet the inks are still some of the most expensive around.
Don't get me wrong..... if the inks cost a lot to make, I wouldn't mind, but we all know they don't!
I used to have a machine that, if one ink ran out, it would still print with the others, albeit a funny colour. With most of my printing, the colour doesn't matter, so I wish I could do that. It doesn't even run on just black, which would be fine for most things, too.
Another annoying things is that it starts telling you an ink is running low pages and pages before it actually runs out, so you feel they want you to change it before you need to.
Plus the casings are now opaque, they were translucent on other models) so you can't even look to see what's left.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I must shut up about inks! :D:D

zagubov wrote: »

That's what they did in London for the same reason. Some of the main roads still don't have them put back up.

And some of the sign posts still point the wrong way.

michaels

i just bought a colour laser printer, £25, it seemed rude not to. Currently although we have a colour multifunction which cost 30 quid including an extra set of inks and a bw laser we only ever have ink in the bw as if we put any in the colour the kids use it within minutes. bw laser was free, eventually we had to buy a new toner for 35 quid but it does about 20k pages...

GDB2222

michaels wrote: »

i just bought a colour laser printer, £25, it seemed rude not to. Currently although we have a colour multifunction which cost 30 quid including an extra set of inks and a bw laser we only ever have ink in the bw as if we put any in the colour the kids use it within minutes. bw laser was free, eventually we had to buy a new toner for 35 quid but it does about 20k pages...

You bought a Samsung CLP-415N?