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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
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 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.
<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.
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!