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Epson's 'Empty' Professional-Grade Cartridges Can Have 20 Per Cent of Their Ink Remaining
sandbagger writes: Printer ink is expensive, so it's important that when a printer tells you a cartridge is running dry, the cartridge is actually running dry. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. The folks over at Bellevue Fine Art in Seattle recently decided to find out exactly how much ink their high-end Epson 9900 printer wastes. A professional grade 700ml cartridge will have 120-150ml remaining when "empty," and a 350ml cartidge will have 60-80ml remaining when "empty." For this studio, the difference amounts to hundreds of dollars worth of ink every month.
Except the printer refuses to print when the cartridge is 'empty'. It'd be like your car refusing to start or automatically turning off as soon as it hit empty no matter what. You'd then have to disconnect the tank, throw away that 20% of fuel, and buy a new gas tank from the manufacturer and only from the manufacturer.
Ink dries. If your printer didn't flush the color ink periodically it would likely damage the print head.
I agree that ink is absurdly overpriced and printers designed for profit over efficiency. However, you're mostly suffering from not using the right tool for the job—inkjet printers are built for photos while laser/LED printers excel at text and business graphics.
A cheap monochrome laser would run circles around your printers in speed, crispness, and reliability, with far lower cost per page and no ink to dry out.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Usually the trick with refilling cartridges is not the ink, it's replacing the dmca-protected chips that enforce the manufacturer's monopoly on their cartridge market. Don't buy printers that use them.
You are not paying for the Ink. You are paying what you can bare for each sheet of paper. Adding 20% of extra liquid to the cartridge, so you get perfect prints each time, cost less than a penny for the manufacturer.
Just looking at the ink (after subtracting the cost of an empty cartridge) it is one of the most expensive liquids you can buy: http://www.buzzfeed.com/higgypop/top-10-most-expensive-liquids-on-earth-6qcr
Exactly. For how infrequently the average person needs to print something in color, there is little cost-benefit to keeping your own color printer at home. It's far more cost effective to get a consumer laser printer these days and just do your handful of color prints at a local print shop. I really recommend the Brother 2270DW. It does wireless printing and full duplex and can be bought for around $100USD. The best part is the toner cartridges last for thousands of pages and can be had for the same price as one inkjet cartridge. If you absolutely must have color printing, even color laserjets these days can be had for $250-300.