Slashdot Mirror
Ink More Expensive Than Champagne
laing writes "According to this story, ink for home printers is now seven times more expensive than vintage champagne.Ink in a typical replacement cartridge costs about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre." Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!
This was all covered earlier. The story posted by Michael earlier today about Lexmark's DMCA suit contained a link to a BBC article showing the price of ink to be higher then that of vintage champagne. The 1.70 per millitre thing was even covered.
You guys are editorial juggernaughts.
Ink costs more than champagne? What?! That's not the natural order of things. To correct this problem, the French must immediately start drinking printer ink and printing with champagne. That should kill a few problems with one stone (sorry for the mixed metaphor). To clear up the resulting confusion we will call printer ink "Freedom Champagne" and champagne, "printer ink 2: full-speed".
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
IAALS.
People are taking this so negatively; just revel in the fact that champaign is so cheap!
Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!
/> don' know what yer takin' 'bout. <hic /> I get those spams alla time.
I <hic
Champagne.ink? Has someone been coding in Java too much recently...? =p
I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze
The thought of even drinking the ink, or snorting toner sends shivers up my spine! Urghhh! Us geeks know how to have a good time eh? ;-P
if you think toner is expensive you should see the cost of MICR toner used to print cheques
See title.
You don't get any for booze because the ATF would go postal on spammers. They take their job very seriously.
Anyway, why do we need all this hard copy anyway ? A more interesting article could be written on the technological tricks the Chateuax Petrus has used to ensure a good grape harvest.
But seriously -- anyone mind providing conversions to USD?
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
the Manchester(UK) metro this moring, the Metro for all those who dont know is the free bus read in the morning.. I dont know if its just me but its amusing that the Metro got the story out 16hours before /.
moo
I've long held the belief that ink for inkjet printers is way to expensive. I bought a cheap laser printer 4 years ago, for about twice that of a nice inkjet printer. However, I am still using the same toner cartiridge that came with it. I've probably saved myself 10 times the money by going with a laser printer. Yeah, I can't print in color but that does not bother me. I'm not sure how the price of toner compares to ink cartridges, but laser is the way to go.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I know it's expensive, but when you're choosing between champagne for your "lady-friend" and a $30 ink cartridge, what do you do?
My annual operating cost for an $800 HP LaserJet 2200 is about a $100 for toner.
Sure, I paid a lot more up front, but having to spend $100 every two months to maintain an Epson Inkjet added up quickly.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Everyone buying ink in bottles keeping
control of both quality and price should
post their methods and experiences so
we don't have to use this thread to whine
about suspect business methods anymore.
Does this mean people are going to start bootlegging ink? Will the great crime families ditch the drug trade for the undergound ink market? I fear the day our great cities are brought under the heel of the ink barons.
I tend to find the 86' Lexmark ink has a fruity taste which can be complimeted only by a good mature cheese and a decent toner cartrige.
Even though ink is more expensive than fine champagne, and therefore is better than fine champagne (proof by induction), you shouldn't drink it.
It would stain your teeth some ugly color like #006666, and you would never get a date and you would die cold and alone, a pitiful 30 year old virgin.
Instead, drink beer -- it's been helping ugly people get laid for over 200 years!
I don't want to be here.
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Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!.
Sending booze by mail across state lines is not legal in many places.Pound for pound...
Poodles cost more than horses!
Crack whores cost more than fatties!
Eardrums cost more than eyeballs!
Best Windows Freeware
This happens with ink. How fortunate we are that other stuff for computers cant be sold the same way ink is.
Its a good strategy selling cheap hardware, and than charging huge amounts in the stuff needed to make the hardware function. Should this be illegal?
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
This post reminds me of when the Mayo Clinic informed me that they make their own ink to keep costs down, since they like to insource as much as possible. Perhaps it was the cost of outsourced ink. From IT to Ink there are good reasons to do it yourself.
I just found it interesting that the Mayo Clinic, as far as I could tell by working with them, is a company that is going the opposite direction as most IT companies when looking at sourcing projects.
This one I think is called a yink. And all he does is drink drink drink. And what he likes to drink is ink. And the ink he likes to drink is pink.
so, if you have a lot of ink, you should get a yink, I think. -Dr. Suess
.sig
I usually get the generic cartridges for my pre-chip Epson. When they ran out of those, I had to buy the "economical" two-pack of genuine Epson.
Aside from the $40 cost (deep-discount, as I understand), just getting the cartridges out from all the packaging was a chore. It was like peeling an onion. It was time- consuming. I needed a knife to get past the hard shell. There were slick-coated 4-color ads in and on the packaging.
The resulting stack of garbage took up half the wastebasket -- not including the spent cartridges, which I am starting to save for refilling.
Knowing I paid for all that glossy, 4-color trash makes me highly reluctant to buy those genuine cartridges again.
Max: But chief, that's incredible. Do you realize what this could mean to our energy supply?
Chief: Unfortunately its an extremely rare type of ink that can only be found in the Middle East.
Yes I'm paraphrasing, but that's the first thing that came to mind;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
This has been going on for a while, it shouldn't surprise anyone. Manufacturers are getting cheaper (not all their own faults, but it's a fact of life for most consumer grade items). The make crap and hope to keep selling it, because other manufacturers are finding cheaper ways to produce the same goods (usuallt with offshore labor, but not always).
So...in the end, they produce crap and try to make up profits elsewhere. In the printer business, that's either paper or ink. And not a lot of printer manufacturers are selling much expensive paper. And, they're not liekly to beat the paper industry at inexpensive paper either.
Me, I cut printer costs by saving everything on $0.50/GB hard drives instead of printing, always cheaper in the end.
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
Isn't there some type of Open Source Solution for this problem? Shouldn't there be one? We need to get a group together and create an Open Source printer. Then we need a similar ink solution helping to drive down the prices.
How many "p" equal 1 £?
...there will appear a printer company that doesn't do nasty tricks about its cartridges and sells printers and materials at reasonable prices. I'm sure there is a large market for this.
Like: Cartridges with "refill valve", authorised "refill sets" and "cleaning units" (so dried cartridges could be reused), the cartridge capacity used in 100% and not lowered, new cartridges that come with the printer full, not just with enough ink for 5 pages, and nothing that would try to make your cartridge useless sooner than it just rubs off against the paper or gets broken in some other "normal way". Plus user policy that grants not changing that.
I'm sure "per customer" profit would be way lower, but sales would beat all the competition.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The 1997 Epson is printing quite nicely. Too bad ink doesn't get better with age.
Unlike Champagne, ink becomes useless with age, your drivers turn up their nose at an old cartridge. Damn expiration dates.
I guess this means I'm going to be giving my English instructor a bottle of champagne instead of a research paper this Fall.
Champagne is to printer ink as:
a) Automobiles are to shoes.
b) Doorknobs are to bedpans.
c) Beach sand is to integrated circuits.
The answer is c because integrated circuits are computer related and this is slashdot...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of drunken soviet cartritges that refill YOU!!!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Well according to this, ink costs about the same as Chanel No. 5 Eau Du Parfum, but when was the last time you tried to print porn with parfume or champagne?
Huh?! Is it?!
"I wonder what it's like living in a constant haze of stupidity" - Hiei, Yu Yu Hakusho
1/4 of an ounce will set you back a dollar. That means one gallon will cost you $512.
You think that's pricy? I advise you not to look at the cost of perfumes or colognes then.
Dell realized how much money is being made by all the printer manufacturers. They wanted a piece of the action. So they buy Lexmark printers, put the Dell logo on the front, and modify the printers so they only take Dell cartridges. Then idiots that think they are getting a great fuckin' deal on that $80 printer have to pay $30 for black ink and $30 for a 3 color cartidge. It makes people not want to print anything. Before they hit the print button they have to pause and think "Man, do i really want to print this? Its going to cost a couple dollars just to print..." I miss the days of dot matrix. This is one thing about the PC industry that really pisses me off. They must be making $20 profit on a $28 cartridge. I thought competition was supposed to keep prices in check? Is there a printer "cartel?" There is obviously some kind of price fixing going on here because I fucking know it doesnt cost $20 for a few CCs of ink
Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!
Actually, it says nothing about toner and everything about the high price of ink. Note that:
1. Ink is for inkjet printers.
2. Toner is for laser printers.
3. Toner is usually MUCH cheaper per page than ink.
I've been waiting to find a color printing option that approaches the cost per page of a laser printer with the color quality and resolution of a good inkjet printer. So, has anyone here on Slashdot found an optimal solution that offers reasonably quick printing? Extra points for built-in network support.
Yeah, and a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gasoline.
You obviously don't live in California.
I mean, you drink some champaigne, take a piss an hour later, and it's gone.
You print out your term paper...and behold! It's still there! Way to go ink manufacturers!
Of course, you could always try your luck with pissing on a piece of paper...but I don't think your instructor would like to read your essay that you printed that way....
You're waiting for /. to post a review of T3? Why? About a zillion sites have got reviews of it up already if you weren't too lazy to go look.
I am not a man, I am a free number.
1. Develope color printing technology that is cheaper than ink-jet.
2. Make scads of money
3. Buy one of the really prestigious Champagne "Houses" - they are so funny...they do not call them estates, but houses!
4. Hire the best chef in France to make lots of Hot Grits
5. Invite Natalie Portman over
6. Enjoy 3 course meal of Fine Champagne, hot grits and Natalie
7. Print out pictures of #6 on cheap color printer
8. Sell copies of pictures
9 Profit!!!!!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
How do you think HP got the cash to buy out Compaq? God knows Carly had yet to make HP produce a decent PC themselves. Whole-lotta profit in those itty-bitty cartriges.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
...when you buy Champagne, the bottle is actually full. Plus there is no crime against refilling the bottle and using it for your own stuff.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I agree for another reason: I drive thru a stretch of dairy farms on my daily commutte to work and if I were asked to go and milk those stinky cows under a constant barrage of pigeon/bird droppings I would be charging an arm and a leg too :)
Consider this:
1. Buy mint condition Epson Stylus Photo EX @ Goodwill for $8.
2. Buy (6) color and (6) black ink tanks from 'inkinablink' on eBay for ~ $45 delivered
3. Connect to Linux box and configure CUPS
4. Print. A lot. $53 per year, plus paper.
5. Printer breaks? Printhead clogs? Repeat step #1 as necessary. I 'upgraded' from a $20 Stylus Color 800 to the $8 Photo EX.
Come on people, use tha brain a bit, you don't have to go to CrapUSA to buy this stuff...............
Fancy restaurant starts you off cheap, with like a 4 dollar beer or 7 dollar mixed drink... but by the end of the night you're shelling out $200 for the dom perignon to maintain the drunken stupor!
Get the word out to the people! This is an injustice!
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
That's nothing. You should see the cost of worms. This week, 250 grams of mail-order worms cost me 4UKP (say $6). So much for the urban legends about worms going into McBurgers. I bet they just use cheap filler ingredients instead, like ground up cow.
Refill your Canon i320 printer that you bought for $40 (U.S. price) with this refill system: http://www.ims-ink.com/. It costs $17 at Costco and refills the black cartridge an estimated 24 times. The system also comes with bottles of colored ink; haven't calculated the color refills yet.
For a person that uses his printer alot, one ink cartridge lasts quite a long time compared to how long a champagne bottle lasts for someone who drinks alot.
I buy a drink mix that, added to water, yields a liquid that's more expensive than gasoline. Does that say anything about the high cost of the mix, or the low cost of gasoline? NO! They're two different things and thus have two different prices. Telling me that a little tub of ink costs more than champagne on a per-unit basis is similarly useless information, unless I can substitute champagne for the ink.
Yeah, and the difference is that there's no R&D costs with gold, nor does the FDA force the miners to put it through an expensive approval process before it can be molded into your favorite bling.
That tells you more about the price of bottling than anything else.
Compare bottled water to bottled gasoline, or pumped water to pumped gasoline to get a fair comparision.
Because it's only an inch and a half accross?
Or because it isn't a real t-shirt, just a ascii art one?
Well based on the Pfizer stock it looks like, to some, Viagra is worth much much more than 35 times it weight in gold...
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
I was once told by the design dept. where I work that they would never let me take the printers they were using.
Then I gave them one of these.
They couldn't get rid of the other printers fast enough. 20 PPM full photographic color, single-pass laser printing. The damn thing basically has a first generation Power Macintosh G4 under the hood for the RIP processor (PowerPC 7400 / 500Mhz, 20GB hard disk, 512 MB RAM).
It is the most impressive printer I have seen in a long time. Be warned: it's damn expensive, but it has already paid for itself many times in the last six months.
Oh, and it has your built-in Ethernet, and responds to AppleTalk, LPR, and Windows printing.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
...I bet it can't touch Bull Semen.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
So it costs him $900 in the first year with the laser printer, and $700 in the first year with the InkJet ($100 for the Printer, $100/2 months on ink). The second year, it only costs him another $100 for the Laser, and another $600 for the InkJet, which is where it makes a difference.
Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!
geez, don't give them ideas!
ID-10-T is a way of life
What's printer ink made of anyway? How hard would it be to make your own, with the right pigments?
the weed seems to be taking effect..
retarded cum jockey
but it doesnt give michaels sandwiches the same tangy zip he craves.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Hang on just a gol-durn minute here!
"mao che minh (611166)" points out that this story is a rapid-fire dupe, and gets a +5, Informative. I say the same thing (albeit in a more smartassed way) -- and even go to the trouble of self-deprecating as "obvious" -- and get a -1, Troll?? What am I trolling for, complete apathy?
I was expecting a +2, Funny, or, at worst, 0, Redundant. Are mod points being passed out in Cracker Jacks these days, or what?
(Now watch as the original modders also mod down this complaint against them.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
A link to a story that links to a different article does not make for a redundant link, zipperhead. But nice job whoring that karma!!
Obviously not.
Over here in Belgium, ink is more expensive than buying a new printer. So... You'd better buy a new printer, use it with the ink that comes with the printer, sell the printer after the ink is gone, and buy a new one.
you are a loser.
Why not just use champagne as ink toner? That way it doesn't matter whats written on the page, the reader always puts it down with a smile.
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Ah, yes...that's probably a result of the printer technology that Xerox got when they bought Tektronix. Good stuff. I'm sure it's a great printer, but the price is still a tad stiff (~$1,500USD) and toner cart prices on Pricewatch seem a bit spendy, though certainly better than inkjet per-print prices. Probably a great choice for a workgroup printer but a bit of a stretch for a home office printer. Good suggestion though...thanks for the feedback.
1) Buy a $20 PDF writer which writes all printed documents to a PDF file.
2) Mail said document to your office overnight.
3) Print said document and quickly dash over to the printer and snatch it before your local bean counter or IT gastapo catches you using company resources.
4) Lower personal costs to zero.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Why not make some good strong coffee and fill your cartridge with that? It's black, it's liquid... voila!
I need to stop printing and start drinking. Its "cheaper". Yeah honney. I was thinking about printing out the manual for your new stairmaster, but I wanted to save money so I drank a case of cris and then put it together.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Ahh, but the NEA might give you a grant for that!
My name fits again.
Other in other news, Dick Cheney is the appointed Vice-President of the United States... More news at 11:00.
Bottled water is more expensive than wine.... Crab, what a great place to go out for a party!
My other OS is the MCP!
Comparing prescription drugs to a standard commodity such as gold by weight is likely to produce very skewed results, for two reasons. First, gold is a commodity. You can buy it from anybody and there is no patent-protected monopoly on it. Second, the masses of effective doses for most pharmaceuticals are extrememly variable and can vary by something like six orders of magnitude from one compound to another.
To get really ridiculous, why not talk about the cost of software per gram? It approaches either positive or negative infinity, depending on whether a blank CD gains or loses mass when they stamp it.
They're just cashing in on the Radio Shack business model. You buy the gadgets, and they've got the supplies you need.
I'm a 2000 man.
Cockeyed.com did a comparison of the cost of various liquids by the gallon in the US. Check it out, some of them are pretty amazing: Cockeyed presents: The Price of a Gallon
Page for page, slashdot costs more than the bible.
The damn thing basically has a first generation Power Macintosh G4 under the hood for the RIP processor (PowerPC 7400 / 500Mhz, 20GB hard disk, 512 MB RAM).
For some reason the first thing I thought of when I saw this was remembering that at one time, the fastest Apple computer was the original LaserWriter. It had a faster CPU than the Macs available at the time.
In Canada, a $100 toner cartridge gets you around 5000 sheets on a low-end laser printer. The same price cartridge for a more expensive printer (same toner, but different cartridge shape for obvious reasons) gets you well over 10000 sheets.
Most inkjet cartridges here are in the $40-$50 range (assuming all black printing). You get anywhere between 200 to 500 pages per cartridge.
So basically:
Note that I'm ignoring any ink/toner that comes with the printer; usually these are extremely low-yield 'samples', and in any case the initial toner cartridge almost always outperforms what you get for free with an inkjet.
So basically, unless you're planning on only printing a few hundred pages EVER, it makes no sense to buy an inkjet for B&W printing. Never mind the fact that if you rarely use an inkjet, the ink nozzles eventually stop working even if there's plenty of ink inside. At least, no amount of cleaning can fix the ones I use in my Epson Stylus 700, if I don't print for more than 3 months.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
One interesting fact about ink cartridges:
As you all probably know: ink prices average around $30 US per cartridge.
Did you know that most of the $50 printers use 10mL ink cartridges, while the more expensive ones use 40+ mL cartridges?
The strange thing is that when it's time to refill the ink, the 10mL cartridges cost almost the same price as the 30 mL that are used in more expensive models. So while you saved a little money by getting the dirt-cheap printer, you're now paying 3 times as much for the ink!
This is (in my opinion) a very unethical way to trick consumers into thinking that they are saving money by buying a cheaper printer. I've heard many people say that "it's cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy the refill cartridges". But it turns out that this is not true.
Don't believe me? Check out the HP deskjet 3300 series ($40 printer). It uses 10mL cartridges that cost $17.00, which is $1.70 per milliliter.
Now check the Deskjet 6127, a $299 printer. It uses 42mL cartridges @ $29.00, which is only $0.69/mL! The ink for the $40 printer is 2.4 times as expensive.
By the way, this does not apply to Canon printers, but does apply to most others.
Don't make that mistake again, you might get sued!
I purchased an Okidate 10e Ledjet that uses a high density LED array bar vs laser. It also features an enclosed paper drawer and feed mechanism that precludes dust - the main killer or printers. Also, it's a nice boxy HPish-looking thing, i.e., it doesn't look like belongs in an organic garden.
I forget the exact cost, but it was around $250. Toner cartridges are very resonable to, I remember around $30-$40 - so reasonable I bought two while I was at it. They last a long while too.
I chose it because we did reliablity testing at work (point of sale systems), and it was the hands-down winner. Heat, dust, dirt, humidity, vibration, etc. Very popular printer with point of sale apps such as McDonnalds (think grease), NAPA (think dirt) and so on.
Cheap, reliable, laser-equivalent performance at lower cost, and no ink!
You forgot electricity. HP Laserjet 1000 burns 200 watts printing (7 in standby), and the 2300 burns 400 watts printing. And it used to be a whole lot worse, some laser printers burned more than 1000 watts. To compare, a deskjet 3300 burns 23 watts printing. You may not pay for it, but someone does. Those watts may not sound like a lot, but they really do add up. Even an energy star networked printer will burn $10-30/year. Most of which would be saved on an inkjet.
-Sean
You also buy new jets now. No champaign comes with a delivery mechanism that can precisely deposit little droplets of it on paper exactely where it should go - at least some of the carts cost is there.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I firmly believe ink is NOT expensive to make. The ink I buy for my fountain pen is cheaper to buy then inkjet ink and its MUCH higher quality...
But the market will bear the insane pricing.. so it continues...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's, "You can drive out nature with a pitchfork..." not "you can drive nature out..."
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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...a fine sativa.
And to stay on topic, pot is worth more than gold.
Actually, here in canada the media tells us that american drug dealers are so dumb that they trade coke for our pot, pound for pound.
zeke
I wirked for California Coolers for a while (anyone remember them?) and let me tell you, bottliing is cheap. After the initial capital investment is earned back, it's pretty much a minimum cost operation.
What this fact tells us is that people will buy just about anything. We've gotten so condition to the $1.00-$1.25 bottle of soda (talk about a pure profit market!) that we willingly accept a $1.00 bottle of water. Add in the snob appeal of certain brands of bottled water and you've got yourself a massive money-maker.
One thing you have to remember is that price is NOT a function of cost. Price is a function of market forces. It is whatever people are willing to pay.
Consider: I used to wirk for a computer store eight years ago. A regular six-connector 50-pin SCSI1 internal ribbon cable was priced at $60.00. You know how much it cost the store to buy it? $5.00. Yep. $55.00 markup. Why? People beleived that SCSI was more expensive.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!
Toner is an powder mixture used to develop images in photocopy machines and laser printers working as follow:
* A copier drum is given a positive charge.
* The image from the original copy illuminates the charged drum and a latent image is formed.
* Static electricity attracts toner to the drum surface and a visible image is formed.
* Toner on the drum is transferred to paper by positive charging.
* After the image transfer process is completed, the paper is separated from the drum surface.
* Toner on the copy paper is firmly fixed when the paper runs between heat and pressure rollers.
* A cleaning blade wipes off excess toner.
* The drum is exposed by a neon lamp to erase remaining static charge.
" ink for home printers is now seven times more expensive than vintage champagne."
It's also 4x more intoxicating!
"Derp de derp."
" Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze! "
Yeah, that was the conclusion we all came to. All the other theories about availability of booze at the local convenience store were just too easy to refute.
Actually, here in canada the media tells us that american drug dealers are so dumb that they trade coke for our pot, pound for pound.
I have some freinds in college who would LOVE to meet those idiots. You must smoke too much of those BCs to believe that garbage. Screw the media, no matter which country they are in.
Bottled Water more expensive than Gasoline! crazy.
I'm afraid that's wishful thinking. Most consumers don't look at the long-term costs of anything. If they did they wouldn't buy inkjets or SUVs. They'd buy LaserJets and more fuel eficient automobiles. People either buy the item that has the lowest off-the-showrrom price or what they've let Amdison Avenue convince them they want.
The costs-more-but-will-save-you-money-later printer will wither and die next to the costs-less-but-will-eat-you-alive-later printer. Once people buy something they'll pay through the nose to keep that item viable, if for no other reason than to convince themselves they didn't get ripped off.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
How about designer brand shoes and clothing.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Explains why my husband won't let me print ("is that IN COLOR?") but doesn't mind when I'm drunk?
I was looking at the HP 3420 - it was on sale recently for something like $40 or so.
I had always used second-hand DeskJet 500's, 560's etc... with the "26" cartridge - that cartridge holds 40 ml and prints out about 800+ or so pages. These "51626" cartridges are right around slightly less than $30 US. I have printed thousands of pages of material using these old HP DeskJets and have had no problems. I like those printers. They are kind of slow, but very reliable.
The black cartridge for the HP 3420 holds 10ml and is expected to print about 200+ pages. It costs slightly less than $20 US. The color cartridge for this printer holds 8ml and produces slightly less than 200 pages.
The higher quality (and more expensive) printers have larger page number counts for their refills, but many of the less expensive brands and printers had page counts of less than 500 pages per cartridge, and even though the cartridges have dropped in price, they hold a lot less ink and you can hardly get anything printed with one cartridge. These bargain printers are probably an excellent solution for those who just need to print out an occasional web page or order confirmation here or there. They probably are not designed for people who print a lot. And, paying 18 dollars for a cartridge just kind of feels better than paying 28 dollars for a cartridge, despite the fact that there is only 1/4 as much ink in there!!! The boxes are all the same size on the shelf, who would guess that one cartridge has 10ml and the other has 40ml?
I have come to expect over 500 pages from one deskjet cartridge. Closer to 1000 would be better - some printer can do this. The HP DeskJet 1200 (which is an older model) - this black print cartridge was rated at 1100+ pages before it ran out (42ml). Same price as the others - about $30 US.
I don't doubt that the quality of the printed pages is good - I love Hewlett Packard printers, it's just that if you print a lot of stuff, you really need to get a printer (even second-hand, if you can find one) that was originally designed to do some serious printing. I found a second-hand HP printer (I love HP printers) that is rated for 12,000 pages per month; not like I would ever print that many pages per month, but it is kind of cool to know that you could if you wanted to.
Office Depot's site has page counts on all the refills - I found it helpful when shopping around for a printer. To some people, page counts per cartridge don't matter - they don't print enough stuff to have that matter. But to many of us, it does make a big difference, and it is surprising how expensive the ink is for the really inexpensive printers.
Have you ever tried drinking ink?
It tastes shit, and got no bubbles.
What is the point of this story? If I want to drink expensive and good bubbly, I drink Cristal!
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Think about it. Can you think of very many fluids that are cheaper than gas? Other than plain tap water, there really aren't very many liquids that you can get that cheap.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Hmm. *swishswish* *sip* *dribble*
This ink is an India vintage...2002 I think. It has an excellently robust color and a nice stain. The spread is characteristic of a 3% solution. The smell contains just a hint of petroleum. Yes, I am certain this is Epson Black, catalog number 734-T4.
*polite applause*
Ok so it is more expensive than an 85 Dom. There are more expensive bottles of chapagne out there. There are some really damn expensive ones. And as for Sauternes.... a '67 Chateau d'Yquem is quite pricey (as is any Yquem). 1945 vintage ports go for a nice dollar as well. So it's not more expensive than champagne just some champagnes. Which, of course, is disengenuous because champagne is not used in the extremely small quantities that inkjet ink is used in. 750ml of ink would last a helluva long time, a lot longer than 750ml (standard size bottle) of champagne would last (especially in my vicinity).
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
In an unexpected turn of events, East and West coast rappers have swapped Cristal and Dom Perignon for cases of Cyan Photo Ink Tanks BCI-6PC. Reasoning aside from the need to hemorage money on useless things, drinking printer ink while cruising the Escalade does not result in a DUI. Rumor has it famed Long Beach rapper Snoop Dogg has even begun smoking HP 78 Inkjet Cartridges.
In other news:
Moet & Chandon and Roederer will begin shipment of their first ever CMYK Photo Inkjet vintage.
Well a printer cartridge will print for a few weeks/months... unlike Dom Perignon which can't get you drunk for a few weeks/months.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It just doesn't pay to discover.
thats why its so expensive
In almost every city in America, clean drinking water is available from your city water tank almost for free. ... Drinking bottled water is looked upon by many Americans with a certain amount of scorn for lack of thrift
I guess it's drinkable here, but it won't pass as "clean" for me until it loses that mysterious nasty taste (filters help, but not enough).
That said, the best thing about travelling is everywhere else I go the tap water tastes as good as bottled Arrowhead (which I get at Costco for $4.50 for 6 gallons; better than $1.80/gal for gas)...
"Mandrake, have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?"
"Do you know what it is? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot that we have ever had to face?"
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Kroger wants at least $1 here in Memphis. And that's for Kroger brand water.
These high prices are just a result of rampant piracy in the ink industry. College students are especially guilty of downloading ink from Kazaa and sharing it with their friends.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
Yeah and marijuana is more expensive per ounce than Gold is, suppy and demand.
Then, this fake Ink crap must be your alka seltzer in ginger ale
I wonder when I'll be able to order it in resturant.
me: I'd like a flute of printer ink thank you.
waiter: Would that be red, yellow, blue or black?
me: Make it blue - oh and none of that refiller ink crap!
6 years from now at McDonalds. "Would you like printer ink with that?"
I just can't be bothered.
Remember that the quantity of champagne you would consume in a sitting is far more than the quantity of ink you'd consume (use) in a sitting (or day). So per day, you're spending less on ink than drink.
I got tired of the cost of ink cartridges. $24USD is just too much for casual printing.
I just dug my IBM (pre Lexmark) dot-matrix printer out of the closet and found ribbons on the web. Only $16 dollars for 3 ribbons. They'll last me at least a year.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Dear world,
That Dom would be a lot more expensive had it come with a very price-at-a-loss wine cooler. The OEMs make the money by selling the ink and toner cartridges.
Later,
Slashdot Junky
.
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
that your printer doesn't require a magnum of ink!
In Cupertino wher the local water tastes like..UGH!
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Crappy taste and the possibility of lead contamination lead me to bottled a long time ago (no pun intended).
I live in Fairfax County, VA--one of the wealthier counties, and yet the water is still crappy. Apparently, in response to concerns about microbes, they've been adding more chlorine to the water. Yuck. Then there's our pipes. Although the pipes are copper, they are joined with solder which may be lead based (40 year old pipes). Although it's unlikely that the lead levels are dangerous, this just gives me one more reason to drink bottled.
I still cook with tap water, but I let the water run a few minutes to clear the pipes before using it.
Of course, it could be worse. I could be living in DC, paying a million dollar mortgage, and drinking out of pipes that--wait for it--date back to the Civil War.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
well if you bought ink in a five gallon drum, the price would probably be different, but you need to account for the cost of the cartridge as well.
A lot of people complaining about bad water are mainly complaining about the mineral content of their water. Water in some areas is naturally "harder" (contains more minerals) than others, and it'd be prohibitively expensive to distill it all. It's not dangerous, and many people don't mind the taste, but some people dislike it (and it tends to leave mineral deposits in your shower/bathtub).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In the time it took you to type this non-puncutuated, illeterate rant and the lame picture, you could have read every fucking dupe on this thread twice. Seek medication or counselling man.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
It was also an important part of the diet of the european middle-ages peasant. Peasants would stockpile barley and wheat for the winter, but towards the end of the winter, the grains would start to go bad. The solution to this is beer
Ahhhh, beer!
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!
-H.J.S.
You can't take the sky from me...
How much per liter is white-out? How much per pound is lead refills for a mechanical pencil? How much per liter are eye drops?
It's all a matter of volumes and supply and demand. If everyone bought ink by the bottle like they did champagne, the volumes would be way up and the consumer price would probably be more similar.
Tastes like apples?
yea, ...but there's still no sex in the champagne room
my blog
I don't get it how do you compare £ to p? What is a p and isn't 23 > 1.70 if they are both pounds per ml? I have never heard anyone in the states write millilitre, why not just write ml? thats whats the beakers and pipes I been smoking out of use!
...that, for instance, HP only produces a few different actual types of printers. i.e. the printers' guts are all the same, just the software is different to allow better printing quality. So it's very likely your $50 printer is the same one as the $350 printer. Just different software and different plastic exterior.
You left that way too open.
Yeah, and you just couldn't wait to put it in, eh?
Road Apples :>
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
A better option (well, IMO) you can get off-brand cartridges for many printers online, and inkfinder.com is my site of choice for tracking the best prices. Last time I got twelve cartridges for my Epson C80, three of each color, for about $65 shipped -- about the cost of two black Epson-brand cartridges at Office Depot.
One of the big problems is with name brand designer drugs, is tha tthey have ridiculous amounts of patent control and lock down every bit of research associated with the drugs so other people really can't get their hands on a cheaper alternative. Recall all of the articles (no linking here, there are like 50) about ridiculous patents, or the making of patents purely to keep other people from competing with you?
That's pretty much what huge drug companies like Pfizer and Glaxco do. Combine that with the screwy HMO system in the United States and you get outrageous prices that go into paying off junkets for doctors and health-care managers.
Recently (like last year and early 2003) there was a big debate about whether or not US drug companies that had patents on AIDS vaccines should be forced to allow generic drug manufacturers from India and other countries to make cheaper copies of the drugs for use in Africa where AIDS is running rampant.
Of course US Administration policies toward international family planning groups isn't really helping, nor did their oppostion to opening up the patents initially. Anyhow, I'm going to stop in the interest of keeping this a-political.
>It would stain your teeth some ugly color like #006666, and you would never get a date and you would die cold and alone, a pitiful 30 year old virgin.
Which of course makes you wonder the true cost of other things, oh like sex.
Date 1: Fairly cheap lunch/coffee: $20-30
Date 2: Evening movie, dinner: $60-70
Date 3: Concert and light bar hopping (parking, tickmaster tax): $50-70
Non-Date: did relative/friend a favor to get on her good side: roughly $30-50 lost opportunity cost (more if you include your hourly rate)
Date 4: Simple night in, beer/recreational drugs: $25
Score.
Not only shouldn't you drink the ink, you should at least have $200 if hoping to score.
Ink is a hell of a lot more fun to drink than vintage champagne. Gives you a better high. See? I'm writing (ink) and I feel good about myself.
This insight into the life off OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN came from intelligent comments on Slashdot!!!
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
I don't much like the printer companies either, but not ALL of the money you spend is on the ink. For HP printers at least, the cartridge includes the actual print head, which is a fabbed semiconductor. HP doesn't even fab their own printheads, so there is some overhead there as well. This is the reason (generally) that HP carts are somewhat more expensive than, say, Canon, which uses a fixed print head on their bubblejet printers.
Saffron (a spice made from crocus flowers) is more costly than gold!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's bullshit. My Lexmark 4039-10 died and I wanted a new low end laser printer because I knew that laser printing is waaaaay cheaper than inkjet. But guess what? There's like 3 laser printers below 300 bucks. A Casio, an Olivetti and an HP. One doesn't have Win95 drivers anymore and two are USB only. Leaving one with what can best be described as drivers that were basically written to be traded for crack.
So it's back to the inkjet route. And while I love my Epson C82 I know each page is costing me a fortune. At least I get toss out two Canon BJC-4200's now (well, one goes to college with Kid) And will soon toss out a Canon BJC-600.
BTW Canon printers are pretty high quality. They all go obsolete and you can't get ink for them way before they break beyond repair, unlike my HP LaserJet5 which suffered a torqued chassis in the paper path and died a horrible 'pick up 10 sheets of a paper at a time' death. And the Lexmark actually died from the combination of a blown clutch and a failed paper sensor in the tray.
I doubt these most of these modern $100 inkjet printers can live to the 3000th page. Usually they will break well before that and there is no economic sense in fixing them.
They did an episode on bottled water. It turns out that bottled water is NOT tested or regulated by any government agency unless it crosses state lines, but tap water is constantly tested. The federal government has over 100 people that test tap water, but less than one person to test bottled water.
In an independent study that they quoted, more than half the brands of bottled water would not have passed tap water quality specs.
The funny part of the ep was when they went to a NYC restaurant and had a "water steward" BS'ing people into paying $8 for a bottle of water from the hose in the alley with a phony label on it; people were making up all kinds of BS about how "sparkling" and "crisp" it was, and how they each had a different character even though we knew they all came from the same hose.
Around here (Ann Arbor, MI), the tap water is VERY good tasting; I bought some bottled water in Chicago a couple of weekends ago and it tasted FAR worse than what comes out of the tap here. I actually think the tap water tastes better than the bottled stuff, but people still buy the bottles.
Also, Aquafina/etc is NOT distilled, it's merely filtered. Taste distilled water sometime; it's nasty. Aquafina is just Pepsi with no carbonation or flavoring; really, it comes from the same lines, it's the water that they normally use to mix soda. So you can pay $1 for a bottle of Pepsi, or $1 for a bottle of Pepsi without the additives.
What's that Monkey George? Your printer is out of ink. Yes, they make lots of ink in Europe. Yes, Monkey George. We will invade Europe.
What I find even more shocking (and annoying) than the artificially high cartridge prices is the fact that even bulk refill ink (and refill toner for that matter) is also way overpriced. There seems to be some sort of very-well-kept secret on where all the toner and ink refill vendors buy their supplies. Taking a recent example: a mere 90 grams of refill toner should not cost anywhere near $17. And that was the best price I could find anywhere. It sure beats paying $70 for a new cartridge, but it's still a scam. Inkjet ink is far worse a scenario.
So who's the "OPEC" of ink and toner? Any why isn't anyone fighting this nonsense?
I got tired of paying $30 per cart for my Epson Color Stylus 777, so I checked out Google and discovered that there are a handful of (Chinese?) manufacturers producing generic ink WITH microchips included. This is important because several Epson printers have chips on their replacement ink specifically made to thwart generic ink manufacturers... my model included.
The old way of refilling these carts was to buy a chip flasher and a bunch of ink, refill the original carts, flash the chip, then reseal the carts... major pain in the ass.
That's no longer necessary.
So I ordered a few carts at around $7 each from eink4u.com and paid $40 for 3 black and 2 color carts with shipping. No problems to report thus far.
Fuck Epson.
Oh, and there are MANY places other than eink4u selling cheap ink. Look around on Foogle, or better yet, go to BizRate.
I have to disagree with you on this point. Freshly distilled water is extremely tasty, though if it is left to sit in cheap plastic containers for a long period of time, it will absorb chemicals from the bottle which are poor tasting and possibly harmful to you.
Anyone who thinks that distilled water tastes bad should try a glass of freshly distilled water at room temperature. You will be amazed at how much better it is than any bottled water, much less tap water.
Peace and love, y'all
If you don't want to think, let me lay it out for you then: we, them, our dogs and mommies, everybody are fed up with expensive inks. We want low cost stuff but can't have it because most people are so stupid that they can't count 1+1 before bying a new shiny sub-$50 inkjet. Manufacturers on the other hand can count 1+1 and shift all productions costs and then some into ink prices.
Every mfger doing consumer products are trying to tie consumers into expensive replacement cycles. We get useless "new" features with useless "new" products everyday. New models of printers for every year, just for the sake of new looks and to get an excuse to make older models obsolete. People don't want that but tyranny of the masses force it anyway.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!
Great...now we know the next lot of spam will feature booze...
Never underestimate the predictability of human stupidity...
I have a bunch of HP ink cartridges, which the printer insists are empty when they are far from it. I even have one that is nearly full. Rather than give the consumer the option of using ink past a certain date, I suspect that the printer falsely claims that it is out of ink.
I use #10 cartridges on my HP 2000 C.
It's all about priorities I suppose :-)
Aftershave costs more than the finest scotch. Presumably because very little liquid is required for aftershave, compared to even a single drink. The production cost of aftershave must be much lower than scotch - ever seen 12 year old aftershave?
That's why I stopped using aftershave, and started slapping on the finest scotch. It's cheaper. The scent is more subtle. Highly recommended, but you have to make sure you don't start drinking it or the whole system falls apart and you find you are spending a lot more on your budding alcoholism, than you ever did on aftershave.
The reason people with substance abuse problems drink aftershave is cuz it comes in small bottles - like ink. You can't buy, and you'd never use a magnum of ink for your printer, but a magnum of champagne might not be enough; you better get two.
I think we're missing the point here, it's not the ink that's expensive it's the fact that the print mechanisms are now built into the cartridge, at least in the case of an ink jet printer. So each time you buy a cartridge you are also buying a print head. The ink itself must be a small amount of the price.
HowStuffWorks explains more.
The real scandal here is that the heads can last far longer than one batch of ink. Refilling should be properly endorsed and encoraged by the printer manufacturers, and practices like these should be stopped.
Of course what should actually happen is that people get out of the habbit of printing unless it is absolutely necessary. Most printed pages in the companies I've worked in end up in the bin fairly quickly anyway. What ever happened to the paperless office?
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
All that said, I gotta tell you, I bought a case of Aquafina in Michigan City, Indiana a couple of weekends ago, and it was pretty vile. By contrast, the Aquafina here in Michigan is fine, though I generally buy a bottle when I'm hard up for some water, then refill it out of the tap, since the tap water in Ann Arbor tastes just as good as the Aquafina.
The stuff I like best is the unsoftened stuff out of our well. It's a little chunky (high minerals incl iron) but I like it like that. The city tap water at work is OK too, tastes good, not nearly the mineral content.
I have the perfect solution, instead of a laser printer heatig ink, etc. Have the laser hit the paper directly and heat it up
"Evian" is "Naive" spelled backwards.
...do advertisements get modded +2, Informative.
No, it comes from a town in France called Evian-les-Bains.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
You can buy whole-house filtration systems. Sort of like those filters you sometimes see people put on their kitchen faucets, only put on the house's main water supply. Not quite as good as distillation, but not bad either. But they're not particularly cheap.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Uh. The water that leaves the treatment plant may be great. I'm sure it is.
But where I live it's not always the same water by the time it has travelled through the various pipes and waterworks and comes out the tap. I'm sure that also holds true in many places in the USA. Shit happens.
I drink distilled/RO water because the filtered tap water in my house doesn't taste nice to me. I do drink the filtered tap water but when I have a choice why drink something I don't like the taste of?
I may be an idiot, but there are people who spend about the same amount or more on Cola because they like the taste or the caffeine etc. Just think of distilled/RO water as yet another "bottled drink". I'm sure it's healthier than Cola. Sure won't make you insulin resistant for one.
And not all distilled bottled water tastes the same either - some seem to still have traces of acetone or something. I don't like the taste of mineral water either (chalky/powdery taste). I prefer to get my minerals from food.
Anyone who believes that the water will remain just as good after travelling many many miles of probably decades-old pipes and worse - old _domestic_ water systems is just as stupid as those drinking bottled water if not more so.