Went to OfficeMax, b&m (Lancaster, PA).
Epson Stylus C60 ink jet printer. Regular price of $79.99. $30 discount at register brought it down to $49.99. There's also a mail-in offer good for a $20 OfficeMax gift card. Struck me as a pretty warm deal.
Now that I've given the deal, I intend to tell my story.
A couple of months ago, my good printer died on me. Well, not really died -- it just wouldn't print cleanly and clearly, and no amount of nozzle clearing and cleaning helped, nor did it improve when I installed new ink cartridges.
Fortunately, I had an HP 610C sitting in the closet. I bought it back in late 2000, for around $20 (an excellent Staples.com deal which we can assume expired some 500+ days ago), and had never gotten around to using it. Well, time to use it.
The 610C has been printing adequately, but it's not exactly a great printer. For one thing, it hooks up to the computer via a Centronics parallel cable, and seeing as how it's no longer the stone age, I'd rather go with USB. It's also a little on the sluggish side. And while print quality is okay for text, it's a little disappointing on photos.
Anyway, recently it occurred to me that I ought to pick up a couple of new ink cartridges for the 610C, as the ones in the printer have got to be near dry.
You know how much a pair of ink cartridges for this printer would run me? $50+. Even remanufactured ones would be $40+. And just for the record, these are small cartridges. Smaller than found in most printers, anyway. 20ml instead of 40ml, I believe.
So instead I bought the aforementioned Epson C60 printer. It comes with a black cartridge and a color cartridge, right in the box. So for roughly the price of a pair of replacement ink cartridges for the HP 610C, I got a pair of ink cartridges for the Epson C60, a new Epson C60 printer, and a $20 OfficeMax gift card. (The C60 also seems to print a little faster than the 610C, quality -- particularly on photo printing -- is better, and it uses a USB cable. Oh, and replacement ink carts can be had for less than those for the HP would've run me.)
I mention all this to highlight the absurdity of the situation -- it's cheaper to simply throw away (or give away) a fairly decent little printer which is in good working condition, and replace it with a superior brand new printer, than it is to buy replacement ink cartridges.
Nor, I suspect, is this true only in regard to the 610C and the C60. There appeared to be more than a few inexpensive printers at OfficeMax (a couple from Lexmark and one HP, in addition to my C60 and the dirt cheap C40). I wonder how many people will decide not to bother dropping $30 or more for a couple of replacement ink cartridges for their Econo-Printer, when a brand new printer complete with ink can be had for under $50?
(Admittedly, most of these El Cheapo printers come with just one cartridge standard -- the color cartridge, not the black. But some -- like the C60 -- come with both. And of those printers that come with only 1 cartridge, I suspect a couple might include a free USB cable.)(The C60 doesn't come with a cable.)
Okay, I just wanted to vent a little, about how budget printers have become disposable items -- cheaper to replace than to refill. Maybe I'm channeling a Puritan or something, but it just seems obscenely wasteful to me.
On the bright side, there might be some way to use this to rationalize a future purchase of an Epson 1280 or 2200, which are expensive enough that it still makes sense to buy ink for them, rather than to toss the old printer and buy a new one. Man, I'd like a 1280. Of course, then I'd need to spring for a top notch film scanner, to do justice to the thousands of old Kodachromes I'd like to scan onto disc. For that matter, given the size of a high quality scan, I ought to be storing the image files on DVD, and not CD. I wonder what a good DVD burner would run...
Epson Stylus C60 ink jet printer. Regular price of $79.99. $30 discount at register brought it down to $49.99. There's also a mail-in offer good for a $20 OfficeMax gift card. Struck me as a pretty warm deal.
Now that I've given the deal, I intend to tell my story.
A couple of months ago, my good printer died on me. Well, not really died -- it just wouldn't print cleanly and clearly, and no amount of nozzle clearing and cleaning helped, nor did it improve when I installed new ink cartridges.
Fortunately, I had an HP 610C sitting in the closet. I bought it back in late 2000, for around $20 (an excellent Staples.com deal which we can assume expired some 500+ days ago), and had never gotten around to using it. Well, time to use it.
The 610C has been printing adequately, but it's not exactly a great printer. For one thing, it hooks up to the computer via a Centronics parallel cable, and seeing as how it's no longer the stone age, I'd rather go with USB. It's also a little on the sluggish side. And while print quality is okay for text, it's a little disappointing on photos.
Anyway, recently it occurred to me that I ought to pick up a couple of new ink cartridges for the 610C, as the ones in the printer have got to be near dry.
You know how much a pair of ink cartridges for this printer would run me? $50+. Even remanufactured ones would be $40+. And just for the record, these are small cartridges. Smaller than found in most printers, anyway. 20ml instead of 40ml, I believe.
So instead I bought the aforementioned Epson C60 printer. It comes with a black cartridge and a color cartridge, right in the box. So for roughly the price of a pair of replacement ink cartridges for the HP 610C, I got a pair of ink cartridges for the Epson C60, a new Epson C60 printer, and a $20 OfficeMax gift card. (The C60 also seems to print a little faster than the 610C, quality -- particularly on photo printing -- is better, and it uses a USB cable. Oh, and replacement ink carts can be had for less than those for the HP would've run me.)
I mention all this to highlight the absurdity of the situation -- it's cheaper to simply throw away (or give away) a fairly decent little printer which is in good working condition, and replace it with a superior brand new printer, than it is to buy replacement ink cartridges.
Nor, I suspect, is this true only in regard to the 610C and the C60. There appeared to be more than a few inexpensive printers at OfficeMax (a couple from Lexmark and one HP, in addition to my C60 and the dirt cheap C40). I wonder how many people will decide not to bother dropping $30 or more for a couple of replacement ink cartridges for their Econo-Printer, when a brand new printer complete with ink can be had for under $50?
(Admittedly, most of these El Cheapo printers come with just one cartridge standard -- the color cartridge, not the black. But some -- like the C60 -- come with both. And of those printers that come with only 1 cartridge, I suspect a couple might include a free USB cable.)(The C60 doesn't come with a cable.)
Okay, I just wanted to vent a little, about how budget printers have become disposable items -- cheaper to replace than to refill. Maybe I'm channeling a Puritan or something, but it just seems obscenely wasteful to me.
On the bright side, there might be some way to use this to rationalize a future purchase of an Epson 1280 or 2200, which are expensive enough that it still makes sense to buy ink for them, rather than to toss the old printer and buy a new one. Man, I'd like a 1280. Of course, then I'd need to spring for a top notch film scanner, to do justice to the thousands of old Kodachromes I'd like to scan onto disc. For that matter, given the size of a high quality scan, I ought to be storing the image files on DVD, and not CD. I wonder what a good DVD burner would run...
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