A rant on Lexmark

I have in the past been a big proponent of Lexmark printers, they have been often 1/3 the price of HP, Xerox. Ricoh - etc, and with great/better performance to boot - however this time I cannot stand behind them, they have provided a subpar product, and subpar support to boot.

I have a client with several X500n color laserjets, so far the oldest 2 have failed CPU fans - the genious of Lexmark engineers chose an extremely obscure fan that appears to be only manufactured by 1 or 2 companies - a 24 volt 50x50x10mm fan with speed sensor - most of the small electronics and computer industry uses 12 volt - why 24. After removing the fans from both printers they were simply cooked, the label was cracked due to heat, but there was no dust - the fan simply failed.

After calling lexmark, they said such a shame, the unit is out of warranty, but the part is available for a mere $65 - SIXTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR A 5 CENTIMETER FAN!!!!!!!! - I think the radiator fan in my truck cost less and its about 50 centimeters!!! Come to find out - Lexmark more than likely does not even have this fan in stock!

Another company supposedly sells the same fan to spec for a mere $25 - not quite highway robbery - probably Lexmarks supplier - hmm 200%+ markup - sounds about right - but go figure they are out of stock also - probably because Lexmark drop shipped the last one out like some small time computer supplier.

Since nothing matched the exact specs of the original I finally just decided to find some other fan and adapt it - I found this slightly larger 80mm fan for a mere $9.95 - is Lexmark trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes???? I needed some longer screws and a couple small zip ties to secure it.

Being that this is mid-range model, I hope it doesnt trickle down to any of the higher end models - I have another client with the X642 with easily 500,000 pages on it, and it still cranks out 15-20,000 pages per cartridge without fail.