I Primary is a Cannon Pixima 5000 that prints at 9600DPI resolution, one of the highest on the market. Now it cost more than an HP but the difference is quite clear and the cartridges cost far less. It actually has two black cartridges, one that is active when printing color and another when only printing B&W. It cost 28 bux to replace all four cartridges.

Nice printer Rob.

The price difference with canon cartridges is not as large as it seems.

First the carriage needs to be replaced occasionally, which isnt the case with HP and Epson. I dont know all the details tohugh.

Second if you look at the contents of the ink cartridges you will see some differences.

Epson 17ML Black and 8ML color

I forget how much are in HP and Hanon

But I think the HPs varied between 29 and 45 ML

Canon B-6 cartridge is hard to find appears it 8ML...

CAnon has some tiny cartridges ranging from 2.5ML to "high capacity" 12ML

Hi,

People are griping about the sad situation with inkjet cartridges in all the trade papers. Most people have just learned to live with it. There is at least one law suit about preventing refills of cartridges, thus depriving the printer companies of some more revenue.

I'm sick of it, and I've tried to do my part. I buy refilled color cartridges and fill my own black. I tried color but it's too much of a crap shoot.

After refilling I have to do a hard reset on my DJ990 to keep it from rejecting the cartridges. I never pay attention to the ink level indicators that are provided by HP. 6.14.05: The DJ990 prints when the color cartridge is empty.

My oldest printer was a Data Products line printer, RIP, but I still have an HP LJ2P, which prints great black and white. 6.14.05 -- Gonzo :-(

Pressure on the printer manufacturers might induce some change to the obvious ripoffs that are occurring. I'm sure that a lot of ink is being trashed by unsuspecting users.

tWeaKmoD wrote:

~Robrowe~ wrote: It is most of the time cheaper to buy a new printer than to replace the cartridges. I know people that do this. Actually, I made the mistake of spending $70 on cartriges last year and then later in the year I bought a new copier/scanner/printer for $90. It is very common to find prineters for $50 or cheaper, yet a black and color cartrige are alteast $45. How can that be?

its like gillete razors: you get the thing itself free in teh mail (the latest and coolest models too!) and have to buy the blades for much $$$$$$$$$$

Here's an extra tidbit to add to this story.

My Konica Minolta Color Laser I recently bought has been telling me I'm low on black ink. So, naturally I spent the $80 on getting a new black catridge. But out of pure curiosity I have been prining full 30 page booklets to see how much ink was really left. To date, since the warnings telling me I need to "immediately replace the catridge" I have printed nearly 30 of these 30 page booklets, which mostly use black ink. That's 900 pages on a toner that's only supposed to have 1400 pages in it!

Go figure?

~Robrowe~ wrote:

It is most of the time cheaper to buy a new printer than to replace the cartridges.

There is a reason for this, the ink cartridges in a new printer don't hod as much ink as a new cartridge. They give you the new printer cheap, knowing you will run out of ink soon and ned a new cartridge. I have heard you only get half as much ink in the cartridges that come with your printer.
The cheap printer cost is to beat the compititions price, and the real money is made up on the ink, thats why they make it so hard to refill them.

I used to go with HP, but after the ink low pop-up kept coming up after I only bought the cartridge about a month before, I bought a Lexmark All-in-one. It has an actual cartridge meter, and, so far, the meter seems to be correct (although I still use it for maybe 10+ pages after it says its completely empty) but I guess it is hard to get perfected, and the all-in-one only cost around 149.99. I will never buy another HP product again, not only the printers, their computers aren't exactly reliable either.