A Solution To Overpriced Inkjet Cartridges
How To Play the Inkjet Pricing Game To Your Advantage...
About a month ago, the color cartridge of my inkjet ran out of the blue and yellow ink. Well, perhaps it ran out, or it clogged, but the bottom line was that color printing could not be done- unless you consider magenta only as color. Between my desktop crashing, and the only thing I intended to print was my taxes which are in black and white anyway, I didn't exactly run out to buy a new color cartridge.
Truth be known, I use the printer for less than 50 sheets a year. I bring my digital pics to the local Eckerd where for around a quarter a print; I get great 4x6's on Fuji paper. I can't even buy the photo paper for that price without the ink, and my vacation photos are never an emergency to print anyway. Also, the quality from the drug store is far higher than I can get at home anyway.
I've had my HP printer since 1997, and it's a parallel port model, the Deskjet 722c. At the time of purchase it was around $300, which is why I have difficulty parting with it. It is set up to use two cartridges, one for black ink, and another for the three color inks. For the black cartridge, I have been buying the generic cartridges which brings them in at less than $20. Unfortunately, with my small volume of printing they often get clogged before depleting their ink, but I've figured it in as the cost of doing business. Each cartridge lasts around 18 months lately. Also, the printer works quite fine still, even though the Windows 95 desktop it was originally attached to has long gone away.
I went to price the new tricolor cartridge (part number 23), and the only one on the display at Walmart was from HP. I was in sticker shock when I saw that it retailed for $34.99. This is way overpriced for the rare color print I do in house. This is more than 10% of the original cost of the printer! If the cartridge clogs in another year or two, at the current color volume I'm printing at, it works out to around a dollar a page!My short plan was to run the printer with only the black cartridge, and forget about the color. For photo prints, it is simply more cost effective to outsource them to the local minilab with better results overall.
As I turned the corner in Walmart though, I saw an end display of printers. To my amazement, the price tag was only $29.87. The Lexmark printer does even feature separate black, and color cartridges. (There is an HP with one cartridge for a cash strapped price of $24.88, but the blacks will look more brown than black). Now I'm not saying this Lexmark is a great printer, but for a tax return, and occasional correspondance, this should be adequate. Now I've seen some cheap deals on printers, but they're often after jumping through some hoops. You know, stuff like filling out multiple rebates, or included with buying a new computer. But today, this little Lexmark was there for the taking, no rebates, no additional purchase, just stick it in the cart and pay!
Now the amazing part is that the replacement cartridges for the Lexmark will set me back around $60 for the set. Why would anyone pay double for the cartridges than they paid for the printer with the cartridges included? I think we should all just buy the printer, and when the ink runs out, go buy another one. In the long term, this is the cheapest solution for a low volume user. Also, we get the added benefit of upgrading the printer technology with each subsequent replacement.
This is akin to the razor blade and razor theory of marketing. They sell the disposable razor quite cheaply, and then make the money back on the razor blades. What's the solution here? Stock up on the razor while it is on sale so you don't need the overpriced blades too soon. I think the same strategy applies to the printer.
Did I end up buying it? Quite frankly, no. I walked away, finished my shopping, and exited Wally Mart sans printer. I did pass up this really good deal because I don't have anything to print for now. But when I do, I now have a plan to not play the inkjet game the way the company intends. Now this is stickin' it to the man!
As always, your comments are appreciated.
--Jonas
posted by digitaldoc at 8:00 AM
23 Comments:
I think you will find that the cartridges that come with the $25 printers are less than fully charged with ink. It is the same situation with many laser printers. They come with demo cartridges instead of full ones. It's still a pretty good deal if you fill your own inkjet cartridges.
Bill Kunert
That's probably true, but I'm finding that the cartridges are clogging before I can use them up anyway. Besides, Lexmark is giving both a color and a black cartridge for less than the price of the color cartridge.
High cost of ink printing is why I love laser printers. You can use them as infrequently as you like and the overall cost for a small number of pages is pretty low.
Ink jets on the other hand can clog if you don't use them frequently which means running the unclog routines which use up a lot of ink. So even if you don't print a lot, you still use up ink.
I wonder if color laser printers penalize you for low print volumes.
I have been using Canon inkjets for years now, ever since the HP's I had, threw fits when refilling :). I get about 200 pages per black cartridge. I was thinking about your suggestion to buy a printer each time rather than replace the cartridge also! I also ran into the problem of the "demo" cartridges shipping with them :(.
Does anyone know of a cheap printer that includes FULL cartridges?
How about a printer now a days that can be refilled easily - like the canin pixma 3000,4000,5000... they do not have the chip on them, and can be refilled so simply it isnt even funny.
How about a way to get the manufacturer's to actually lower the price to a reasonable level? What ever happened to that government investigation anyway?
Mike
Refilling rules :) without the limiter chips :O the bastards.
Same problem here. I use a B&W laser printer for 99% of my printing. Had a Lexmark inkjet for the occasional color job and everytime I used it the cartridge was clogged.
Broke down and bought a color laser. It wasn't cheap, but I'm still using the same toner cartridges that came with the printer over two years ago. And by now, the cost of color lasers has come down significantly.
Bite the bullet, by a color laser, and move on!
You pay a higher cost in energy for laser printers, in general, if you leave them on all the time. There's also a matter of blowing toner dust into the air.
You kind of have to leave them on. If you don't, the roller at the fuser flattens out causing lines on the page, and paper jambs. If you ever notice, the printer will cycle the paper path motors to keep them from getting flat spots.
I've been using a monochrome laser for about six years now and use a toner cartridge about every two and a half years. I'm considering a color for the same reasons. I bought new ink for my printer, used it once, the next time it was clogged.
Even with the unclog routine, the cartridges can't be revived in my experience.
Bill I'm sure you're correct about overall energy consumption of a laser printer. But all of mine go into a hibernate mode when they're not used for a time. I have 3 laser printers running at my house 24/7 and have not seen any impact on my electric bill and no effects from toner dust that I am aware of.
buy your ink via mail order. Using a Canon and now a Brother brinter with ink tanks, I spend $5 or less per tank. It helps that each color has its own tank, so you just replace the color that is dry.
If your problem is clogging from infrequent use then you should schedule a page to print every week or month.
At some point, they have to heat up the fuser secion --either immediately or by maintaining some predetermined temperature. There's no way around it. The image is applied to the page by charging the drum and paper to different polarities. That too uses energy and it's all doen with electricity.
True, but the pages don't smear when I drip water on them...
Don't drop acetone on them... ;-)
Filling the existing cartridges is not the solution here as the heads keep clogging. At $35 a pop, I should at least be able to use the ink from them. A monthly print would help, but who is that organized?
What's organized?;-}
Who needs to be organized? Have none of you geeks ever heard of Windows Scheduler? You can schedule a page to print once each interval of your choosing. Hasn't that occurred to anyone?
Evidently not!
Okay, everybody hand in their Geek IDs.
I guess we card here at TechNudge!
My solution is easier than scheduling a print job and helps keep the heads unclogged. Granted, it uses more ink than I'd like, but it's better than running the unclog routine.
Plug the printer into a power strip that you turn on/off with the use of the computer while leaving the printer's on/off switch on. That means, each time you turn on your computer, the printer runs through it's print head "check" routine (whatever you want to call it) which initializes the heads and seems to clear them on a regular basis.
That means, for me and my Epson printer of a couple years old, I print very little but the heads remain clean!
It's worth a try!
Kevin
That's a great idea Kevin! Unfortunatley for me it won't help. I turn my computer off once a year, when I go on vacation.
The problem with Windows Scheduler is that if the computer is not on when the task is set to run, the task will not run. A workaround is to put a script in your startup folder that checks if the test page has been printed this week, and if not, then print it. There are also third party schedulers. If you leave your computer on for a year at a time, like rapcomp, this probably won't be a problem.
If you buy a new printer every time you need to replace the cartridge, you are both destroying the environment and wasting your money. Sure, it's cheaper than buying cartridges from the manufacturer, but there is this thing called the internet, where you can find high quality, topped up, generic ink cartridges for less than half price of the manufacturer's.
There are also ways of cleaning clogged printheads. I can't recommend any, because I haven't used any successfully. What would happen if you microwaved an inkjet cartridge? Might be worth a try.
I wouldn't recommend microwaving an inkjet cartridge...
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