The Great Inkjet Printer Conspiracy
I'm not going to tell you anything new in this article that you cannot find out for yourself with a bit of searching. However, if you own an inkjet printer, you just might learn something new, and perhaps shocking!
Inkjet printers are known by a few other names, such as bubble-jet or thermal ink jet used by Canon and HP, or the piezoelectric inkjet used by Epson. No matter which type you use, what I'm going to tell you applies.
It's All in the Ink
Most people buy inkjet printers because they are inexpensive and print nice color documents or photos. Some units, called all-in-ones or AIOs also have a scanner and photocopier built in, and some yet have a fax machine built into the unit.
Most people are surprised, shocked and even angered to find out that although the printer itself is inexpensive, the ink refills are not. You can often find a brand new inkjet priced only a few dollars more than what the ink refill costs! Prices of $40, $50 or even $60 are not unheard of. When you consider how much ink is actually in a refill, usually under 20 milliliters, the cost of the liquid is incredible. One article priced ink at the equivalent of $8,000 per gallon (or $30,320 per liter for my metric readers)!! And you thought gas was expensive!
The printer companies have to make their money somehow, so they lure customers into buying inexpensive hardware but empty our wallets on the refills.
Discount Ink Refills
So you can't bring yourself to shell out the money for a brand name refill, so you consider a discount refilled cartridge or refill kit from the local ink vendor. The process for actually making a brand-name ink cartridge is expensive and done with high-quality machines. A refilled cartridge has no such process. It is actually very hard to achieve the same quality as the brand name. However, if you are printing at econo or draft quality with black ink, such refills can save you some money. If you are using colour, it is best to avoid them if you want a quality printout.
What Happened to Dot Matrix?
Dot matrix or pin printers used small pins that impacted a ribbon to make letters and numbers on the paper. They were quick and cheap, but they were also noisy and could only print text in black. Once inkjet technology came out, the demand for dot matrix printers waned and manufacturers stopped mass producing them. You can still buy some from specialty stores online, but they are expensive because of their rarity.
The Laser Printer
Laser is now at a good price point to compare with inkjets. Even colour lasers, which used to costs thousands of dollars, are now only a few hundred. So why aren't they more popular? It's a simple fact that the majority of people only look at the initial purchase price when making buying decisions. You can buy an inkjet that is advertised at 16 pages per minute for $99, why spend $400 for a colour laser that prints at 4 pages per minute? The answer, which you now know, is that laser toner doesn't cost $8 grand a gallon. A laser toner cartridge typically lasts for thousands of pages and is actually a very economical choice for text or simple black and white or colour graphics. Laser printers are not very good at photos, however.
So You Only Print in Black
I've heard this lament many times. You never print in colour with your inkjet printer, but all of a sudden your printer refuses to print because it says you are out of colour ink (or has "expired"). New smart chip technology on ink cartridges means that if you don't use your ink for periods of around 2 years, the cartridge will tell your printer there's a problem and you won't be able to use your printer any more. It's an artificial expiry date as Slashdot reported earlier this year. Also most inkjets will refuse to print even in black ink only if any of the other colours have run out. If you've run into this, it may be time to consider a laser printer!
Inkjet Secrets
Much of the information in this brief article came from customer experiences and this article, written a few years ago. I found it to be an eye-opening look into the world of the inkjet printer business (although it is now somewhat dated). The best tip I got from the article was the money-saving tip to print in a lower resolution of 600x600 (if your printer supports it), and to use econo-mode or a similar lower quality setting which uses less ink:
Conclusion
The next time you purchase an inkjet printer, you'll think twice about the real cost of owning and operating it after reading this! I'm not recommending that you get rid of your inkjet - in fact I own a couple of them and they are great tools for my business. Consider a laser printer if colour photos are not required, and if you are using an inkjet, experiment with and use the lowest resolution and quality setting to save on your ink costs. Finally, you could also do what a handful of my customers report: when your ink runs out, buy the cheapest new inkjet printer you can find to replace it, and donate the empty one to a friend or family member!
Inkjet printers are known by a few other names, such as bubble-jet or thermal ink jet used by Canon and HP, or the piezoelectric inkjet used by Epson. No matter which type you use, what I'm going to tell you applies.
It's All in the Ink
Most people buy inkjet printers because they are inexpensive and print nice color documents or photos. Some units, called all-in-ones or AIOs also have a scanner and photocopier built in, and some yet have a fax machine built into the unit.
Most people are surprised, shocked and even angered to find out that although the printer itself is inexpensive, the ink refills are not. You can often find a brand new inkjet priced only a few dollars more than what the ink refill costs! Prices of $40, $50 or even $60 are not unheard of. When you consider how much ink is actually in a refill, usually under 20 milliliters, the cost of the liquid is incredible. One article priced ink at the equivalent of $8,000 per gallon (or $30,320 per liter for my metric readers)!! And you thought gas was expensive!
The printer companies have to make their money somehow, so they lure customers into buying inexpensive hardware but empty our wallets on the refills.
Discount Ink Refills
So you can't bring yourself to shell out the money for a brand name refill, so you consider a discount refilled cartridge or refill kit from the local ink vendor. The process for actually making a brand-name ink cartridge is expensive and done with high-quality machines. A refilled cartridge has no such process. It is actually very hard to achieve the same quality as the brand name. However, if you are printing at econo or draft quality with black ink, such refills can save you some money. If you are using colour, it is best to avoid them if you want a quality printout.
What Happened to Dot Matrix?
Dot matrix or pin printers used small pins that impacted a ribbon to make letters and numbers on the paper. They were quick and cheap, but they were also noisy and could only print text in black. Once inkjet technology came out, the demand for dot matrix printers waned and manufacturers stopped mass producing them. You can still buy some from specialty stores online, but they are expensive because of their rarity.
The Laser Printer
Laser is now at a good price point to compare with inkjets. Even colour lasers, which used to costs thousands of dollars, are now only a few hundred. So why aren't they more popular? It's a simple fact that the majority of people only look at the initial purchase price when making buying decisions. You can buy an inkjet that is advertised at 16 pages per minute for $99, why spend $400 for a colour laser that prints at 4 pages per minute? The answer, which you now know, is that laser toner doesn't cost $8 grand a gallon. A laser toner cartridge typically lasts for thousands of pages and is actually a very economical choice for text or simple black and white or colour graphics. Laser printers are not very good at photos, however.
So You Only Print in Black
I've heard this lament many times. You never print in colour with your inkjet printer, but all of a sudden your printer refuses to print because it says you are out of colour ink (or has "expired"). New smart chip technology on ink cartridges means that if you don't use your ink for periods of around 2 years, the cartridge will tell your printer there's a problem and you won't be able to use your printer any more. It's an artificial expiry date as Slashdot reported earlier this year. Also most inkjets will refuse to print even in black ink only if any of the other colours have run out. If you've run into this, it may be time to consider a laser printer!
Inkjet Secrets
Much of the information in this brief article came from customer experiences and this article, written a few years ago. I found it to be an eye-opening look into the world of the inkjet printer business (although it is now somewhat dated). The best tip I got from the article was the money-saving tip to print in a lower resolution of 600x600 (if your printer supports it), and to use econo-mode or a similar lower quality setting which uses less ink:
Resolution is the second most important factor.
Normal printers let the user choose between some preset factory defaults like "economode", "normal", "max quality", "b/w".
These settings tell the printer which halftoning matrix to use.
High-resolution printers eat a huge amount of ink compared to old one.
This is ONLY good for printing photos.For a normal text document 300x300 is far enough, 600x600 is necessary only for very particular and complex fonts or technical cad/cam projects.
Using 600x600 you will use 4 times the ink of a 300x300 print.
With 1200x1200 16 times and 2400x2400 64 times.
As you can easily understand using hires is a crazy WASTE OF MONEY being the average user printing in the 90% of the cases just a text doc using M$ Word.
Conclusion
The next time you purchase an inkjet printer, you'll think twice about the real cost of owning and operating it after reading this! I'm not recommending that you get rid of your inkjet - in fact I own a couple of them and they are great tools for my business. Consider a laser printer if colour photos are not required, and if you are using an inkjet, experiment with and use the lowest resolution and quality setting to save on your ink costs. Finally, you could also do what a handful of my customers report: when your ink runs out, buy the cheapest new inkjet printer you can find to replace it, and donate the empty one to a friend or family member!
posted by Peter at
10:32 PM
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managed to last this long, more than twenty years since they first appeared in the Macintosh computer in 1984.
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