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Testing Cheaper Printer Ink
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Computer users world-wide spend $22 billion a year on ink cartridges, and the big companies are getting stingier with the amount of ink they are putting into each cartridge, the Wall Street Journal reports. Entrepreneurs are seeking a slice of that market by undercutting HP and Lexmark with ink prices 20% to 50% lower. The Journal tested do-it-yourself refill kits, cartridge retail outlets and replacement cartridges from online stores to find the best way to save money on ink refills. One major finding: The quality often wasn't as good as with the name-brand cartridges."
Too bad they haven't even mentioned Continuous Ink Flow Systems - CIFS replacement kits exist for most of the ink printers out there and you stop getting raped by the printer manufacturers. Why buy cartridges at all, when you can buy ink by the barrel?
From TFA: "The kit included three ink colors -- yellow, blue and magenta"
Not to be anal, but isn't it cyan, magenta, yello (CMY)? Blue is part of RGB. There is a difference IIRC.
Ok, first thought on the quality is .. Durrr .. obviously the quality is going to be lower. Any idiot could tell you that.
..
However
Does it actually matter? Certainly I find that any documentation I want a client to see has to be *perfect*, which generally means sending it out to a proper copy shop or in-house repro facility. Internal documentation doesn't need to be anywhere near as high quality, so replacement inks are ok assuming they actually last a few years on the paper, I find thats more important than a few lines here and there.
So really where I work there isn't actually a market for "premium" ink cartridges. They're too expensive for everyday things, and not good enough for top quality things. There isn't any middle ground.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
I worked as an office junior for a guy once who refused to by branded cartridges once he found out about them - in this case Epsom. The cartriges were about 2/3 of the price and when they worked were pretty close to the quality of the original... when they worked. Between increased maintenance, broken printers and destroyed print outs I can't see how the TCO was much less than double the price of the branded inks.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Digital photos are printed on proper photographic paper using a web-based service which returns the (non-fading, and remarkably cheap) prints in the post two days later.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I mean really, If I had started out with a blank slate and the intention of making a true jem of the worst part of the consumer electronics industry I would not be able to top what modern printer manufactures have come up with.
The previous Lexmark debacle was just another symptom. I refuse to believe that Ink for something that prints out my TPS reports is worth more than its weight in gold.
"The price of ink per milliliter from the big printer shops such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Lexmark International Inc. has been steadily rising, at about 1% a year"
Excuse me, but wtf? It is supposed to be cheaper to produce a product as time goes on, and dont give me that "they are innovating the way things are printed". There hasnt been any corresponding 1% increase in quality over the years.
Now things are coming to a big market (refillers, do it yourself or walkin/internet retailers) and personally I cannot wait till they gut the entire industry down to a reasonable profit margin. The only complaints of the article were "not as sharp as the new HP cartrige", personally I can live with that if it means not being overcharged the next time I goatse my neighbors mailbox.
There is truth in humor.
What is it exactly that makes the quality worse? Is the ink less good? You would think they could fix that and add a buck or two - and still slap the HP and Lexmark on their fingers...
I work in this business but the trick is really really really, i can't stress this enough, don't buy a cheap printer. I'm suprised how many geeks completely ignore this part of their system, they'd sooner put neon lights in the case than get a decent printing aperatus.
7 2-236251-236261.html?jumpid=re_R295_prodexp/buspro ducts/printing/color-inkjet-printers
if you're looking to print anything, get a laser, they're built better, and cost less per page. if you must have ink jet, consider a draft printer or commercial quality high volume inkjet, i know HP sells an inkjet with a 60+ Ml black cartridge, that's a lot more than the 19 ml ones they give you in the cheapo consumer units. did a little research and here's a list of printers starting at 150 bucks that use 70 ML black cartridges.
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF02a/189
also worth noting, don't refill the cartridges for canon or epson printers unless you want to be replacing the printer shortly, it's like putting a bit of suger in the gas tank at every fill up.(hp's the print heads are disposable so it doesn't matter as much, and lexmarks aren't even worth mentioning)
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
Honestly InkJets printers have the highest costs per print vs. Laser or Solid Ink. And the cost of these printers have dropped Rapidly.
Samsung Makes a Color Laser Printer for $600 that comes with full cartridges, which covers about 10,000 prints. vs Paying $80 for an Ink Jet and $70 for ink every 500 prints. If you do the math you find you are saving a lot of money in the long run. Also Solid Ink is really good too, just as good if not better then Laser for Cost/Page. (And for those you probably said they heat their old TekSolid ink, Solid ink has improved greatly in the past 5 years and are just as reliable as a good laser printer)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I remember searching this out extensively when I took on a colour Epson printer from my brother. I don't have links to the sources, but I recall that the nutshell answer was that some manufacturers' prices were better or comperable to the generics, and some were worse.
Apart from factoring in cost of replacing print heads more often, and potential problems with DRM or voiding your warranty if they allege damage was caused by use of non-original ink (which I think in the US is in violation of the Magnuson-Moss Act, but I don't think is so here in Oz, tho I haven't checked) I recall there were two main factors:
One was capacity of generic cartridges - some have a smaller volume than the original, and hence this has to be factored in against their cheaper cost. Off the bat, this made the generics only marginally cheaper than the original for my printer. (I'm talking new cartridges, not refills).
The other was the quality of the print job. I was looking for a colour printer for photos, and it matters to me that the printouts would last perhaps 1-2 yrs before fading for the generics, versus a much longer (supposed) lifestyle for the Epson ink. Why save a couple of bucks if the photo will fade in its frame?
For me the answer was simple, and the Epson was much better value than the generic stuff. I recall finding material that suggested that it wasn't so clear cut for ink from other manufacturers, in particular HP. But I didn't chase that down.
fwiw, reading other peoples' experiences that it took a number of printouts before the generic ink replaced the original in the printer heads, and to expect smearing and poor quality until then, didn't exactly engender confidence that the inks were of comparable makeup.
-- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." -- HL Mencken
I used to use refill kits for my old canon bubblejet. I then changed it for an Epson C62 because I needed a colour printer. Lo and behold they'd fitted "smart" cartridges with chips that knew when the where empty and resisted all efforts to refill them. After a quick trip to the shops to buy replacements and finding out that they were £40 for the colour one and £29 for the black one, I said "fck that" and and just went back to the shop where I bought the printer and bought another one as the printer itself (which came with a set of cartridges) was only £60. Fortunatly I've now got a friend who runs a cheap cartridge website who supplies me with a full set for £6. Probably not as good as the official ones but for a differance in price of £63, I dont give a damn.
We've got an HP laser of about the same vintage. I think it was over five years before we had to replace the toner cartridge. My wife told me there was something wrong with the printer, and looking at her printouts my first thought was, "do they even sell the cartridges for this thing anymore?" Of course they do. You can get toner cartridges for the original laserjets
We also recently got an inkjet printer for the odd color document and for photos. Now a photo takes a tremendous amount of ink, to be fair. But we dont' really print photos that often; we're actually more likely to look at them on the screen. I'd say say we print photos about as often as I print things like refernce manuals on the laser. So while things may not be exactly equal, it's still fairly safe to say that we spend more on ink in six months than we spend in toner in five years.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have used refill kits in the past and although they are cheap I find they tend to mess up your printer heads. I have lost two printers in the past to these refills. Now, I just use new cartridges.
Adventure City Tours
<disclaimer>I used to work for one of the online digital printing service providers.</disclaimer>
The quality of the prints was, I have to admit, pretty damn good. When I first started there the service was quite expensive and it was touch and go whether it was worth sending off to have them printed. By the time I left though the price had dropped greatly and the quality remained (at least in the basic prints anyway).
It's worth shopping round, you can get some really good deals such as a second set for free. The cheapest always used to be (in the UK at least) Bonus Print but they were cheap because they only did a very limited number of print sizes. There are loads of other services out there that will print you photos onto just about anything you can think (we even did a toy bear for a while!). The quality of the other stuff though is questionable at best. A 2MPixel camera will produce a pretty good A4 sized print.
I'm sure I will get shouted at for promoting it but there is actually a fairly good digital printing client built into XP. You select a folder with images in it and then select print from the left hand menu (you need folder view tured off). It will give you a list with a number of printing service providers. I don't know if it still works though - since leaving the company I have stopped using Windows.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Not much.
A drum of ink, if memory serves, was around a couple of hundred dollars to synthesize. 55 gallons of purified, strained dye ink.
Now pigmented ink- thats far more expensive. The good ones are nano-milled which add (if memory serves) 300$ per kg to the production cost.
Ink is cheap.
The research, however, is very very expensive.
for a while (mid '80s), hp was starting to feel pressure on refilled toner cartridges and started making statements about refilled and/or third party toners breaking the warranty. i'm not sure that this was ever 'official' hp policy.
however, one day this stopped very suddenly. it turns out that there is federal law that says that if replaceable/consumable parts/materials by third parties will void the warranty, then those parts/materieals have to be provided free under the warranty. apparently, someone called hp on this and they have taken great care to note that the use of this stuff will *not* void the warranty. if it leaks, breaks, etc is a diffenty story.
eric
I bought a refill kit at Costco as it was the first one I'd found that had Photo Cyan, and Photo Magenta (for 6 color prints)
Aside from the hassle, I couldn't see a noticible difference in the prints after refilling. The _second_ refill however had a color drop out and I was too lazy to troubleshoot it. That's the nice thing about the HP printers - new cart = new print nozzles.
So, I'm pretty happy with at least one refill per cartridge...I also don't really mind the cost of the ink...you either pay now or pay later, I don't see why folks haven't figured that out.
Now, when my Laser Printer finally kicks off (May be soon, I doubt I'll replace the photo drum on a, geeze, 8 year old printer), I may seriously investigate a color Laser printer with an ethernet port on it...I've seen them as low as $350 w/o NIC and $450 with one.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
It turned out to be in the 6 figure range per gallon. (Although this story says its up to 8 kbucks per gallon) and there was this story about a US woman suing Hewlett Packard, saying its printer ink cartridges are secretly programmed to expire on a certain date.
Also, some people will want to do their own thing on their homecomputer but often have to print two or three pictures in order to get a good one. Many people are not skilled at getting the color, contrast and cropping right and they don't want the hassle. So for them getting prints the traditional way may be the best option.
Printer ink can be purchased by the gallon starting at about 100 bucks per gallon, depending on the usual factors
Other Comparisons (shamelessly stolen)
16 oz $1.29
16 oz $1.19
20 oz $1.59
16 oz $1.25 . $10.00 per gallon
12 oz $3.15 . $33.60 per gallon
6 oz $8.35
4 oz $3.85
7 oz $1.39
1.5 oz $0.99
9 oz $1.49..........$21.19 per gallon?!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjlwsales
4 1206) and for awhile he was offering free profiling of an image- definately worth the cost...
Its had one very good review (http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2
BUT... if you want stuff to last, buy AgX prints. There's 100+ years of technology in that...
Consumer Reports did a side-by-side test, as well as simulated UV exposure age tests. They found the same story -- refill ink was OK for drafts, but name brand ink looked and lasted much better.
You get what you pay for, anyone?
'tis the last hurdle of true WYSIWYG. why isn't there white printer ink?
Because (a) There isn't really a market for it, and (b) Printer ink works on the subtractive model, and to produce an ink that can print white on non-white paper would violate this model, and thus (more importantly) the ink itself would have to be substantially different in nature to the standard CMYK inks.
Think about printing white on black; the ink would have to be dense enough to *cover* the black up (something like 'Tipp-Ex'/'Liquid Paper'), and I'd guess we'd require a lot more of it on the paper. (Bear in mind that 'cover up' is the word here; this is neither subtractive nor additive- for the latter case, we can't add light. It also implies that the only way to get certain colours on certain non-white papers is to cover them with white ink, then use the CMYK inks on top of *that*).
All this implies new print-nozzle technologies would be required, and these would have to be separate from the current CMYK ones (there's *no* way they could design a nozzle that can handle 'normal' ink and the white ink *and* retain decent performance *and* sell it at a reasonable price).
Yeah, I realise you were possibly joking, but if it were trivial, I bet we'd have seen white ink by now.
Don't hold your breath waiting for it. Oh, and while I'm here.... In order to pre-empt any "white ink" jokes:-
"Uh, I can get you some white ink. Just wait till I get my pr0n collection, huh huh."
Pathetic. There goes the "insightful" mods...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I gave up on inkjets and bought a decent but inexpensive laser (Lexmark E232). It cost me less than my first inkjet (an HP Deskjet 500 back in the day), and I've found that I really don't need to print in colour that often.
The E232 is ridiculously fast, too, which is great.
I've still got my inkjet (a crappy Lexmark Z32) on the off chance that I really do need to print colour some day, although I'm more likely to drop a PDF onto a CD and take it to a print shop... it'll be much cheaper than investing in new ink.
- chrish
If you can believe it everybody here at the unamed government agency I work for has their own inkjet printer. Why? Because they are too lazy to get up and walk over to the $20K floor copier that nobody uses.
Sometimes the Federal Gov boggles my mind....when I worked in the private sector if I had asked my manager for a personal ink jet printer he would of passed out laughing and then after recovering would tell me to get back to work, use the floor copier and don't EVER ask for something so stupid again!
I couldn't stand not posting it. I got 2 working inkjets using different technologies and I have nothing against them.
:) Printer counts, just printed a status sheet. Yes, that postscript show off page still prints, Epson still warns me that I should get a toner before it ends.
The stuff here needed huge amount of printouts, I had a spare money and I got really tired of buying ink (original) or printing via clone stuff (which DOES have diff.) so I went and bought a Epson C1100 Colour Laser.
The brand choice was not so random, I did my usual trick, checked around which brand does really care about OS X development etc.
The thing is, I really feel like I wasted huge amount of money to ink. Because of a illustration I misunderstood, I spilled 75% of toner (dust?) which you know, no printer comes with full. It was stated on manual already.
As I am lucky(!), my mailbox under that situation (black toner warning) has become full with 200 page word documents which _have to get printed_. Believe or not, that spilled toner printed:
443 total pages, 262 of them colour, 181 B/W
Of course I am not mad to count
I am not advertising a particular brand/model here but staring to the ink packages I still have on desk, I say something is wrong with inkjet technology.
If I had to print 30 pages/month, I would stay with ink of course.
Sure the quality goes down; HP and Lexmark cartridges are designed to wear out fast. But if you buy a printer with a permanent printhead and ink tanks, and buy good ink that's formulated for the printer (not "one-size-fits-all" generic ink) you can get very good quality indeed.
I have a Canon i970 photo printer. I have never bought an OEM cart, when the ones it came with ran out I started refilling. I have refilled each tank about 25 times now, and the quality is still fine.
Wake up people. HP and Lexmark inkjet printers are cheap crap designed to be a continuous source of income for the manufacturers. Pay > $50 for a printer and save $100's later.
Epson also has permanent heads, but they take other steps (bottom loading carts which are messy to fill and cause bubbles, and chipped cartridges) to make refilling a pain.