Digital BW, The Print

Before you get really discouraged please see my post under this same 
thread, message #17245 from July 29th.

There are some things you can do to insure survivalbility of chips. 
Once you get  two-four known good chips, you are all set for using 
carts. The chips may or may not be DOA from MIS, you can't make that 
assumption. They are as delicate as any other circuit board- 
motherboards, RAM, graphics cards, etc. That is why they are shipped 
in anti-static bags. I will grant you however that I have never had 
the problems with chips off Epson carts that I do with MIS chips.
Jim H.






> (After friendly call to MIS, but someone need to tell them that 
being friendly is 
> just the start of good customer service): Here is the what the 
person on the 
> telephone replied when I said that I had used their telephone 
instructions to take 
> a good chip off my Epson cartridge to make the MIS cartridge work, 
and I wanted 
> them to replace the defective cartridge with a good one. (Seemed 
like a 
> resonable request to me.)
> 
> 1) Bad cartridges "happen all the time." It appears they are getting 
lots of calls 
> and taking them as a normal part of business.
> 2) MIS will not send a new cartridge. MIS will send a replacement 
CHIP which I can 
> put on the cartridge, assuming that I am good with an Exacto knife 
and the little 
> plastic nibs have not been damaged.
> 3) MIS does not test chips to see if they are good. She said the 
chips and 
> cartridges are made, filled, and packaged in China. She said "there 
is no way we 
> can know if the chips are good" - even the 2 loose chips that she 
sent to me as 
> replacements. She impled that it was "their" problem, meaning 
someone else in 
> China.
> The replacement chips arrived by express mail in 3 days.  As I said, 
friendly and 
> prompt and no clue that quality control is an essential element of 
long-term 
> profit margins.
> 
> So, the issue in choosing a system to print b/w is reliability 
before quality of the 
> print. Why would I use a computer that I had to wonder if it would 
work each time 
> I loaded the program? Why choose MIS if you are hoping the chip will 
work each 
> time you change ink, etc. I switched to Mac because I was tired of 
computer 
> problems getting in the way of just working on my images. [A very 
good switch, 
> by the way. The only time I have a crash is when I am at work on my 
PC.] So why 
> would I commit to a printer system when the company has a "that's 
the way it is" 
> attitude toward defective equipment? Waiting three days to print or 
needing to 
> buy extra cartridges that might work as backups (as suggested) did 
not seem to 
> be a problem for the representative on the phone. (Of course, she 
was not the 
> one trying to get the print out of the Epson.)