expensive ink!!

[new guy]

I have an HP printer that is about 10 years old. I just bought a new black ink and a new color ink cartridge. The "combo pack" cost $73.00. (900 pages of black and 530 pages of color) Is this price for this amount way out of line? If so, does anyone know of a QUALITY printer with less expensive ink? I only use the printer occasionally for bank related papers.

[frhrwa]

I found that Canon eats more ink, HP used to be fine, but also eats "expensive" ink, other than CostCo will refill cheap for you.. but, I finally switched to Kodak printers.. cheaper ink and seems to print twice the pages.. I have a few new packages of HP ink, let me know what type you use, if it matches, its yours.. can't remember off the top of my head, but will be back home thursday.. so I'll look in here for your reply, and check to see what I have.. that beats buying it by a far shot.. and I can't use it..

[Externet]

Hewlett Packard spent millions on finding a scheme to make money; resulting in not to make money with printer sales but in selling ink.
Probably the $73 would buy a new printer with a tiny portion of ink with it, tossing you a hook. My new HP printer did cost about less that much.

Refilling cartridges not always work. As far as I know, some printers memorize in non-volatile, the serial number of the cartridge and its ink level. When emptied, refilling will flag the printer to refuse working. So you open your wallet for $20+/ounce for something worth perhaps pennies. An office supply chain told me HP menaced to pull the dealership if they continued to refill customer cartridges. And they stopped.
'Nice' tactics and ethics, ha?

I have bought refill kits at the 99¢ store resulting some in success, some in failure.
Perhaps you may give this a try :
http://www.walgreens.com/topic/inkrefil ... s-info.jsp

Miguel

[ltx71cm]

Those refill kits were taken out of the picture thanks to newer printer cartridges with a chip inside that tells the printer whether it's exhausted or not. No amount of refilling will help. What really gets me is the ink doesn't need to actually be low before the cartridge calls it quits. Two other things that get me going are mandatory "test" pages and the "cleaning" procedure most printers go through. If you've ever taken apart an inkjet printer (especially a Canon) you'll see a sponge/absorbent material SOAKED in $1600 a gallon ink, seems excessive. That's worse to me than purposely drawn out voice mail messages designed to rack up minutes. What happened to an honest dollar?

Ugh! Liquid Prices

[VernGraner]

I have an HP printer that is about 10 years old. I just bought a new black ink and a new color ink cartridge. The "combo pack" cost $73.00. (900 pages of black and 530 pages of color) Is this price for this amount way out of line? If so, does anyone know of a QUALITY printer with less expensive ink? I only use the printer occasionally for bank related papers.

Some people retrofit their printers with external ink tank systems. Good example videos are here:

Google Ink Jet Videos

A friend of mine did a retrofit on his epson and prints bunches of 8x10 photos with it.

Vern

[haklesup]

Its been said and with good reason that printer ink is the most expensive liquids ever produced. I assume thats retail because its pretty clear that the only way to make money on a $100 printer is to soak the consumer for the ink. Costs to manufacture ink probably approach 10% to 50% to cost of aftermarket inks in refil kits.

There are basically 2 kinds of ink jet printers out there. Ones that integrate the print head in the ink carteridge and ones that have ink wells seperate from the print head (which is probably also replacable but not unless it gets hopelessly clogged)

HP is clearly in the first camp. after years of chucking printers because the print heads clogged even though I still have 3-5 more unused ink refils I finally got an HP 3 in 1. Now at least I can count on it working even if I don't print but one page a week (infrequent use tends to allow the heads to clog). THese printers generally can't be refilled more than once or twice due to the memory in the carteridge. Sometimes there is a way to reset that page counter but its different for each model and you have to search online to find out.

The printers with replacable refils but perminant heads tend to be less expensive to use for frequent printing. The aftermarket inks can save you a lot but you will risk poor color rendition (in photos) and unpredictable clogging with lowest quality inks.

YOur ink may have been particularly expensive because it is for an older printer and may not enjoy the larger volume manufacturing of the newer refils. (Another beef, similar looking printers do not use the same refils frequently)

As for recommendations. Kodak specifically advertises longer refill life and lower cost of ownership due to less ink cost (though the printer is a buit more than average). I also like to use an HP with aftermarket ink. If it clogs or looks funny, I can just change cartridges and never worry about a clogged head.

Just search printer ink and your model number on eBay and you'll find the low cost sources real fast. To be fair, it sounds like you got a high capacity refil. those cost a bit more.

[Externet]

That video from ltx71cm shows the sponges were never fully loaded with ink at the factory. Half undyed.

Here is more of the ripoff. Millions of $$ to the dumpster to keep big shots on their private jets :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycD4XkUt ... ature=fvwp

Miguel

[Lenp]

I guess I'm different than most folks. I use a HP black laser for 70% of my printing, an HP duplex color laser for 25% and a 6 cartridge Epson inkjet for those special pictures. The laser cartridges get used up 100%, the nozzles don't clog and cost per page is well below most inkjets. Plus, it's faster and can handle a wider range of media, like transparancies and there's no need to do 'maintenance' functions that gobble ink. Getting an almost free ink jet printer may really not be a deal!
Follow the money!
Len

[Robert Reed]

Len
What are the pros and cons of your laser jet printer. I have considered purchasing one, but don't know much about them. I myself have no real beefs with ink jets at this time. I have an older HP that uses $35 B&W cartridges, and they really do a lot of printing before they run down. But if the lasers are much cheaper and can maintain the same quality, I may switch.

[Lenp]

Len
What are the pros and cons of your laser jet printer.

I'm not sure what a 'laser jet' printer is? It seems it is HP name for the standard laser printer. I could not find any HP 'laser' printers. They are all called 'laser jet' while everyone else calls them 'laser'. Market confusion I suspect.So I have conventional laser printers, regardless of what HP calls them!

Some of the pros of the laser printer are lower cost per page, instant drying (since there is no wet process), not picky about paper like some inkjets are, Many models will duplex (2 sided printing) and faster page printing. IN the color models, the individual cartridges can be changed and the knock-off cartidges are ususlly relianble. They are also usually quieter than a laserjet. Some models have multiple paper trays so forms and labels can be software selected. The really expensive printers also collate the print output. Just notice that places that do large amounts of printing, like hospitals, nearly always use laser printers.
As for cons, I guess the big one is initial cost for the printer and since they are sometimes bulkier they take up more space. They also use more power and generate some heat.

The inkjets big pro is low, sometimes free up front cost. They generally can provide better color photo quality than laser but use special papers to get the fine details.
They are also smaller, use less power and generate nearly no heat. As for the cons it has to be the high ink cost and special papers cost. Theya re also slower and make more noise.

I'm sure there are more issues with either printer type but these are the ones that come to mind.
Len

[Janitor Tzap]

Lenp,

Yes,
each style printer has its strong points, and its weak points.

Cost has come down on Laser printers quite a bit.
I got a cheap Samsung ML-2510 (Mono Chrome) 1200 x 600 DPI.
$100.00 with Toner cartridge.
But the Samsung is already almost out of toner.
{That's because it was shipped with a nearly empty toner cartridge.}

I also have a Minolta Konica 2400W Color Laser Printer 2400 x 1200 DPI.
$400.00 Subtract $200.00 Rebate: Total Cost: $200.00.
I purchased the Color Laser printer about three years ago now.
It's still on the original cartridges yet.

And I have my old work horse, an HP Laser printer.
HP LaserJet IIIp 300 x 150 Dpi.
It was purchased from a used office equipment surplus store for $50.00.
{That was back in 1996}
Since then...
I've added memory to it, replaced rollers, fuser, and replaced the High Voltage Power Supply.
I'm currently on it's second toner cartridge.
{I'm holding on to it because the newer printers don't seem to support the older ASCII, or old IBM fonts.}

I did have a Canon InkJet at one time.
But after I went through 6 Ink cartridges, plus used refill kits for them in one year.
I got rid of it, and plunked down the money for the color laser printer I have now.

As for types of paper......
You'll find that for best results with photos, is to use photo paper.
This goes for Ink, or Laser Color printers.
For text, or every day stuff.
Standard Copier paper works fine.

I worked with a guy that rebuilt copiers, and Laser printers for awhile.
It was amazing how finicky some machines were about what toner, or paper would only work with them.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[Robert Reed]

Thanks guys. I'll keep this info in mind when the time comes for the switchover.

[frhrwa]

its corporation rip off.. good ol' American GREED.. how to screw everyone with the price of their ink! and then how to use that ink so you run out sooner.. "like cleaning" printing test pages, etc.. I threw out all my Canon, HP, Lexmark printers.. right to the dump, a couple were still in the boxes new!.. NEVER again will I buy an HP product.. everybody can praise their performance all they want, its the company that I despise.. previous postings will point out it took 5 years to get them to warranty/fix a $1300 laptop that died 2 weeks after I bought it.. the Canon was eating me out of house and home cleaning itself to death, then telling me it was out of ink.. the Lexmark got to picky about paper.. wouldn't feed half the paper that I had, had to buy the rough matt finish in order to get it to feed.. so...... the best thing EVERYBODY could do, STOP BUYING ANY HP PRODUCT..