Should I buy a new printer?

[Craig234]

I have an HP 882C, and very light printing needs. Typically I might print a rebate form, directions, or game info.

It's out of ink, and buying 2-packs of new color and black ink will cost over $100.

So I realized that's the price of new printers, which come with some new ink, and decided to see, is it worth buying a new printer for those sorts of needs?

I'm not unhappy with the 882c, it's 'adequate', but the ink sure is expensive. I assume newer printers have nicer resolution and other enhancements that I'm not familiar with.

 

[Zepper]

In order to run most HP printers economically, you have to be willing to refill the cartridges yourself. They will generally refill 5 or more times before the head goes away. Or you can get professionally refilled cartridges with a discount or rebate for sending your empties for somewhat less than the OEM carts. Check http://www.swiftink.com (obligatory mention) - they often have specials going for AT members, check the HOT DEALS section here. Heatware.com members were also getting 10% off recently, check there too.

On your original premise, yes it is often cheaper to buy a new printer than to get a set of OEM carts. But be careful, some printer mfrs (HP in particular) include "starter carts" in low end models that don't have the full volume of ink that the carts you buy separately have. I recommend the original line of Canon Pixma printers for those that want the lowest running cost in ink jets. I found a source of some factory refurbed Canon iP3000 printers that have a 90-day factory warranty and a full set of full-sized OEM carts. That would be more than adequate for your usage (it's the one I use) and some of the best refills (from the site listed above) run about $20 for a full set (even less on their frequent deals) - and there are plenty that would run less than $10. for a full set (OEM would run about $45. per set). Brother all-in-ones also use passive ink tanks with clone tanks available - those start at under $100. (MFC-210) and would probably meed your needs.

I wouldn't recommend Epson for your usage as they have a tendency to clog if not used all the time.

I don't recommend Lexmark ink jets at any time for any reason - even more expensive to run than HP unless you refill the carts yourself. And I think they do the "starter carts" thing too...

.bh.

 

[Lemon law]

Zepper is correct-------------in an inkjet the best hope lies in the non-chipped Canons that are now discontinued. Still quite a few available.

Any Canon that takes the BCI-3&6 cartridges will be an economy champ and offer the lowest per page costs of any inkjet when compared OEM cartridges to
OEM cartridges.

But they really become super economy champs when paired with pre-filled cartridges readily available dirt cheap on the internet. And become even more economical
than that when refilled---and they are super easy to refill BTW.

The general purpose models to look for are the ip3000, ip4000, and the ip5000. Or get the ip4000 printer engine in multifuntional form with the MP780.---try ebay for finding a non-chipped Canon.

 

[Craig234]

Thanks for the replies. You're right on the starter cartridges; the new HP has a 14ml cartridge while the replacement cartridge has 30ml.

I tried refelling it once, and it was a big hassle. The kit I got is a few years old now and I wonder if it could even be reused anymore.

I saw replacements at Fry's that were 'refilled in China' for a little cheaper; I'd rather just get the unspecificed, but perhaps USA, ones from HP.

However, I can check the links.

I'm not seeing any comments that the printers are that much better now to upgrade for that reason.

 

[Lemon law]

To Craig234,

To give you some data, by your own words its going to cost you $100.00 to get a new two pack. Probably about what your printer costs new.

But in the good old days---less than two years ago---I bought a Canon ip4000---which came with all ink cartridges OEM BTW---for $110. The Canon ip4000 came with one 27 ML black text cartridge and four seperate color cartridges that held 13 ML of ink each. If I choose to buy a complete set of replacement color cartridges from Canon at full OEM list price---it would cost me around $70.00.

But because the ip4000 is a non-chipped Canon, I opted instead to buy brand new replacement third party prefilled cartridges from one of the vendors highly recommended by the nifty stuff
forums---which got my replacement costs for a full set down to less than $10.00--or a 7x savings.
Were someone to choose swift ink---the saving would only be about 4x--maybe 5x after sales. At your printing volume, you would hardly notice the difference.

But HP cartridges are another matter---because they have a propriotory printhead on the cartridge.
Bottom line, if you choose to avoid the hassle of refilling and choose to go with an outfit that pre-fills the cartridge for you---they must use a pre-depleted HP OEM cartridge---and your savings are seldom over 2X---and even if they refilled the cartridge exactly right--its still will be no good if the printhead on the caretridge has problems--either dried up or burnt up.

I have tried in past to refill HP cartridges and always made a botch of it---you have to break off the top of the cartridge---its messy---but some do really study up and do learn to get a fair sucess rate refilling HP's.

Even though I had 100% sucess rate using that highly rated vendor, I later opted to try refilling my own---and now save on the order of 15X--using basically the exact same inks to refill my ip4000 and my MP730----and I can refill a full set for less than $5.00 of supplies. And comment that refilling a Canon BCI-3&6 cartridge is real easy--and because the cartridge is transparent, you can see exactly what is going on.

I also have an old working HP 520 officejet I keep as a backup outgoing fax machine---but I just quit feeding it with expensive cartridges-------but you are correct---there is no need to buy a replacement printer if you can't save money---get a non-chipped Canon and you just keep saving,
and saving and saving---just print something at least once a week to keep the printhead cycled. As for you, if you keep that HP---it will be $100 this year, another $100.00 the next year for replacement ink--and so on---and until the printer craps out or until you get another OS and HP fails to give you a printer driver that works with that OS.