I loathe injet printers and ink cartridges that cost more than single malt

[alf]

I know it is a razor/razor blade business but it is a PITA to keep buying and refilling those stupid ink cartridges.

Anyone have a good alternative that works?

[ckissick]

[gr8fl4porsche]

I'm not really sure what your question is, but I maintain 5-6 printers. Inkjet and laser.


I use all remanufactured cartridges. Usually from Injet123 or their many competitors. Check Amazon as well.

They are at least 66% cheaper and some are 90% cheaper than name brand. Office Depot will give you $3 for empties and some of the blacks I buy don't cost much more than that making them near free.

They might not last quite as long but the price diff is huge compared to Office supply stores.

[nota]

does anyone know of a printer that still prints a black&white copy
if a color ink runs dry ?

[arcsine]

Back when I was doing the graphic artist thing, we had a 54" large format inkjet printer. Cost $1000 to replace all four nk cartridges and reservoirs. (in early 2000 dollars) Admittedly each color reservoirs held about a liter of fluid and would last for a while, but at 54" of printing width, it was not on the order of years. More like three months. Glad the company picked up that tab.

[jyl]

I prefer lasers, retired my inkjet some time ago.

[James Brown]

Thanks for jogging my mind, I need a HP92 cartridge sooo I checked out 123inkjet and purchased 3 re manufactured ones for $9 each. Plus, got a coupon for 10% off! And the reman. inkjets have 100% more ink than the factory new ones have. So out the door with 3 for under $30 bucks delivered in 3-5 days. that's as good as it gets.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Originally Posted by jyl

I prefer lasers, retired my inkjet some time ago.

+1,000

Same here.

Inkjets are garbage. Good only for clogging and costing you a fortune in recurring cost of consumables. It's the same model as cell phones - give away the hardware for virtually nothing but get 'em on the recurring charges (ink/toner).

I use an all-in-one color laserjet for my home office. Yes, the up-front cost of the toners are staggering (about $300) but they last a LONG time. I doubt I'll be replacing them before 2012, maybe longer.

[Erakad]

I got tired of this too, so I bought into a continuous ink supply system (CISS). You do some minor modifications to your printer by removing the existing cartridges and inserting ones with tubing leading to ink reservoirs. For my Epson R260 I would spend ~$30 for about 50-100ml total of ink in non OEM cartridges. About 1.5 years ago I bought the CISS system with 100 ml of ink in each reservoir for about ...$35! I haven't run out since.

Occasionally, I need to reprime the "cartridges" when I haven't used the printer for awhile. Only real problem was when I had to replace the chips that make it run ($15) when they quit a year ago. Don't know why they stopped working, but no problems since. I figure I've more than made my money back with this system.

Mine is similar to the picture below, bought from EBay, but have seen it on Amazon too.

[alf]

Originally Posted by Erakad

Interesting, will have to look into this. I saw something like this at the PCmall, thought it was used to refill used cartridges.

I just bought a bottle of refill ink for $2 at the PC mall, it came with a small drill bit drilled out the hole in cartridge and filled it up with ink. Works but it is a little messy. Vendor says could do it 2 or 3 times per cartridge before that thing goes.

[VINMAN]

I picked up a Kodak ESP printer. the initial cost is a little higher, but the ink is dirt cheap compared to inkjets.

[fuelie600]

Tried a Kodak printer. Didn't get as many pages as the HP, and the damn thing died after 8 months. I am back on the old HP and paying through the nose....

[Porsche-O-Phile]

My old one was a Kodak EasyShare (I don't mean to bash Kodak per se, they're a U.S. company that has a great history and makes some great products). This particular printer was the absolute worst POS I've ever owned and the "straw that broke the camel's back" with respect to driving me away from inkjets ever again. It made a few fantastic-quality photos but then clogged, requiring me to go through a lengthy head-replacement ordeal. Of course the ink cartridges that were in the (clogged) head were junk and had to be discarded (there went $50). Two months later, same thing. Another head replacement (and another $50 in ink). A few months later it happened again and that was it. I went out that night and bought the laserjet and sold the inkjet (with full disclosure) on FeeBay - someone else's problem now. Or maybe it works perfectly for them. No idea. Don't care. I'll never buy another inkjet. Ever.

[VINMAN]

Jeff, was yours an older one that uses ink, or one of the newer ones that use pigment instead of ink?

[legion]

Jeff, I have similar problems with HP printers. Considering that I print maybe 6 pages a year at home, I spend more time printing test pages than actual documents.

I've also noticed that HP printers will mark print cartridges as "used" when you put them in the printer. If you remove a cartridge and reinstall it, the printer will pretend it is empty and refuse to print. I think this is designed to prevent refilled/remanufactured cartridges from being used.

For the longest time, the business model in the printer world has been to make the printers almost free, then charge a small fortune for the ink. Manufacturers have gone to extreme measures to protect their ink cartridge sales.

Recently, Kodak has decided to go the other direction by charging close to what it costs to make a printer, then charging close to what it costs to make an ink cartridge. There is less incentive to undercut them on the price of ink cartridges, and less incentive for them to resort to questionable tactics to protect that revenue stream.

[GH85Carrera]

If you only print a few pages per year just get a B&W laser printer. I have one at home that I print about one page a week on. I bought it almost 10 years ago. I think I have put one toner cartridge in it in all those years.

At work we have a color laser printer that we use all the time. Each cartridge lasts for many months. It is way cheaper than the inkjet and sweaty hands will not smear the printouts.

We just installed our new big 64 inch inkjet last week. It can make a print 64 inches wide and up to 100 feet long. A complete set of inks cost 2 grand. I will be making some 50 inch x 12 foot prints next week. The customer usually orders 14 of them.

[stomachmonkey]

Different manufacturers use various methods to hose you.

Epson printers us a chip to "estimate" how much ink is used and will disable the cartridge if it "thinks" it's empty even though it's obviously not. You can get a chip reset device from fleabay for a couple of bucks.

HP, you need to check the box, the cartridges have an expiration date. A "brand new" fresh out of the box cartridge will print like it has clogged heads if it is out of date.

[alf]

I sure do miss my old school Okidata laser printer. Only printed in black and grey but it worked for 10 years, then finally kicked it. I should get another laser printer and ditch the stupid injet POS.

[Schumi]

I only print B&W pages, and forever I used a HP Laserjet 4L from 1993. Had it hooked to an Compaq laptop via parallel port, I would jsut send it PDFs to print. 4 Pages per minute. Got the job done.

Never changed the toner on it. Found it in the trash, worked flawlessly for 4 years.

got this color laserjets on campus now, totally badass.

[VINMAN]

I use my Kodak for printing the good stuff, pics , etc, etc... I use my HP deskjet for all the simple b&w stuff. Unless the document cals for it, most of the time I print low quality fast draft. Easy way to save ink.