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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?
If your office is using inkjets, and you have more than 2 employees, then your IT or management are being extremely stupid.
Laser printing is the absolute cheapest with the Xerox color laser printers being the cheapest per page with their solid toner printers. We allow the sales department to print all they color they want as the Xerox is lower per page in full color than the HP4100dn Black and White, and yes I am counting printer cost+maintaince.
Inkjets are good for home use only or in LARGE format photo quality printing. Using then in an office is the absolutely stupidest thing in the world, you can recoup the cost of a $1900.00 Xerox color laser in less than 1 year with ink prices alone.... And yes, I know what I am talking about. We have a remote office of 3 employees and one manager, they were spending $225 a month in ink on two HP inkjets.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
<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.