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European Parliament: No More Ink-Cartridge Chips
Leon Zandman writes "Electric News reports that the European Parliament voted unanimously on Wednesday in favour of a new EU "electroscrap" recycling law, which comes into effect in 2006 and includes a ruling directing manufacturers of printers to no longer incorporate chips into their own-brand ink refill cartridges. These chips prevent cartridges produced by other manufacturers from being used in many printers. In addition, proponents of the measure say the chips prevent them from being refilled -- a feature on many cartridges made by printer manufacturers. Seems that prices of printer cartridges are going to drop. Let's hope the prices of the printers themselves will not skyrocket..."
The current business model is "Sell the printer at a loss, clean up on supplies."
Since the printer companies won't be able to rely on this anymore, they will have to jack up prices just to make a profit.
This is something I don't think many (non-techie) consumers realize. Many complain about high ink prices, but don't realize the manufacturer probably sold the printer at a loss.
Oh poor baby HP - can't monopolize the ink business anymore. Frankly, I think this is the greatest thing that could have happened to the printer biz - because like people are saying, they'd rather drop a few hundred on a printer and not have to spend a bloody fortune on ink all the time. My damn ink dries up before I can even use it, and my printer takes the 2 cartdriges, so they screw me over every time I need to print something. Trust me, ink competition in this market is a good thing. This would be like if you could buy a car for $100 and every time you needed gas, it cost you $500 and you could only buy gas from one company. It's just not right.