What is Digg?154 Comments
- KnightMareInc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+95Its cheaper to buy a pinter with ink then it is to buy just the ink.
- cranium, on 10/12/2007, -1/+59What you might not realize is that the cartridges you get with a new printer are only filled part-way compared to the replacement cartridges. This is true regardless of the manufacturer of the printer, they're all trying to get the initial price down.
- MrBabyMan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+50As King Gillette, inventor of the disposable razor said, "The key is to give away the razors and make them pay for the blades."
- tamzarian, on 10/12/2007, -3/+47What are you gonna wipe your ass with when this happens?
- FRAGaLOT, on 10/12/2007, -6/+39The ink is cheap.. it's the CARTIDGES that are friggin expensive.
- V1ncent, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25I use laser printers only. MUCH cheaper. Can't wait for all the ink scammers to have to sell their snake oil at a realistic prices.
- 5abi, on 10/12/2007, -11/+32all you have to do is buy a printer same as your current one, take out the ink and return the printer
- ChileanGoD, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24With sea shells (Demolition man)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22just go to a local ink refilling shop, it costs like 1/5 of what it would normally.
- Ryosen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18As long as there's no other alternative, ink will continue to cost more than your finest champagnes. They don't cost a lot because the ink is expensive, they cost a lot because we have no other choice.
- madhouseradio, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19ChileanGoD, you have been fined 1/2 credit for violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.
- ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Ink cartridges will be very cheap as soon as they're useless. How much do dot matrix refills cost, after all?
- mt066, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18I've never seen one either.
- tecmec, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14there is an alternative, laser printers
- dotdan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12What do you guys do, drink it?
- biometricks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13I've never seen one either. Are they inside Staples or something? Or are they just ink refilling stores, kind of like gas stations?
- rewritable, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16No sh** when my old HP 1401 ran out of ink I just bought another one because the price of the black/color ink seperately was the same as the entire printer!
- twistymcgee, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13But don't the printers come with the cartridges not full to curb just going out and getting another printer?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I work for an ink company who makes inks for digital machines. We bank on our product to produce high margins but with high quality. The big problem that folks do not understand is the investment costs as well as the manufacturing costs involved, not mention R&D.
On many printers if you do not filter out every single particle above a certain threshold (think sub micron range) then you fudge up a head, permanently, period. No amount of cleaning or purging will fix it. Think of sticking a golf ball into a garden hose and in get stuck, it will never get past the end, ever. This is what we deal with.
You can't put a product out there unless it's 100% effective. If you have a failure rate of .0001% you are screwed forever.
While I am talking about machines that are called "Wide Format" they often times use the same print heads, but have thousands of nozzles not just the 128 or so on consumer stuff.
Ink is expensive for a reason, but it has to be such a high quality and constancy that most folks couldn't even imagine. On the other hand I hate my F**king Ep**n that sucks up ink so fast and is so expensive that I know can be produced for pennies a cartridge. - biometricks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Yeah, I kind of wonder what they do with all the ink sometimes...
A long time ago (i.e. before I started) the horrible decision to give everyone their own deskjet printer was made, rather than force people to share lasers. I've tried to setup centralized printers and remove the deskjets, but management won't back me up even when when I show them we'll save a ton of cash. - graemee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8While I did the same, $25 4M+ and still have the "old" toner in it. However the problem is not lasers, but mostly colour ink jet printers. The only reason your cheap refill is possible is the competitive refill market.
Colour ink printers manufacturers have gone out of their way to prevent that competitive market. They have patents, DCMA, integrated DRM (yes DRM) and clocks chips in cartridges just to make you buy over their priced ink and make their over priced ink the only one available. - zoombusa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9lightscribe paper?
- reddevil3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"But consumers are starting to demand more for their money, according to a study announced today."
You don't have to conduct a study to know that! - Irimi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8At a garage sale I got a HP 4L Laser Jet for 20 $ and it has lasted me about 1200-3000+ pages and is still going strong .. its only black and white, but it gets the job done. A refill will cost me about 50$ and the refill place down the street.
- Shmoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Tell me about it. Like there's ever going to be a time when consumers don't demand more.
"No, please! I've had enough, stop giving me so much!" - doppler00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Ha! Speaking of the HP Laser Jet 4L I still have one. My mom bought it for our 486 computer back in the early 90's and it's still working. I'm only on the 4th toner cartridge in it's entire lifetime! Toner in general lasts several thousands of pages, ulike injets, so they are a much better value. Unfortunately they are useless for photography.
- BlackCow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I found that it is much much cheaper if you just buy it online. A lot of people dont think of that.
- robdavy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13@ afruff23
Where on earth do you live? Every town/city I've come across is crawling with them.. - jejones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@cozinator: Be VERY careful when checking out the Samsungs. I'm glad you said _new_ Samsung, because the CLP-{500, 510}[N] are wretched. They sound great when you look at the feature list, but... (1) the Linux driver is nowhere near feature parity with the Windows driver, and doesn't work and play well with CUPS, (2) the cartridges store a page count--printing one pixel in cyan on a page counts as one page--and when the count hits a certain value, the printer considers it empty, (3), rather than routing waste toner back to the cartridge, it goes to a "waste toner tank" that they want you to replace at $20 a pop, (4) while the waste toner tank isn't chipped, the sensor that tells the printer when it's full is flaky/sensitive, and looks at a spot near where the toner comes in, so even a relatively new tank runs the risk of toner spray making it look full. (It's darned hard to clean the things.) Oh, yeah, (5) it's very finicky about stuff other than plain paper. Don't ever try to print card stock double-sided.
- cozinator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@author20:
Your last sentence ruined a credible and informative post. - LNahid2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Yeah, I got sick of buying disposable printers so now I use a laser multifunction. Even if the cartridges are half full (as they usually are), I've still found it cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy ink during sales.
- nazadus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It's all about supply and demand. They are losing share to lasers and customers are going "umm, this laser tech seems better, give us more or we'll migrate". They aren't giving more and thusly more and more people are getting lasers. Hell, even the ancient lasers are still going strong and still selling.
And yes, customers can ask for less. Think about getting a laptop with CrapWare (TM) like what Dell does. To enhance your experiance? Give me less. Hell, don't even give me an OS.
So yeah, customers sometimes do want less for their money. Personally, I'd rather just get better support. Support is what defines a company for me and if I will ever recommend or go back to them. - etruscan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7But you don't see printer manufactuer's making easily refillable cartridges and providing ink refills that are cheap for their customers. There are services around here which will do that for you, but how hard could it be to create something that the consumer can easily refill?
- Habemus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I have an HP printer and the printer heads are enbedded in the ink cartridge. You replace the ink cartridge and you get new heads. So what if some cheap refill ink clogs the heads? I'll just go buy a new cartridge which is what I would have bought anyway. "Clogged printer heads" is a red herring.
- biometricks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5We spend about $15,000 on ink and toner at year where I work. It's ***** nuts.
- afruff23, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Hmm...local ink refilling shop? Never seen one, unless the big chain stores do it.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Nope, never. Get a color laser instead. Biggest cost up front but it's a better value.
- KIERANMULLEN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4BULK FEEDER SYSTEM
Purchase an epson printer, (i boguht a epson r800 refurbished on ebay, new $399.00 for $70 and it works great) (epson.com does have a clearance center in their online store) then purchase one of the bulk tank feeder systems on ebay for about $80 (including ink) they contain about 100 ml of ink for each color. A cartridge would normally only have 10-14 ml of ink in each one. So the price is worth it just for the ink! Refills on the bulk feeder systems are about $40 for 100 ml of 8 ink sets for my printer.
KieranMullen - nikebud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's the "men's razor" marketing approach. Razors are cheap, but they are only selling the handles. They practically give the razors away so that you keep buying the blade catrtridges (what are they up to now, four blades, and battery powered?)
Gaming console manufacturers use the same practice, as of late. - spyres, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Even those systems don't help with inevitable head clogging issues that seem to haunt the epsons. They print beautifully when they work, but they're also finicky pieces of ***** in many ways.
Epson even lost a class action suit recently because their ink cartridges were reporting empty when they truly weren't. - MasterDwarf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ya bone head. You could have appealed to many people had you not whipped out the female comment.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4About 3 years ago I bought a cheapass $30 canon printer from Frys. I then went to costco and found this "ink refil kit" that contained literally like 8 large bottles of ink. I simply drilled holes in my cartridges and refilled as necessary. Total cost over 3 years: $50+paper (and I still have a ***** of ink left)
My next deal was a laserjet 6L i found at a garage sale for $2. Worked for a year, got more toner for $15 on craigslist (someone had a new unopened one)........total: $17+paper
I stopped buying ***** epson printers when I figured out they DUMP ink into the back of the printer only to have it leak all over your desk and carpet a year later. - Karyyk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not always true. The Canon i560 & ip3000 (and all others that used the same carts) came with full ink carts (all transparent, full and identical to the replacement carts we bought from Canon). Of course, the ink cartridges for those models were also relatively inexpensive (they don't have the print head built into them).
Also, whoever said that dot matrix refills (ribbons) aren't high isn't quite right. They're as high as they always have been. Dot matrix / impact printers are alive and well, especially if you work at any place that runs lots of paper, continuous feed reports. They're still the most durable and efficient printer for that task. The cheapest impact printer that we buy is the Genicom LA36N, which comes in at a hefty $482 price tag. - lordkosc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is why I switched to color laser printer! :)
- grgt1994, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There was a story a while back about how drug lords of Central America are getting into counterfeit printer ink because the margins are so lucrative. Now you know ther is something messed up with a business model when you price your product so wacked out that drug lords move in to cut into your profit. "You want some crack, or I got some real smooth HP Photojet ink man"
- twistymcgee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I believe the toner is pretty expensive for those as well as the drums if you have to replace them.
- author20, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I am a former HP reseller, and HP was my customer (they don't sell internally). I used to be 100% HP printer shop. Now I am 100% Canon. We have good HP printers all over. They collect dust. Wanna know why?
Carlie Fiorina joined HP after bankrupting Lucent. Then she changed everything:
1. HP Quality Control & Support died; to be fair it was already bad.
2. HP Printer ink became so expensive -- it was often 30% the cost of an ink jet, possibly 10% of the cost of a laser. And HP never told the market when lasers became less productive than ink-jet.
3. Canon -- cheapest cartridges and you can get good generic (caution -- some are bad and kill the nozzle). Some shops used to sell Canon ink cartridges for only $1.50 per; cheaper than refilling.
4. Epson -- ink is more expensive than Canon, but lasts for years. Special process makes Epson a good choice for exterior signs and banners. Won't fade for years I think is their guarantee.
Now that HP lost the ink battles to Dell (I don't discuss them because Dell printers have no resale value), they figure the best way to get themselves out of the ditch is to dig deeper. Their current printers are almost free; especially the all-in-one machines. Remarkable? Yes, until you need a refill of ink. Can you imagine an ink cartridge set selling for $30 to $50? Well -- HP cartridges do, and that is probably why their brand might die in three years. I love HP and American companies, labor and profit. But I won't bankrupt my business to support greedy idiots, and when Carie was fired, the idiots remained. HP stockholders better study the printer market before the company finds itself where Ford and General Motors are.
Lesson? Don't hire females as CEOs of technical companies when they have a track record of destroying them. - spanner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I actually don't believe the voodoo chant that the "cheap ink damages the print heads". Firstly with canon, a cartridge has the print head built in, so if it happened you lost nothing, secondly its just a form of scaremongering to stop people trying out alternative inks.
- bannonto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I am sorry for all the negative diggs. Paperless schools are coming. Our local school district is saving thousands of dollars a year by on-line testing, and not allowing students or teachers to print emails.
- Wahttehhog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"What are you gonna wipe your ass with when this happens?"
www.washlet.com -
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