Reducing TCO of an Inkjet Printer?

AtariDatacenter asks: "Everyone knows that inkjet printers are cheap, but the cartridges cost a bundle. I was trying to find one with the lowest total cost of ownership for a modest twenty or so pages a week. This PC Magazine article kind of takes this on, but with a small sample group. Are there any printers today that should be avoided? Is ink reducing software like inkSaver as good as they claim?" Inkjets have a lot of drawbacks when it comes to laser printers except one thing: the initial price. When it comes to printing lots of text that you intend to keep for an indefinite period of time, which works out better over the short-term and long-term? I've already had Inkjet printers die after a few years of normal usage, are laser printers any better?

Comments

Continuous ink systems

[eXtro]

You can buy extremely high quality ink (or cheap ink) in bulk and use a continuous ink system. A lot of professional shops make use of these. Once I run the free cartridge that came with my Epson 1280 out I'll be adding one to my system.

The ink becomes a lot cheaper. I'll be using the archival inks from inkjetmall.com as well as their continuous ink system.

They could prepare their readers.

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's a trick in which PC Magazine participates, rather than tell their readers to prepare for the attempted rip-off and tell them where to get cheap cables.

Priorities?

[Raetsel]

20 pages a week? That's a resonably substansial amount of printing.

1. In color, an inkjet will cost you (rough estimate) $2 to $3/week at that rate. That's not taking the cost of special paper into account. (Ask yourself if you need color -- what are you going to use it for?)
2. At the same rate, a used LaserJet will cost you roughly 50 for the same number of pages.

   Really important point:
   

3. Laser printers produce a lot better output on cheap paper. Inkjets sometimes require paper that costs more than blank CD-Rs! ($1.00/sheet for photo quality paper!)

There certainly are reasons for an inkjet, too. You can't beat the entry price, but it's a Gillette business model -- lose money on the razors (printer), make (lots!) of money on the blades (ink). I recently heard tell a rumor about a disposable (recyclable?) inkjet -- the whole printer was cheaper than 2 replacement cartridges! (Ouch!)

If you really need color, an inkjet is hard to beat.

• HP Inkjet printers can "mix" ink to create better-blended colors on a page. (I don't think they're alone in this capability, either.) HP calls it "Color Layering" -- it works because injets dyes and pigments aren't completely opaque, where laserprinter toner is.

• Color laser printers are limited to placing 4 different colors of toner next to each other and letting your eye perceive something that's not really there. Sure, you could stack pixels just like an inkjet, but instead of blending colors, you'd just see the one on top (best case), or a melted brown smear (worst case).

• Other side of the coin: Dyes fade. Pigments (for the most part) don't. This is why you can still dig out 20-year-old laserjet-printed material and it's perfectly readable. Print out a picture of your cat on an inkjet, leave it tacked up in your cube, and print out a new one -- same printer, same file -- a year later. You'll notice the fading.

  There are some inkjets moving to pigment-based instead of dye-based inks. (It's a premium expense, though.) The output from these is supposed to be colorfast for much longer periods, but I haven't seen this first-hand.

Okay, last point: The Minolta (QMS) Magicolor 2200 color laser. Office Depot sells 'em for $999. Listed on Pricewatch (refurbished) for just shy of $800. 1200 x 600 dpi, 20 PPM B&W, 5 PPM Color. Even comes Ethernet-ready. Yes, it's expensive, but it seems like people drop that much on (new | upgrade) parts for their computer every 6 months.

Don't mix ink types in Epsons!

[inkfox]

If you buy an Epson inkjet printer, throw away the ink that comes with it. Generic ink cartridges for the Stylus series can be had for under $2 per cartridge (yes, even the color ones) with one catch:

Epson's ink congeals on contact with most generic inks and jams up the ink path, often irreparably. This problem is mega, since Epsons have the printing unit built into the printer, not the cartridge as with HP carts.

I've not had a problem with mixing different kinds of generic ink however, so as long as an Epson never tastes an Epson cart, you're good to go.

It's also worth mentioning that there are replacement assemblies available for the epsons, which use tubes going from specially modified print heads to individual pint-sized ink reservoirs which sit in a box beside the printer. If you get one of these, you can print something like ten thousand pages of color without refilling.