HP and the “All In One” Toner Cartridge

The laser printer is a brainchild of Gary Starkweather at the Xerox facility in Webster, New York (1969). The invention of this toner-based printing equipment changed the way people thought of mass printing. However, it used to be that Xerox distributed only laser printer types that catered to large corporations and establishments which made laser printing restrictive to most consumers. It took 15 years before Hewlett Packard (HP) launched its LaserJet models in 1984 that truly made laser printing almost affordable to regular consumers. Thus, the HP LaserJet is the prototype of laser printers we are using today and this is made possible with of the development of the ‘all in one’ toner cartridge.

The ‘all in one’ toner cartridge actually initiated the mass production of desktop printers as this made the replacement of toner consumables so convenient. Said toner cartridge concept embodies all the imaging components found inside the cartridge. In fact HP, was so successful in the desktop printer and ‘all in one’ cartridge segment that by May 2006 the LaserJet has reached a milestone of 100 million units delivered worldwide. Just to support the consumable requirements of LaserJet users, HP is obliged to manufacture at least a billion OEM toner cartridges annually. Consequently, use of the ‘all in one’ toner cartridge has its downside from exorbitant production costs to the ill effects manufacturing has on the environment.

Due to the hefty pricing of OEM toner consumables such as the toner cartridge, other options were developed by third party manufacturers to extend the printing capacity of empty OEM toner cartridges, instead of immediately serving it to landfills after it has run out of toner supply. Thus, the aftermarket for toner consumables opened – and the most sought-after market toner product is the compatible toner refill kit. Say for users of the HP 3005 laser printer, the immediate purchase of a replacement cartridge for a toner supply exhausted Q7551A (standard yield) or Q7551X (high yield) cartridge and its likely trip to the dump site can be precluded with the administration of refills on its empty toner chamber using the the compatible toner supplied with the HP 3005 Toner Refill Kit.  This practice translates to big savings as the toner refill kit is retailed for only $23.95 versus the $215 price tag of a brand new replacement cartridge.

Despite its affordable pricing, compatible toner powder supplied with the kit delivers similar print quality and yield of 13,000 pages based on a 5% industry standard page coverage, just like the OEM toner. The price difference between the OEM cartridge and compatible toner is around 89% and considering that 3 to 4 subsequent refills could actually be administered on an empty cartridge, bigger savings can generated up to the ‘end life’ of the cartridge.

So, what made laser printers so popular? The obvious answer, the development of the HP ‘all in one’ toner cartridge to load the LaserJet line of laser printers.