I’ve previously mentioned that I bought a Kodak all-in-one printer. When it prints, it prints beautifully. Ours didn’t print well for months, and I finally got around to calling their tech support, which was excellent. They sent me a new print head, which resolved my problem. Unfortunately, I had to stay on the line with tech support for over an hour, and I spilled permanent ink on my pants (it doesn’t wash out like they said it would).
Apparently, Kodak printers have a fundamental flaw in the design of the print head, and I’ll need a new print head about once per year — see the comments on [Kodak’s blog](http://cathieburke.pluggedin.kodak.com/default.asp?item=488521). Here’s one of them:
> Posted By: ThriftyTechie (7/30/2008)
>
> Before I tell you about my problem, I must say that the Kodak AiO printer phone support is excellent. I’ve had several experiences with your phone support (unfortunately) and every person has been helpful. Kudos. The bad news. It looks like that you have a couple of fundamental engineering flaws in your printer. 1. The non-disposable print head is just not durable enough. 2. The ink cartridges are too small. More frequent ink swaps are a) annoying for the consumer and b) can not possibly good for dependability, durability of the machine. My 5100 printhead failed completely after about 14 months after several months of sub par smeared and greyed-out printing. Lots of ink cartridges wasted on calibrating and testing. I was high on the product’s claims (i.e., save money on ink!), but this product certainly did not live up to the hype.
My time is valuable, so rather than spend over an hour on the line with tech support, I’d rather buy a different printer.