I have to very much agree with corkyg, but what corkyg may of left off is the why's and the potentials of both printing technologies. And then there is that other joker in the deck, which is the media a printer prints on. Most of the time we can say that media is paper, but even then paper varies widely in its thickness, porosity, and a bunch of other characteristics. But printers of both types can print on other media such as cloth or whatever. But if we want to take the paper variable away, we can only apples to apples plain paper we would buy in quantity from an office supply store or the like.
Then we can say that a laser printer is a new technology more closely related to a Xerox machine, and mankind has been using ink to print for thousand of years. The laser printer that uses toner to print has certain resolution advantages on paper, because toner does not as readily diffuse away from the spot it was deposited on to other places on the paper when compared to ink with its much higher diffusion potential.
But when we ask, why should one printing technology be more expensive that the other in the real world of today's prosumer printers? Because if we apples to apples compare the average prosumer B/W laser printer to its equivalent B/W only prosumer inkjet, the laser tends to be far far cheaper than the inkjet. But if that extends to printing as a whole, how can we explain the fact that books and newspapers are almost always printed using cheaper ink?
And to answer that question, we only need to look at what our OP said. "but WOW ink is expensive! Was $89 to get a 3 pack at SAMSCLUB."
In a sense, Mizzou is only semi-correct, HP makes a huge fortune off of finding suckers who will pay $89.00 for a tiny amount of ink amount of ink vended in cartridge form. And its not just HP, it basically all inkjet printer makers conspiring together to keep the cost of inkjet printing artificially much higher than it should be. And until consumers all over the world band together and demand better, its the ink jet printer makers that are winning.
As for me, I was lucky enough to buy one of the last non-chapped Canon inkjets. and I can print color on plain paper for less than my laser will print B/W. And you can too, it starts by googling a dedicated inkjet forum like the nifty stuff forums. And learning how to refill your own inkjet cartridges. Its hard with a typical HP printhead on the cartridges, but much easier with a Canon or Epsom inkjet tank. There are ways to defeat the chips, they are minor annoyances. But most sheeple are afraid to learn, and would rather get ripped off instead.
But by networking our printers both together, I gain faxing and copying abilities that we both need, and if one printer needs repair or replacement, we have a spare printer already to go. And if you need a lot of pages printed fast and in high resolution, a laser runs rings around a inkjet in speed.
Facebook
Twitter