Daniel Gray Rants on Inkjet Cartridges

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.geekbooks.com/blog/archives/000124.html' target='_blank'>http://www.geekbooks.com/blog/archives/000124.html</a><br /><br /></div>"It's clear that inkjet printer cartridges are our generations classic example of the "razor-for-the-blades" (RFTB) marketing approach. In RFTB marketing, the expensive razor is given away, in order to sell many more of the even more expensive blades, down the road. With inkjet printer cartridges, it's all too obvious. I could swear (and I often do) that the cost of some inkjet printer cartridges seem to exceed the cost of the printer itself.<br /><br />Far be it for me to criticize the inkjet printer manufacturers for the practice. I think that inexpensive color inkjet printers are pretty cool ... not perfect by any means ... but pretty cool. The idea that absolutely anyone can afford color prints would have seemed unfathomable in the early days of the desktop publishing revolution. Back then, desktop color printers were insanely expensive, and in the province of the well-heeled. These days, color inkjet printers are everywhere ... if only those darn cartridges weren't so expensive!"<br /><br />Daniel has a good rant about ink prices and he talks about his experiences with replacement inks. Once, many years ago when I had my first Canon bubblejet printer, I bought a DIY inkjet replacement kit. It was a complete disaster. Since then, and after reading about how badly most third-party inks fade, I've stuck to OEM inks. What about you?

[Don Tolson]

I also tried DIY inkjet refills for my HP722C a year or so ago. I also found it to be a complete disaster. Ink everywhere, a mess in my printer, smears, etc. and the 'refilled' cartridges seemed to be running out of ink much faster than the new originals.

For my $$ and time, it makes more sense to go to Costco and buy a bulk pack of 2 or 3 cartridges at a time -- black and colour.

[James Fee]

I'd never refill ink. Whats the point of printing if the picture looks like crap because of bad ink? 8O

[michael]

I only ever buy Canon inks, it's just not worth risking prints and the printer with the other brand inks. To fully replace the ink on my i9900 (which arrived today, I've only done small prints as I'm out of paper, but the quality is superb so far) would cost me about $80 if I shopped around. But they last a long time, my last printer a Canon i850 used the same ink tanks and it was about a year before I started to run out of ink, although I was only making smaller size prints, it's still quite impressive. I expect the i9900 to last me quite some time, so if I fully replace all the ink every year it's still not a huge expense. If I used "comaptible" inks I could probably refill the printer for $40 a year, to be honest that $40 I'd save just isn't worth the potential problems and poorer quality prints.

We should be thankfull we're past the days of replacing the print head every time the printer ran out of ink - that's what made ink so expensive.

[David Horn]

Same here. Ink everywhere but in the cartridge and the stuff stains your fingers good and proper. (And the carpet, but that's another story...)

In the end, I found it cheaper to buy new printers each time, which really says something and is fairly pathetic when we're trying to encourage recycling.

I gave up and bought a colour laser printer (HP something-or-other) brand new for $400 and haven't even had to buy an ink cartridge since. It even came with full tonor cartridges, a rarity in today's world.

[Jason Dunn]

Heh. Looks like I'm not alone in my opinion. ;-)

We should be thankfull we're past the days of replacing the print head every time the printer ran out of ink - that's what made ink so expensive.

Interesting you should say that - quite a few people still seem to think that's the advantage of HP printers, that it's a good thing that the print heads need to be replaced. I've only recently bought an HP printer, prior to that I was using only Epsons and Canons, and in all that time I never noticed a drop in print quality to do the heads needing replacing. So I'm not sure that it really matters to me - I'm fine with just replacing the ink. ;-)

[dartman]

Jason,

What HP did you buy? Is it for photos?

I still have my Canon I960. Does a great job.

I use an HP 970 for non-photo color printing. Had it a couple years. Still works great. I have printed some photos on it but the newer models are much better.

dart

[Jason Dunn]

What HP did you buy? Is it for photos?

No, it's a psc 2510 combo fax/scanner/printer deal. I've printed photos on it before, and they look ok, but I prefer my Canon i950.

[Macguy59]

Precisely why I avoid HP printers. Their ink cartridges are very expensive and I print enough on a regular basis that I don't have problems with clogged print heads on my Epson and Canon printers.

[fgarcia10]

I may be the only person with good experiences using refills, I also use third party inks replacement. Neither my printer nor my photos are mess up.

I started using those inks almost a year ago and I don't see my pictures fading or the quality of my prints degrading. My five years old son saves then on his albums and I save them on my hard disk and cd just in case. My printer cost me a $99.00 "Epson Photo 825" but the prints look like the one from my Olympus 35mm camera. If I have to buy another $99 printer it is fine with me I have saved way more than that.

I'm a novice photographer, but I understand for some of you with very expensive equipment might not make cense but for a lot of us it does. And maybe some printers are like luxury cars that only take premium gas :wink:

[Dave Beauvais]

I was at an Intel conference last year where HP was a featured vendor. The HP rep who did the presentation said -- and I quote -- "HP is not in the printer business. We are in the ink business." I was annoyed to hear her state that so matter-of-factly, but also strangely refreshed by the honesty of the comment. :)

I've got a (relatively) old HP DeskJet 930C which was free after rebate from the now-defunct e-stamps.com. It's been working well for a few years now, though I find I only print on it about once or twice a month at most these days. (Paper is evil.)

[James Fee]

This just reminded me of an article I read on geek.com (http://www.geek.com) about a year ago.

HP expires your ink cartridges for you (http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Apr/gee20030501019809.htm)
In what can only be a bid to force people to buy more cartridges, Hewlett Packard has started making its inkjet cartridges expire when they reach a certain age. This was discovered by a corporate user who was presented with the error message "Cyan Ink Cartridge has expired" when trying to use his printer. Enquiries as to why this happened were met with HP telling him the date stated on the cartridge is not the expiry date, and that the cartridge will expire after either being in a printer for 30 months or has reached the age of 4.5 years.

[sheik]

It is worth distinguishing between ink-jet refills and 3rd party compatible cartridges though (which the poll doesn't).

The savings made by using compatible cartridges are huge. I am in the UK and use http://www.choicestationery.com - (they sell official cartridges too by the way). Bundle packs of two black+two colour carts work out at about 20% of the cost of the official Epson ones for my printer.
I can't tell the difference in quality so there is no question of which brand I will choose. I do have to do a print head clean every few weeks but I have to do that with official cartridges too.

Epson's print management software does complain about the unofficial cartridges but you can choose to ignore it. Personally, I wouldn't buy an ink-jet if there were no 3rd party alternative to the official inks.

/\dam

[Jason Dunn]

It is worth distinguishing between ink-jet refills and 3rd party compatible cartridges though (which the poll doesn't).

Hmm...but it's all 3rd party ink, regardless of how it's packaged, right? I bought a whole bunch of cartridges for my Epson C80 off eBay, and while the print quality was close to original (a bit to magenta for me) the darn thing dried up in TWO WEEKS. I tried it again and the same results...talk about frustrating! :evil:

But I'm glad they seem to work well for you. :D

[sheik]

Hmm...but it's all 3rd party ink, regardless of how it's packaged, right?

True, I just thought I'd make the point as there were a few comments about people spilling ink all over the place :)
I've never tried the syringe/refill packs myself, as it just seemed like too much (messy) effort.

Also, in some printers, the printheads (or part of the printheads) are in the cartridges so if you just refill them you will still be using an old printhead which should really be retired. In these cases it wouldn't surprise me if refills produced inferior results - but it wouldn't be because of the actual ink quality.

I've heard rumours in the past that at least one manufacturer tried to put code in their cartridge chips in an effort to make it a (DMCA) crime to clone them. Nothing seems to have come of that though so I may have misunderstood it at the time.

/\dam

[Jason Dunn]

I've heard rumours in the past that at least one manufacturer tried to put code in their cartridge chips in an effort to make it a (DMCA) crime to clone them. Nothing seems to have come of that though so I may have misunderstood it at the time.

Yes, that was Lexmark...and I think they succeeded in stopping an ink company from releasing clone cartridges. But who knows, that court decision might have been overturned by now... ;-)

[James Fee]

Yes, that was Lexmark...and I think they succeeded in stopping an ink company from releasing clone cartridges. But who knows, that court decision might have been overturned by now... ;-)
Well soon, read up below

http://www.scc-inc.com/special/oemwarfare/lexmark_vs_scc.htm

[Perry Reed]

Well, sure they're in it to sell the ink! They're quite open about that. Let me share a little story...

I worked for HP for many years. Within HP the inkjet cartridges are known as "pens". At a big meeting the head of the inkjet cartridge division walked up to head of the inkjet printer division, and asked... "How's the pen holder business?"

Which is exactly how the printers are considered.

[bobkatt]

This has been an issue from DAY ONE.
We are not hearing anything new.

Basically the more you pay initially for the printer, the less your consumables will cost you. Print heads are not designed for so many prints based on the amount of ink included. Most print heads will last for 1000's of prints as long as you clean them and maintain them.

Always buy printers that use a separate print head and ink reservours.

I have used compatible ink refills and refill cartridges for years.
Far cheaper than buying originals.

You just need to find the right supplier for the printer you have to maximize print quality and minimum problems.

Bob