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Printer Cartridges cost as much as a printer

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TypoKing

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My HP printer stopped printing because the yellow cartridge was out. Every time I tired to print it would error out saying the yellow cartridge needed to be replaced. So I go Costco to buy the cartridges and of course they wouldnt sell just the yellow, I had to buy the whole pack. The whole pack cost about 70 bucks. Then I go to look at how much an entire printer cost. I found one for about 70 bucks. Now I know HP needs to make money but WTH.
 
The joke with printers has alway been that

1 very few printers come with full cartridges.
2. ink is the single most exspensive part of a printer. It gets cheaper however when you buy a higher line printer on average.

Next time buy a inkjet with ink tanks.
 
Buy the cheap bottom end printers, the ink is how they will make their profit. Irony is that the business ink jets I use at work may have cost $1000 new, but I can buy almost 3 400ml individual color ink carts for $70. They also print 500-600 'pages' per cart versus home machines 50-100.
 
Ink costing as much as the printer has been a known issue for many years. (When I tell people this they usually think that Im kidding.) In addition, $70 is not a bad price for a complete refill change out. Many cartridge sets are well over $100 ($110 - $140 typical). On top of it, most people dont even use color all that much & would be better served by a BW laser (which is what I have & $59 refilled toner cartridges last years).
 
This is a problem of the past and should no longer be an issue for anyone who owns a printer that can accommodate one of these:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system



I paid $45 for my HP AIO CISS and it came with a year's supply of ink. A refill pack of 6 bottles of ink costs $20 and will last another 1-2 years.

Problem solved ...
 
The sad thing is HP was the last of the companies to keep giving full cartridges with a new printer.

Also, depending on your needs I recommend a low end laser. MUCH lower cost per page. I have an HP 1020, and it came with a full toner cart.
 
It was really annoying when I need to print a black and white document and my printer wouldnt work because it was out of yellow. The comic was right on. So is there a brand of or type printer that I should be buying instead of the HP pos that I have.
 
TypoKing said:
It was really annoying when I need to print a black and white document and my printer wouldnt work because it was out of yellow. The comic was right on. So is there a brand of or type printer that I should be buying instead of the HP pos that I have.
Click to expand...

Thats funny cuz the last several HP's I owned didnt have this problem.
I guess newer inkjet quality is slipping fast. The best part is thats not called a bug, its a "feature".

I love modern marketing.
 
The worst is the lexmark printers that come with only a color cartridge. No black ink , so how does it print black ? It uses all 3 colors at once !

That had to have marketing drooling about the potential profits.
 
Modelworks said:
The worst is the lexmark printers that come with only a color cartridge. No black ink , so how does it print black ? It uses all 3 colors at once !

That had to have marketing drooling about the potential profits.
Click to expand...

When I was in the Navy we had to use Lexmark cuz thats what NMCI told us to use. And I am sure that was a classic "congressmans brother-in-law" situation.
Those things went through ink cartridges like popcorn. And they cost the Navy 40 bucks a piece. Which is funny cuz we bought about a million of them and should also have gotten a govt discount. Yup, congressmans brother-in-law.
 
Printers and cartridge shavers have a lot in common, you can buy a Gillette Mach 3 for $5.00 with 2 cartridges, but go to buy some replacements and they'll cost you $10.00 for a few of them. Pffff...
 
B&W laser, can't beat the cost per page...

If you absolutely need color, then spend the $$ for a good laser that has cheap toner carts.

Inkjets suck. Leave the picture printing to your photo center and its 30K$ printer.
 
Modelworks said:
The worst is the lexmark printers that come with only a color cartridge. No black ink , so how does it print black ? It uses all 3 colors at once !

That had to have marketing drooling about the potential profits.
Click to expand...

It may have been a cost cutting issue also . Some color inkjet printers in the past could only hold one cartridge at a time and you'd put in the black or color cartridge according to what you wanted to print. These tended to be less expensive than the models that could hold both cartridges even if the cartridges were the same.
 
Spicedaddy said:
B&W laser, can't beat the cost per page...

If you absolutely need color, then spend the $$ for a good laser that has cheap toner carts.

Inkjets suck. Leave the picture printing to your photo center and its 30K$ printer.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Even a laser with moderately-expensive toner carts comes out ahead of inkjets. Photos that I really want to print get run through mpix.com and a color laser is perfectly adequate for "throw-away" picture printing when you don't need pro quality. 1500-2000 pages (actual output, lower than rated) on a single toner (5 cents/page B&W, ~20 cents/page color) is good enough for me.

ZV
 
I've heard that Kodak ink jets have really affordable ink. The only bad thing about them is that they will only produce true color photos if you use Kodak papers.

Cheers,
Aquaman
 
This is truly a dead thread. If you have information and data newer than 16 months, start a new one.
 
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