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HP Explains Why Printer Ink Is So Expensive
CWmike writes "'There's a perception that [printer] ink is one of the most expensive substances in the world,' says Thom Brown, marketing manager at HP. Well, yeah. One might get that feeling walking out of a store having spent $35 for a single ink cartridge that appears to contain fewer fluid ounces of product than a Heinz ketchup packet. Brown was ready to explain. He presented a series of PowerPoint slides aptly titled 'Why is printer ink so expensive?' I was ready for answers. The key point in a nutshell: Ink technology is expensive, and you pay for reliability and image quality. 'These liquids are completely different from a technology standpoint,' Brown says, adding that users concerned about cost per page can buy 'XL' ink cartridges from HP that last two to three times longer. (Competitors do the same.) The message: You get value for the money. No getting around it though — ink is still expensive, particularly if you have to use that inkjet printer for black-and-white text pages."
Digital picture frames still suck. You get a tiny, low-res screen for prices sometimes comparable to a 24" 1920x1200 monitor. Sure, the display electronics will add some cost, but come on.
I always tell people to go to the store to get their digital pictures printed out. It's far cheaper than owning & maintaining your own printer, and typically higher quality. Commodity color lasers (of which I am a fan, too) really don't produce nice super-high-res color glossies.
I hate to admit it, but I love my original Kodak 5100 mfp. The ink is cheap and lasts a long time, the actual cost per page is one of the lowest of all inkjets, and it has lasted longer and worked better than any other inkjet I have owned or used.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I own two brother laser printers (one at school one at home) and would recommend them to anyone looking for a cheap laser printer. The older, an HL 2070N has done a little over 10,000 pages in the 5 or so years since I got it. The newer one, an HL 2170W I've had for about a year and printed around 1600 pages on. They come with a toner cartridge good for around a thousand pages, after which I recommend buying the "high yield" ones which are around $40 and good for around 2600 pages. You'll also need a new drum unit ever 13,000 pages or so, but that hasn't happened yet.
One thing to look out for though, neither of these models seems to have postscript support that I can tell. Brother does have Linux drivers, but I've had occasional issues with them (actually nothing in the last 6 months or so). The few times that I've tried them, the Windows and OSX drivers seemed ok.
This fad with inkjet is amazingly short-sided by people who would buy this junk and just print off their digital photos, instead of buying digital picture frames to load up their images to have around the house.
I got my first inkjet printer around the time my daughter was born, seventeen years ago. Inkjet printers may be many things -- including sharp-edged tools to gouge the hell out of people's wallets -- but they are not a fad.
Digital picture frames are not a replacement for printed photos. They're arguably tacky, especially on a wall with a power cable, they're small, they emit rather than reflect light which is often undesirable, and they have a smaller color gamut and much lower resolution than (good quality) prints, to say nothing of being overpriced themselves. When I just want to look at my pictures, I already have a monitor that's larger and higher quality than any digital frame. The biggest detraction is their power consumption. You can buy a lot of ink for what it costs to power a bunch of digital frames "around the house".
All that said, yes, the ink is grossly overpriced. I expect this will change in time as patents slowly expire.
And the expression is "short-sighted", not "short-sided". The implication is that people are, metaphorically, not looking very far ahead, not that they are somehow impaired by being tiny polygons.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And that's the retail price.
Nearly all monocomponent toner is abrasive-it has to be, it has iron filings in it to allow it to be carried on a magnetic brush.
Dual component machines use an iron filing based developer and seperate toner, but both methods are abrasive.
AFAIK, there is no laser that does not use soem form of iron filing
A tip, but the printer with the largest drum diameter you can, larger the drum, longer the life.
Want the proof? Take a look at ink and printer prices in various countries.
They are not charging what the ink is worth, they are charging as much as people is willing to pay. Example:
HP's C8721 cartridge retails in the US for u$s 21.99
HP's C8721 cartridge retails in Argentina for u$s 20.55
Mostly the same.
Except that price of ~20 dollars in Argentina includes 21% VAT, import taxes (~20%), and ~3.5% other taxes. That's ~45%. But they manage to sell it at the same price they sell in the US, where taxes for this product are much lower. Explain that.
Also, I buy my own Ink (I live in Argentina). A motherfucking LITER of Epson black Ink retails at $30. 1/2 a liter of HP black ink retails for $16.
Now, explain how a few milliliters of ink can cost as much as a fucking 1L bottle full of it? If the bottle was priced like the ink in the cartridge, the bottle would cost somewhere near $10.000. 10k for a bottle of ink? No way!.
Now, I know the ink on the bottles isn't the same a the ink on the cartridges, but it's close enough. A little difference in quality and a different dilution can't account for a 1000x price difference.
So, now matter how you look at it, they are ripping us off, and setting the price of Ink to "as much as we can get away with". There is no correlation between production costs and retail price.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Did they explain why a multifunction device like the HP OfficeJet 4110 won't *scan* unless the printer portion has fresh ink?
This is why I will never buy a multifunction printer/scanner again.