Printer Cartridges: Why are they so pricey? And Which printer to buy.

I haven' bought cartridges for my printer since July 98 and I went
shopping to see about new ones and bloody hell they are that pricey
that IMHO you'd be better off buying a new printer.

My printer HP 660C It uses both a black and one colour cartridge
containing all the three colours for CYMK printing. But it's the
prices that got me..... $78 each.....

For that I'd be better off dumping the beast and buying a whole new
printer and to that ends I am shopping for a new one and looking at
one of those multi function ones......

One that looks interesting to me is by Brother and it offers printing,
scanning, can send and receive faxes. It is advertised as a 5 in one
but what the hell the 5 functions are I have no idea....

The other two I have seen are a Cannon and a Lexmark but the Lexmark
is costly for cartridges and only offers scan, print, and copying.


So which to buy and what do you guys use and recommend?

 

I've been using Cartridge Kingdom which charges $7 for a manual black
refill.

A ink in "genuine" replacments costs 5 times more than vintage French
champagne.

gtoomey

 

canon inkjet cartridges are the easiest to refill, and most successful -
they invented bubblejet printers.

 

Cause the companies want to make money off us? My old printer was a Canon
bubblejet and the carts were about $50 each but didn't last long..then I
bought aHP 710 and I got 2 years out of them for about $70. Then I've
upgraded printeres again baout 6 months ago to another HP this time the 1180
A3 printer. I swear by HP for the life of the carts. Prefer to pay more but
at least I get a year out of them if not more.

Melissa

 

printeres ???

 

It's a change in business model.
Like console game machines and early drug dealers, they weren't making
enough money off their products because of the perceived high initial cost.
So the decision was made to offer the base unit at below cost, draw in the
customers who are then tied to your proprietry product line, and then feed
off them with overpriced consumables with stupidly high margins which the
customer has no choice in buying.
Luckily for us, some poeple offer cheap ink refills for reasonable prices so
you no longer have to support the drug trade.

 

That's fair enough but I think I'm due for a new printer anyway....

Plus I have tried refills for my HP and there is a difference....

 

Thats why I'm saving up & get colour laser.

 

Print, Scan, Copy, Send Fax, Receive Fax

At the moment I think the Lexmark is the pick of a BAD bunch. Canon's print
quality lags significantly below the other brands. They are also expensive
to print with - the individual ink tanks look good on the surface, but they
have very low capacity. Brother's are scarce so it's hard to get cartridges,
plus in the event of a breakdown they are a turd to deal with. HP were
good, but the current range have a significantly poorer build quality than
previous, plus their inks are no longer as economical as they used to be.
HP do offer couriered exchange warranty, but only after you talk with their
call centre in India, who are impossible to understand. HP do however have
the best print quality available in the low-cost units. Lexmark aren't far
behind on print quality, the cartridges are expensive but last well so the
cost/page isn't too bad, plus they are easily refilled if you wish to go
that avenue. The lexmark 6150 and 6170 offer fax capabilities in addition to
the normal print/scan/copy. The 6170 has an automatic document feeder in
addition to the flatbed, which is handy if you are faxing, scanning or
copying a number of loose sheets. Lexmark warranty is a hassle-free
couriered exchange after you speak to an Australian (shock horror) in their
call centre. Epson have some very good multifunction units with excellent
print and scan quality, and low ink costs. They are however more expensive
than Canon/Lexmark/HP, and only have Print/Scan/Copy - no Fax. Epson
warranty isn't as smooth as Lexmark/HP either - they like to repair your
unit rather than exchange it.

Note that multifunction units are low-end printers coupled with low-end
scanners (Epson is the exception). If you want top-quality scanning or
printing, go the standalone route.

If you want to do lots of colour, I'd look at a colour laser - much cheaper
to operate, but bear in mind that colour lasers are not real flash for photo
printing - they do an ok job, but not in the same league as even low-end
inkjets. Colour laser is more for business type printing - brochures, charts
etc.

If the colour printing you do is limited to 6x4 photos, then the path I
would suggest is a small b&w laser for your general printing, plus a kodak
or canon dye sublimation photo printer - these are cheap to run ($1/photo
including ink and paper), and deliver results that only the top inkjets can
match.

Alternatively, if you are after a low cost, cheap to run, general purpose
printer then you can't go past the Epson C43 - printer will set you back
about $100, it has decent sized cheap cartridges (because you are only
replacing the cart, not the head) that are about $20 for black and $30 for
colour. It's print quality is excellent for black, and good for colour - it
does a pretty good job of handling photos. And, it's cheap enough that if
the head craps itself in 18-24 months (as they are sometimes prone to do),
just go and buy another printer - after all, you would have saved at least
that value in the cost of ink compared to say a HP or Lexmark. I had a HP
970c until it needed a new colour cart - it was going to cost me $10 more to
buy the Epson than a colour cart for the 970c, so I bought the new epson.
It's print quality lags slightly behind the 970c, but not far behind. I
used mine to do prints of our wedding photos and the quality is fine.

 

But are the consumables for the laser worth the cost of
the printer? I mean how much life per cartridge with
average use do you get?

 

hehehe sorry typo!

Melissa

 

cheaper than a bubblejet ,
Im using an english unit based on the canon engine and its cents per
page at 10% coverage.

 

If you print a moderate amount, definite.

Often more than 10000 pages.

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From time to time computer magazines will do a breakdown of costs per
copy taking all of that into account, but generally laser printers work
out to be the lowest in operating costs. Have a look at one writeup at
http://winapps.access.gpo.gov/ppd/abstracts/stlouis/ab1611s.pdf for a
rough idea.

 

That's where mine is now inside the wheelie bin

 

Be aware that there can be quite significant running costs with colour
lasers as well.
Imaging unit, corona wires, transfer rolls, fusers and of corse 4 different
toner cartridges!

I've had colour laser for a few years but don't use the colour capacity much
because of these costs.

I have a cheapo mono laser as a workhorse and reserve the colour printer for
jobs where the use colour matters.

Regards,
ahl

 

Thanks will do that

 

Hey shit, we agree on something