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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.
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.
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the strongest word is still the word "free"
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.
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.
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.
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.