One way you can save money on expensive printer inks is to stop using unnecessary apostrophes.
I used just this example in my Econ. classes today.
I also pointed out that an HP toner cartridge for the laser printer was $60, while 2 replacements from a 3rd party seller were $17.
Its only going to get worse. The new Keurig coffee makers only use Keurig products. No buying cheaper coffee or using a reusable cup. (There is something added to the 2.0 coffee makers and cups that allow this.)
Having worked in this field, the main answer is unexpected: ink is technology. It’s actually really, really, really hard to produce liquid substances that have all the right properties at nanogram/picoliter scales.
There are two basic inkjet technologies: thermal (a small resistor heats the ink to boiling, and ejects the drop basically as steam that re-condenses in flight) and acoustic (the drop is ejected by vibration).
There’s also two types of inks: dyes (basically colored water or other substrate) and pigments (small particles of some colored substance in water or other substrate).
Each combination of this has strengths and weaknesses: dyes are cheap but smear if they get wet, pigments are waterfast but clog nozzles and burn. Thermal printers are inexpensive but can’t be used on lots of different substances, acoustic ones have a higher per-nozzle failure rate and are harder to “aim” correctly, but work with a wider range of inks.
All these inks have to survive a high-speed ejection in very small amounts, and make it to the paper without drying out, moving around in air currents, or clogging the nozzle. Worse, they have to mix correctly to produce millions of colors, and that means the drops need to be almost exactly the same size every time, regardless of temperature, wear, or how long it’s been since the last drop fired (which affects refill rate of the ink chamber behind the nozzle). Only a small number of pigments and dyes fulfill these properties, and they have to be mixable in exactly the right ways.
In short, inkjet technology is impossible, and we only imagine that it’s working. More seriously, inkjet technology requires solving a very large number of really hard problems, at nanotechnological scales. People who can solve these problems (both the nozzle engineers and the ink chemists) are in high demand, short supply, and can command extremely high salaries. The ubiquity of this technology belies how very complex it is (and how much it’s improved over the last couple of decades).
It’s also why the “refill” inks you get at those cartridge refill places produce such crappy images compared to the manufacturers’ originals. Gasoline’s just a bunch of hydrocarbons; gold is just an element. Ink is hard.
My complaint is that because I don’t print often the cartridges always seem to clog or dry out or something before I use them up, so I often end up getting a handful of pages per each expensive cartridge. I’ve stopped buying ink altogether and go to a Fedex/Kinkos (or whatever they’re called these days) for the rare occasions when I require a hard copy of something.
I can imagine the current business model for home printers failing as more and more people require fewer and fewer physical printouts, unless they can make cartridges that won’t dry out as quickly and manage to somehow make money from them.
I know that some big high volume printers (like in business offices) use blocks of colored “wax” (I’m not sure exactly what the substance is) that is melted and sprayed on the paper. As far as I know these should work until they run out regardless of age. But these printers are supplied via different business models. The one I’m familiar with is that you don’t own the printer and you pay so much per page (and maybe some set minimum per month) and are supplied with ink as needed.
That kind of pricing, pay per page and get new ink as needed, probably wouldn’t be profitable in the consumer market.
And the right ink, for the right cartridge, when purchased by the gallon, from the wholesaler/manufacturer can run up to $800US. It IS a technology unto itself.
There are some very simple fixes for that on YouTube.
I’ve never used Kodak printers, so no opinion there, but Canon products can be way cheaper than that article suggests. I have this $60 wireless scanner/fax/printer -
The MG3520. The ink is here -
and here’s the combo
It’s about $20 for a single cartridge or $40 for a combo pack. It’s a great little printer for home/school use. It’s quiet and dead simple to set up. The wireless connection is a feature I can’t be without any more and the scanner is more useful than I thought it would be.
Yeah, that sounds counter-productive. Someone buys a printer from company X, prints a few pages and runs out of ink. Do they think “Oh, that was just the starter cartridge – the new cartridge will last longer”? Or do they think, “Holy crap, that printer goes through ink like there’s no tomorrow. I’m going to write a nasty Amazon review and stop printing unless I absolutely have to.”?
Had many small printers or print, scan, copy machines over the years. Don’t use them much anymore but I have a small Canon MP-250 I think.
I can let it set for months and it will still print without being clogged or dried out.
It seems to go through all kinds of shenanigans each time it is started which probably wastes ink but it works every time even after a long unused time.
Cold dead fingers & all that.
There are 2 seller philosophies around this:
- take a loss (or marginal profit) on the printer and make it up on overpriced ink
- sell the printer at a profit and mark the ink up less
As a consumer, the 2nd option is almost always cheaper in the long run. Kodak is one of the few manufacturers who use this model. Have they taken over the market? No, because consumers tend to think in the short term - “Why should I pay $30 more for a Kodak printer today?” instead of “What is the one year (or longer) cost of the using each printer?”
A little math up front could save one a lot of money!
This explains why color lasers are not so popular. Or, to an even greater extreme, black-and-white lasers, considering that 90% of what get printed in a typical household would be perfectly fine in black-only ink or toner. And price per page of a laser-printed black-and-white page completely smashes anything done in inkjet.
Our inkjet printer died recently, and I replaced it with a color laser printer. I did the calculation, and even though the printer costs quite a bit more upfront, in the long run it should be MUCH cheaper.
Epson claims their workforce line of inkjet printers have a cost per page below that of lasers. I have owned them and the ink tanks are huge and inexpensive compared to some other brands.
Our inkjet’s out of ink so when I needed to print a couple pages I fired up the ol’ LQ-500. Ribbons can be as cheap as six for ten bucks, but the way I print this one will last a decade, if I don’t go deaf first.
Get out of here with you and your facts! We’re trying to have a proper witchhunt in here!
I had a Cannon Mp780 business inkjet that worked for a long time with no problems, acquired it when my wife’s business closed, (so got it for free). It worked great for 3 years or so, occasionally needing new ink, but whatever… Finally, we had errors, discovered it was the print head being jammed. After trying to fix it, and failed, we either had to buy a $80 head, or buy a new printer. When I did the research, I learned of the ink wasting of an inkjet, and since we only use a printer occasionally, we bought a laser B/W printer for about $300… Have yet had to replace the ink. (though was only about a year ago)…
The laser uses more electricity (lights noticeably dim when starts printing), but if you don’t have to print in color, and only occasionally like most people, laser is much cheaper in the long run.
Epson’s claim is at least partly true in my experience as small business owner who does about 25,000 pages a year.
I wrote a longer analysis and then realized that nobody really cares. Here’s the shorter version:
For color printing, the Epson is at least half the cost of a color laser, and is closer to a fifth the cost of the actual performance I got from my color laser before I gave it to charity. It’s the same speed.
For B/W printing, the Epson is comparable to some lower-end B/W lasers, but about twice the cost of the mid-range B/W lasers (say, a $500 model). Speed is essentially the same story - comparable to the lower-end lasers and about half the higher-end ones.
But my Epson is a $300 model. If you’re paying $50 for a printer, you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you’ll be paying for that printer through the cost of ink. $50 printers are loss-leaders.
Color lasers are not popular because, unless they are VERY expensive on any measure, the print is poor.
I love B&W lasers, and we use color lasers at work because they are more reliable for the price, but a good mid-range color laser printer does not give good color rendering, and a cheap color laser printer can’t even do narrow lines.
Because it’s THEIR ink, they can charge whatever they want for it. Don’t like it, go to Russia.