Kodak Challenges HP's Printer Sales Model

Radon360 writes "Kodak has decided to attempt to buck the trend set by HP by offering low cost printers and reasonably priced ink cartridges. Three of their new printers start at $149, with ink cartridges costing $9.99 for a black cartridge and $14.99 for a five color cartridge. To counter, HP has announced a release of lower-priced cartridges, though with less ink and they are still more expensive than Kodak's. It will be a matter of time to see whether Kodak can upset the practice of ink cartridge extortion."

Comments

Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[gbulmash]

I guess if Kodak doesn't underprice the printers, they won't be as hurt by cartridge remanufacturers and cartridge cloners as the outfits that sell printers at a loss, looking to make it up in ink. Still, even at their low prices... everyone loves a bargain. If someone can profitably undercut Kodak on cartridges or DIY refill kits, will they find that they've just changed the tempo of the game rather than changing the game itself?

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Marc D.M.]

My only issue with this is that the DIY refills are usually messy and of a lower quality than the original.

I'm looking forward to this as it could pave the way for cheaper photo-printing options.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[LurkerXXX]

If the price difference between Kodak and the remanufacturers isn't that big, who is going to risk f'ing up their printer prints with garbage remanufactured crap when for a very small bit more they could get guaranteed good OEM ink? I know I wouldn't. It's the huge disparity in pricing right now that drives people to take the risk.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Kadin2048]

If the price difference between Kodak and the remanufacturers isn't that big, who is going to risk f'ing up their printer prints with garbage remanufactured crap when for a very small bit more they could get guaranteed good OEM ink? I know I wouldn't. It's the huge disparity in pricing right now that drives people to take the risk.

Exactly. Particularly when the printer is $150, and not some $20 piece of garbage that's just a holder for the $40 or $50 cartridge. Nobody cares really about messing up their printer, when you can just get a new one practically for free -- but when the printer is a significant investment, and the replacement cartridges are cheap, who's going to do that? It's penny-wise and pound-foolish at that point to cut corners.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[jridley]

You just need to be careful to buy a printer with carts that are easily refillable. When I had an HP, it was a little messy. When I had an Epson, it was stupidly messy, bottom fill, poppet valves that leaked, ink all over.
I now have a Canon and it's rare for me to spill a single drop.

Lower quality means you've been using crappy 3rd party ink. Buy from a company that formulates ink properly per manufacturer. IMHO good 3rd party inks are at least as good as OEM inks. It's not like the OEMs have some secret process for making ink.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[DDLKermit007]

It's only a risk if your printer is an Epson generally with non-replaceable ink heads. Something like HPs you can buy the shittiest refills you can, and it doesn't matter. Ink head clogged? Oh well, hit it with a little alcohol, nope, new cart. Too bad I only got to refill that black cartrige three times for printing text.

Something else of note though. I find it highly suspicious these sites that have been doing photo ink print comparisons all of a sudden. In the control case they use OEM fresh carts, and OEM paper. Then they turn around, get the cheapest ink refill they can, and use garbage Office Depot paper, or paper that was made for a different printer entirely (the paper is the main factor in these instances). Just my 2 cents on the matter though.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. If they don't make much money on the ink, they won't care if people buy it somewhere else.

Kodak has priced these printers to be profitable on the printer sale alone. Compare the cost of these Kodak printers with similar HP or Cannon printers. The Kodak printers are much higher priced for the same feature set.

For years the printer market has been driven by the cost of the printer. People want to buy a $49 printer that can do near laser quality text and near lab quality photos and they make their purchase decision based on the price of the box. The printer companies sell the printers at a loss and make up the difference on the ink. People are waking up to the cost of ink and Kodak is trying to exploit it. Kodak is hoping that these people will now buy the printer based on the cost of ink only and not notice the more expensive priter.

You can give Kodak all their profit up front or you can make installments with HP.

What we really need is a printer company that wants to go out of business. They could sell the printers AND the ink at a loss.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[SythDot]

The last HP printer I bought (for "Free") is the last HP printer I will ever buy. Black ink goes for $3000 per litre. Yes, that is not a typo, a 5ml cart cost $15; that's $3 per millilitre or, $3000/litre.

I don't need to support a company that pulls that kind of crap. Besides, they given rise to the single most common class of spam email, the ink refill spam that inundates my server (more that penis enlargement and erectile dysfunction combined).

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[sphealey]

> Kodak has priced these printers to be
> profitable on the printer sale alone.

And the paper. Kodak make a very nice line of inkjet photo paper which comes in that nicely recognizable yellow box with the red logo - and a price to match. They could easily make their profit on the brand if their more cost-effective printers induce people to buy their photo paper.

sPh

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[UncleTogie]

It's not like the OEMs have some secret process for making ink.
No more so than Coca-Cola has a secret recipe/process for Coke...

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[linzeal]

Problems arise when you use some ink cartridges over and over again, I had to superglue the circuit board on my brother ink cart after about 5 refills. It just fell off during printing one day.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[simm1701]

Epson cartriges are not worth refilling. Unlike many other printers the printing head is not on the cartridge, its in the printer (atleast on all the epsons I've ever had). This means the cartridges are a lot cheaper to make, true epson still charge an arm and a leg, but the clones are very easy to find cheaply and I've never had a problem with them.

I think I pay about 3GBP for black and 5GBP for 3 color for my 740 - the printer is also 7 years old now and still works fine.

I think I'll stick with epson in future - mainly for the sheer ease of buying good quality cheap clone cartridges.

Having the printing head on the printer has a down side - if it breaks its time to bin the printer - too expensive to replace/repair - the up side it they can use a better quality one than the disposable ones on the majority of cartridges

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Tim Browse]

And this is commng from someone who self fills.

Well, this is slashdot, after all.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[ThePromenader]

You're in the exact same situation as I - I'm still using my circa-1996 Epson Stylus Photo EX. Prints super-A3 size, and works like a charm. Some ink-clone companies are lower in quality, but with a bit of research (and perhaps some trial and error) one can find a suitable brand. May I also point you to This earlier Slashdot Article.

What it comes down to (for me) is this - since I will never be using any store-bought printer for publication-quality prints, my printer works just fine for all my personal and layout needs. It's when one goes publication-end that one needs to pay more attention. Yet I wonder how much the "big guys" pay for ink?

The high price of ink cartriges is an abuse, and it is no coincidence that virtually all printers have, until now, followed the same practice at almost the same price level. I'm glad to see that trend break.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[Moraelin]

Having the printing head on the printer has a down side - if it breaks its time to bin the printer - too expensive to replace/repair - the up side it they can use a better quality one than the disposable ones on the majority of cartridges

As opposed to HP where, at least for a couple of models, it's cheaper to buy a new printer than change the cartridge? Even though nothing is broken?

Not disaggreeing with you, just saying that if that's the only downside, I can live with that. Happily.

Re:Will People Still Seek Cheaper Alternatives?

[zakezuke]

My Canon has a separate print head that can be replaced.

So does mine.

But... it's a thermal printhead which will burn out. I estimate 10 cartridge changes on your average ip3000+ model based on canon numbers. Reality is much higher, 15 to 20 in my experence.

Epsons are based on micropiezo technology. Printhead life is rated double or tripple that of canon. It is more prone to clog, but a clog is typicaly not a catastrophic condition, it typicaly can be resolved with blue windex.

It's a question whether you want to employ elbow grease, or throw money at the printer to resolve typical print issues.

Let's not neglect the fact that in the case of canon, the printhead is typicaly 2/3 the cost of the printer, where OEM ink is also about 2/3 the cost of the printer. You may want to keep your printer in service, but replacement is not a bad deal.

Their sales will skyrocket

[ZoOnI]

I will be buying a Kodak if the cost of both toner and printers is low as well as a minimum reliability.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[Eskarel]

Yes, but that toner cartridge will usually print out several thousand sheets as opposed to the between 200 and 400 you get from an ink jet, assuming you use it often enough not to get drying or clogging. $100 for 2000 sheets is a hell of a lot better than $30 for 200. Especially when it doesn't dry out or have to get tossed because you haven't printed for two weeks.

Re:Their sales will skyrocket

[Fred_A]

Mod++
Exactly why I switched to laser at home years ago and never looked back. And I'd rather have my photos come out of a Frontier or some such than an inkjet. Ends up being cheaper too.

Expensive!

[wwpublishing]

Is it me or does a $15 cartridge sounds expensive. I mean, like you go to a copying a store, and copies are like .03 each. $15 = like 450 pages. One of their ink cartridges can't even print that.

Re:Expensive!

[PhysicsPhil]

Is it me or does a $15 cartridge sounds expensive. I mean, like you go to a copying a store, and copies are like .03 each. $15 = like 450 pages. One of their ink cartridges can't even print that.

The $15 cartridge is for colour. It's $10 for b/w, but it's still more than you'll pay at a copy shop. The copy shop will be using toner-based laser printers, which have a cheaper per-page cost to run. If you're planning to print a lot, get a home laser rather than an inkjet.

Re:Expensive!

[jlarocco]

$15 expensive? A while back I bought an old HP Deskjet for $10 at the flea market, my logic being that if it didn't work it wouldn't be a big deal because I'd enjoy taking it apart. A win, either way. But then I had to buy ink. I ended up spending $80 for black and color, and I'll be shocked if they last to 450 pages. Fortunately the printer works, because I don't think they do refunds on ink.

But anyway, $15 would be pretty sweet given the alternatives.

Re:Expensive!

[Grishnakh]

Yep, it's a rip-off. Comparing apples to apples, the B/W cartridge is $10. For three times that, I can buy a new toner cartridge for my HP laser printer which will print at least 5,000 pages. I'm sure these Kodak cartridges won't last for 1666 pages.

Plus, toner cartridges don't have to worry about drying out with too little use, like inkjet cartridges do.

The simple fact is that inkjet printing is just a bad idea, no matter what the costs are. It can't compete in any way with laser printing technology, except by using marketing to take advantage of peoples' stupidity and shortsightedness.

Re:Expensive!

[alshithead]

I've been very happy with my HP Laser Jet 2600n. It prints great for our minimal everyday use and seems to be pretty economical for printing large quantity color tri-fold adverts for my wife's business. The print quality is wonderful and the variety of paper types that can be used is excellent. I've got it on a wireless print server by Linksys so all of our computers can use it as the default printer.

I would suggest that anyone using a bubble jet investigate a color laser printer. With the toner recycling promos offered by the office supply stores, replacement toners seem to be a lot less expensive than the little tiny bubble jet replacement cartridges.

Re:Expensive!

[CastrTroy]

In my experience, Inkjets are terrible for casual users. I need to use my printer about once every 3 to 4 weeks. Because it's inkjet, and I use it so infrequently, the cartridge is dried out every time I need to use it. So I've given up on the thing and it sits in a corner. When I need to print something, i'll use the printer at work, or go to the UPS store. For Photos I have Walmart. The next printer I'm going to buy will be a laser, because I don't want to have to worry about the ink drying out. On another note, what happened to dot matrix printers. I remember we had a dot matrix printer and the cartdges (ribbons?) were $5 each and laster for well over 1000 pages.

Re:Expensive!

[dfenstrate]

The simple fact is that inkjet printing is just a bad idea, no matter what the costs are. It can't compete in any way with laser printing technology, except by using marketing to take advantage of peoples' stupidity and shortsightedness.

Coming from someone who has a color laser printer at home and loves it, I can't fully agree.

I may well buy one of these new kodak printers just for printing photos. I'm currently under the impression that you can't get good photo-paper prints from laser printers because they typically melt the glossy emulsion.

The printer I have is the Okidata 5500 . It cost $400 after a $200 mail in rebate (which I did get back in a month or two) and I haven't had to replace a toner cartridge yet*.

They are 'starter' cartridges but I've gone through two or three reams so far on them. Anyway, it can't be beat for copy paper printouts. I just want to print out photos for framing on occasion inkjets seem to do that better.

Kodak's little program here may mean I actually buy one instead of hitting the kiosks at Walmart or a photo store.

*Not counting that messy incident when I realized that the toner cartridges are two seperate pieces, and that the 'lock/unlock' switch didn't lock it in the printer, but locked the halves together. That cost me $120 and an hour of cleanup.

Re:Expensive!

[fotbr]

Dot-matrix went out because they're seen as "old", they're NOISY, and the print quality pretty much sucks compared to anything out now.

That said, I still have an ancient Epson (it was purchased with an old 8088 machine) that still works, and I've got a pile of ribbons for it. It'll print fine from some old dos programs, but I'm too lazy to put together a windows print driver. It is tempting though. Just for the novelty, not for any practical purpose.

Re:Expensive!

[Atlantis-Rising]

I have a laserjet 2600n, and can second this, most emphatically. At home, it's plugged into my network, and I've never had a problem with it at all (except for the fact that it seems to do its autocalibration routines in the middle of the night, which can be very startling the first few times).

Plus, I did the cost per cartridge analysis, and it was half the cost per page of an inkjet printer. Absolutely great. Even if the initial outlay was 399 or so, it was still totally worth it.

Re:Expensive!

[squeegee_boy]

Don't forget that you have to throw away the cartridges and buy new ones every time you decide to print photos (since you only want to do so occasionally) because the ink will have dried out, rendering the cartridge useless.

Do lots of people leave their inkjets in front of a south facing window or something? I print only a few photos a month, if that, and I've never had this problem in the 3 years I've owned it. Not once. Canon i960 with the 6 separate inks, if that matters. My Mom's old i860 was the same (until the electrical part of the head went, but that's another matter). Maybe integrated-printhead cartridges are worse for this? I dunno, but my printer is in a cool, dark cabinet. I have a Laserjet 4000 with a duplexer for text work.

Re:Expensive!

[zakezuke]

On another note, what happened to dot matrix printers. I remember we had a dot matrix printer and the cartdges (ribbons?) were $5 each and laster for well over 1000 pages.

Dotmatrix was cost effective, but I'm not sure you remember it as well as I do. A ribbon out of the box would last a long time, but contrast would fade. It was ledgeable, but rather quickly wasn't what i'd call presentation quality. A small ribbon would probally do about 300 pages before contrast suffered greatly. Current generation OKI printers claim 4 million characters, which works out to be about 760 pages assuming 80 characters/line and 66 lines, so 1000 to 1300 pages isn't unreasonable.

But if you remember dot matrix, you must remember tractor feed jams.

But what happened to them? They are still around. For carbon copy forms they are still quite where it's at. For situations where the amount of data per page is small like with a video rental forum they are still useful as they require squat in terms of prep time, and shoot out a page faster than my inkjet thinks about starting to print. They are not the type of printer you would enjoy using with anything but the built in fonts.

About time!

[Jerry Rivers]

Hurray for Kodak! It appears to be attempting to turn things around and be competitive again after years of lacklustre performance and seemingly rudderless operation. The acquisition of Creo put them in a good position in the prepress workflow biz, and now with this announcement maybe we'll have a reason to buy Kodak again at the consumer level. I look forward to trying one of their printers.

Re:About time!

[je ne sais quoi]

Hear hear!

In their defence, you'd be rudderless too if you were a buggy-whip manufacturer after the Model T was introduced. The multi-mexapixel camera made them pretty obselete, but it is good to see them move this direction, especially since HP have turned into such a bunch of wankers. It's a pity about HP too, they used to make such great calculators, I still have my two 32SIIs that I wouldn't trade for any other calculator that I know of. (Yes, I've seen the 33S, it looks like some dorks from the marketing department got a hold of it and mangled it.)

Back on topic though, this seems like a pretty natural choice for Kodak, I wonder how long they've been planning this, because it's the first I've heard of them in the news since they got out of the analog camera business. It seems like the couple of years that's passed since then would be enough time to come up with a working printer and ink business model and implement it.

Going to buy 2 right away

[Jason Straight]

Just my way of telling the other printer makers that ink isn't worth $30,000/gal

Re:Going to buy 2 right away

[epp_b]

Are you a woman?

Are you new here?

Hope for their success, but...

[catbutt]

I have real doubts they will be able to compete with that model. People's natural tendency is to seek the cheap (or easy) route now, giving far less weight to the long term.

I know I have a hard time bringing myself to, for instance, buy things in larger containers....I know it's cheaper in the long term, but I don't like putting out a bunch of cash now.

I also knowingly do other equally irrational things along the same lines....for instance, if I am standing at one corner of a football field, and have to get to the opposite corner without walking on the field, I will always walk along the long side first. It gets me closer to my destination quicker, even though the overall distance is the same. Irrational, but I can't help it.

Vote with your wallet people.....

[budword]

Kodak here I come. I'm tired of large corparations taking advantage of the flock because we ACT like sheep. Put HP printers out of business until they get the message. I believe I read (maybe here) that HP printer cartriges had a chip on them that would report to the computer that they were out of ink, when in fact they were not, to get you to buy another over priced cartrige. Hurt them where it counts, or they will never change. I've been buying canon printers, and canon ink (rather than slightly cheaper 3rd party ink) to try to reward them for not gouging me on the ink. I'll look into kodak next time I need a printer. Now if they have native linux drivers, Kodak would be a done deal. They won't change until we hurt them where it counts. Next time you buy a none HP printer, email them to tell them why you won't buy their stuff anymore. http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/feedbac k.do;jsessionid=GxCTB6m1p2fJcoG63U7U0P1YV8VQVD3QNP 177At6udUrxCMjeG6K!711870732

Re:Vote with your wallet people.....

[PinkPanther]

Kodak here I come. I'm tired of large corparations taking advantage of the flock because we ACT like sheep

...I'm tired of acting like sheep. C'MON EVERYONE, let's go buy XXX instead!!!

;-)

They better have a good marketing team

[hcmtnbiker]

Breaking from a paradigms is always hard, but breaking from a paradigm like this one will be near impossible. People don't naturally calculate out what is the best for the amount of time they believe they will own the printer, they don't ever realize that they're tied into buying HPs ink for the rest of thier lives. Kodak will have to have one hell of a marketing team to pull this off.

Funny - Canon already does this.

[Plekto]

I can get ink for a typical Canon printer for a couple of dollars because the head and tank are separate.

The price for ink bought online via InkDaddy or other sites for the Canon printers runs about 1-1.5 cents a page, or almost exactly what the cheapest laser printers cost(black), and under 3-5 cents a page for color.

What a concept...

[epp_b]

Well, it turns out that building your products in a way that adds value for your customers is better than intentionally creating a way to continually rip them off (ie: building as much of the printer's "brains" as possible into each ink cartridge)! What a surprise!

Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[gelfling]

My Epson C86 is a wonderful desktop inkjet. Discount ink is $10 for extra capacity black and $8 for each of the other 3 colors. A new C88 is about $80 retail at Staples.

Does it scan? No
Does it scan pictures? No
Does it print w/o a computer? No

And when it breaks I toss it out and get another one.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[NETHED]

Thanks for driving the costs up for everyone. A warranty is just that, its not a end-of-life replacement program. I would chide you further, but I know I'll get modded to oblivion anyway.

Re:Photo printer copier scanner not a printer

[Peeteriz]

Parent said "And I guarantee you that after three years they won't print as they should---just a fact."

      If this is so, then the only problem is that not everyone is bringing these printers back as defective. There is no techical reason not to make devices that survive the warranty period in 95% cases, not 5%.

Typo?

[tooyoung]

Shouldn't that be:

Kodak has decided to attempt to buck the trend set by HP by offering low cost printers and outrageously over-priced ink cartridges

Re:Too bad

[tkrotchko]

At BJ's club, canon's 3e cartridges (fairly common) cost about $11 for B&W, and about $25 for all 3 color cartridges.

Note the color cartridges are discrete, which is slightly cheaper in the long run.

Is there an old joke here someplace?

[CrazyJim1]

I used my Lexmark to print out five dollar bills, but I still couldn't afford ink refills.

Re:It is not extortion

[iCEBaLM]

I'm pretty sure he was talking about the ink cartridges, not the printer.

HP releases ink cartridge page yield using ISO standard pages at http://www.hp.com/pageyield

Re:Apple printers!

[maxume]

Do you have a Steve Jobs I can borrow?

Ink prices

[purduephotog]

Dye Ink costs about 1 to 15$ per gallon to manufacture. Milled ink (methanol milled nano-particulate pigment ink) is about 3x the cost.

I used to work for Kodak.

They can dump better ink at lower prices all over the market. HP does NOT want to get into an ink pricing war- everyone would lose.

Re:Ink prices

[Lumpy]

Wah!

It needs to be bad for everyone. Although I dont understand why anyone even wants Inkjet anymore for anything but a CD label printer.

Xerox full color lasers are almost $200.00 with a full set of toner carts. I have ran at home for a year now printing at least 5-10 pages a day between and still have not ran the toner below 1/2 yet.

The bets part, I can shut off the printer and let it sit there for years and turn it on and print right away. Every inkjet would be completely dead as the heads would be clogged and dryed out.

Yes nest year I will have to pay $300.00 for the high capacity toner cartridges, but then I'll have 4 years of "ink" at that point and will probably throw away the printer before it needs a refill.

Not bad for a network laser that has a photo quality mode that looks fantastic works with linux as it's a real postscript printer.

Does anyone even make a postscript ethernet inkjet?

Re:Ink prices

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I really haven't had such significant problems with ink drying like that, and I have left my inkjet printer unused for months at a time. The only special treatment I do is to wrap the printer in a large bag for storage in a closet. Years is silly because if you print that rarely, then you don't need a printer.

For general use, laser is fine, and that's what I use most of the time. Still, for quality photos, I'm not going to pretend that an inexpensive laser is going to do that as well as my inkjet can for picture quality.

BTW, just to add something off the wall, at the one desk I use for printing various things, I have four types of printers associated to just one computer. I can actually justify a fifth printer.

Re:Ink prices

[sacrilicious]

Xerox full color lasers are almost $200.00 with a full set of toner carts.

Cheapest Xerox color printer I saw on their site costs $350 (I don't regard "rebate" prices as real; and if I did, I'd compare their "$250" price to something below the expected street value of the kodaks). Doesn't look like free toner cartridges are mentioned either....

Re:Ink prices

[Sketch]

The problem with low end color lasers is they appear to be following the inkjet ink model for toner cartridges.

Printer - $250

Full replacement toner set - $321 (from the same site, I didn't shop around)

When I looked a few months ago, the cheapest color lasers I could find where you didn't pay $50+/cart were in the $400-500 range.

Kodak? Printers?

[rueger]

Get real, this is yet another last gasp attempt by Kodak to find something, anything that can replace the photographic film business that was their bread and butter for so many decades.

Re:Kodak? Printers?

[Jerry Rivers]

Kodak has been in the printer business for a long, long time. Though mostly at the enterprise level as far as I know. I remember seeing Kodak-branded laser printers in the 90s.

Why shouldn't they get into new business? Are they supposed to just close up shop because film is dead? And they are nowhere near a "last gasp." Kodak's a big company with many assets. Though they have slumped badly in the last seven years they still rake in $13.5B in sales.

If only the RIAA were listening now...

[zappepcs]

If only the RIAA would take a note from this exercise. Both industries have similar problems. I hope that the consumer is the real winner....

And this is news how?

[Anonymous Coward]

People must not look beyond HP printers much, if they think this sort of thing is new. Canon has been selling dirt-cheap ink refills for years.

Case in point: I bought a Canon i475D for about $40 in 2004. The ink cartridges are easy to find, and cost $5.99 for black and $13.99 for color (at Newegg, about $1 more at B&M). It is far from the first Canon printer to feature a system like this.

If anything, Kodak is late to the game, and HP just continues to suck.

Epson has also been selling relatively cheap ink cartridges for a while now.

The printer-ink thing has to crack soon

[Animats]

The early ink-jet printer patents should be expiring soon. The first inkjet printers were developed in 1976, and HP's original DeskJet shipped in 1998. We'll probably see a flood of no-brand-name printers using generic ink over the next few years. That's what happened to laser printers when those patents expired years ago.

Re:The printer-ink thing has to crack soon

[petermgreen]

that will stop cartridge cloners, it won't stop builders of inkjet PRINTERS.

patents can make building PRINTERS much harder (witness the fact that there are only a few makers atm) but as the GP said patents have a finite lifetime.

the cartridge chip thing only affects builders of third party carts for existing printers.

related article in the Economist

[sacrilicious]

Caught this article just a few weeks back, it goes into some detail on Kodak's inkjet technology.

One major question for me

[BrynM]

One of the things I was left wondering after reading TFA is "But does the Kodak software try to take over my computer and is it a resource hog?" That, not the cartridge gouging, is what made me swear never to buy another HP. I was already saying "cool" about actually buying the printer at a reasonable price and letting the ink be a normal price. If Kodak has decent, non-obtrusive software, I'm thoroughly sold.

The Quality SUCKS

[bademailname]

I have seen the quality of these bargain printers first-hand at a recent (HP) seminar, where they "tested" (in a very armchair fashion) the $199 model Kodak vs. the $199 HP. The Kodaks are a bargain for a reason: they suck ass very hard. The color was washed, almost 5 shades lighter than their HP counterparts. The ink has a waxy residue when it dries that is incredibly easy to scratch with your fingernail. Both Kodak and HP use image-enhancement algorithms before outputting, but in the Kodak it is impossible to switch-off, which destroys most mid- to high-res images. The contrast is horrendous and in some test shots it looked like pictures of two different locations. Oh, and the printer? The on-screen controls are wonky and limited. The ink-system uses print heads, which were difficult to install. The Kodak was nearly 1 1/2 times the size of the HP. And did I mention the image enhancement can't be turned off?

Re:Special Interests

[Tim Browse]

Answer:

• Colour inkjet printers are cheap.
• Until pretty recently, colour laser printers were not.
• Many people want to print in colour (note I said want, not need).

HTH

Another alternative

[gerardrj]

People... stop using ink jet printers. I'm not going to talk about brands since I don't want to skew this argument, but for about $500 you can get a really decent color laser printer that will to 20 pages/minute in black and 5/minute in color. Yes, that's five pages per minute not five minutes per page.

Yes, you pay a lot more for the printer, $500 vs about $100 for a decent inkjet, but you don't need to EVER clean print heads and you don't need to purchase special photo or "hi-res" paper. As a bonus, a page printed from a laser printer will last as long as the paper does; toner doesn't fade or decay at any descernable rate unlike ink which will start fading in a few months unless well protected.

So lets look at those costs:

Inkjet: $149 to purchase the printer; $25 to refill the ink. I my experience I get maybe 100 pages from an ink cartridge. For 4000 pages I pay $975 for ink tanks. This number assumes that the tanks in the printer box are full and that I never have to clean the print heads and that all the ink is always used on printed pages. I've now spent $1,125 to print 2000 pages.
Lets take my laser printer: $500 to buy the printer with cartridges that last ~4500 pages.

So even for printing 4000 pages the laser printer is $625 cheaper than the ink jet. And yes, I'm ignoring the electricity costs since most lasers today have "instant on" fusers and have quite good power management. The annual electric cost may difference may be $20, but even if the electricity operating cost is $500 more for the laser I still save $120 over the cost of the inkjet.

The break-even point for the laser is about 1500 pages. And again... all these numbers assume you are using standard paper in the inkjet. hi-res or photo paper can increase printing costs on the inkjet by a factor of two, easily.