>In terms of quality how are these cartridges? How much ink are in
>them? Will it affect the overall performance of the printer? Will it
>cause premature clogging (yeah, that sounds funny )?
I purchased a set of clone cartridges for an Epson Stylus 740. I only purchased one each of black and color. The price was about 75% of a standard epson cartridge at the time (but I don't remember now).
Nearly every time I printed with the generic cart, the ink did not come out of the cartridge correctly... there were spots on the page of various inks (color and black) as it printed in any mode and resolution on any type of paper. Even when it would get through a page without blotting, the quality wasn't as good as the epson brand. I ended up removing them after only using them one day for testing (as soon as I replaced with the epson brand the problems were gone).
Thus, I have never purchased generic cartridges since then. (Replaced with EPSON brand carts about 3x now).
Of course, I only tried the off-brand once, so, I may have just hit the defective ones, but, it wasn't worth it (at the time) to potentially damage a $250 printer over a comparably small amount of savings. I may re-evaluate that decision since the printer can be had <$100 nowadays and the Epson(TM) Brand cartridges are about $18-25 each depending on where you buy and in what quantity. The risk/reward factor is much better. But, it is still a gamble. Let me know how the cheap ones work for you all.
:Q