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Computer Printer Ink Cartridges

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Butts

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Are these a licence to print money ?

I have a Kodak Printer which was fairly cheap and they proclaim to have lower costs than the others.

Even so I have just purchased a combined Black and White and Colour Combo Pack for £17.99 from Argos.

The B&W Cartridge claims to be good for 500 copies but my ink always seems to run out before my paper :oops:

In the 18 months I have had the printer I have just passed the point where I have expended more on cartridges than the cost of the printer.

For the amount contained of ink these cartridges do seem prohibitively expensive.

Someone will come on and tell me they cost Kodak about £1 each - thats some mark up :p
 
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Badger

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They are unnecessarily expensive when you consider the costs involved. If ink was really so expensive newspapers, magazines, books wouldn't exist. You couldn't recreate a book in your collection yourself for anywhere near the price it costs a publisher. Of course much of that is down to the volumes ordered, but even so, when most ink cartriges are recycled anyway nowadays, you're paying well over the odds for a bit of ink.

It's all a scam anyway, printers break within a year and you can guarantee the next printer you buy will mysteriously use a slightly different cartridge to your old printer - and don't even try pouring it from one into the other, they know. They always know.

The printer companies like to con us into thinking different printers must require different ink. It's all tosh. Ink is ink.
 

Butts

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the printer is basically free with the initial supply of ink

Suprised no one has come in to undercut them massively - or have they got copyright /patent protection.

Even the Tesco etc own brands ones are not that much cheaper than the genuine ones.
 

starrymarkb

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I paid about £100 for my HP printer about 10 years ago, cartridges are relatively cheap at £12 for black and £17 for colour (both have a decent amount of ink in them)

My Dad bought a £40 HP printer around the same time. Black Ink cost £19 and Colour was £35 (and they only had half the ink in them!)

My Printer is still going (and the Ink hasn't increased much)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
you can get cheaper refills from Cartridge World, but I haven't had good experiences with them

Me neither, found the refills were very streaky (on my Dad's mine were not worth refilling)
 

pdq

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I use a company called Prink. For my Epson 6 ink printer they are about a fifth of the cost of Epson originals. Never had any problems with them, and at that sort of saving i wouldn't be bothered if the occasional one failed.

But my best buy was a Samsung personal laser printer 8 years ago, which cost £50. Toner is around £40 for a compatible and I've only had to buy 3 since 2004. They claim to do 3000 sheets but i haven't monitored this. I use it for all printing where colour isn't important. Great value.
 

SS4

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That's what happens when you buy a dirt cheap printer. The manufacturer seeks to make profit on the ink which is always more expensive and the printer acts as a loss leader.
I got a HP and the ink cartridges are roughly £10 each (one for black and one for colour). I've had cartridges from Ink World before which have worked well enough.

If you do a lot of printing, especially in black, have you considered a laser printer (or printing at uni :lol:)
 

Nym

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Count yourselves lucky, cartrages for one of my printer are;

£144.88 for one of them, and for the other a full set is in excess of £550 for a set of cartrages.

Does have a yeild of 12,000 and 10500/7000 respectively though...
 

Butts

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Count yourselves lucky, cartrages for one of my printer are;

£144.88 for one of them, and for the other a full set is in excess of £550 for a set of cartrages.

Does have a yeild of 12,000 and 10500/7000 respectively though...

Blimey did you "liberate" that from WHS sounds like their pricing structure - or was it a "prize" at the BH :p
 

yorksrob

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I remember reading somewhere that printer ink is usually more expensive than Champagne litre for litre.
 

All Line Rover

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If you buy a cheap inkjet printer, the running costs (for the ink cartridges) will be astronomically high, as that is how the printer manufacturers recoup their money. On my last Epson printer which cost £29.99 to buy, the branded black cartridge contained just 3.5ml of ink!

If you are a heavy user (like myself), it's worth investing in a more expensive printer, as these accept high-yield cartridges which have much lower running costs. My new Epson printer cost £149.99 to buy*, but the branded black cartridge contains 25.4ml on ink - almost 8x the amount of the previous one!

*It's absolutely huge, extremely fast, has a touch-screen, will do up to 99 copies at a time, has Wi-Fi, will print onto any surface imaginable up to A4 size and also does automatic duplex printing, so I didn't just pay extra for the cartridges it accepts.​

If you are desperate to do bulk printing on the cheap, the best place to buy compatible cartridges is eBay, where they can be had for as little as 20p each. I do offer a word of warning, though, which is that such cartridges will void any printer warranty (which is reasonable, seeing Epson or any other printer manufacture doesn't guarantee that these cartridges will work with your printer). They also seem to leak occasionally, about 1 in 10 don't work, and the print quality is worse but still fine for printing documents. For these reasons I would only recommend using them with a cheap printer (such as my former £29.99 one). I would never use them with an expensive printer.
 

bnm

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My cheap as chips Lexmark has served me well. Had it four years and only purchased one set of cartridges.

I've been using refill kits from Wilkinson (approx one a year) at around £5 for black, £8 for colour, ever since and have had no noticeable reduction in quality.
 

Ascot

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At home I have an old HP 2175 which does the job, however I find I rarely have to print though. Funnily enough my work uses the same cartridges. :lol:

When I print a voucher or ticket I am usually out and so I can make use of the many free services available. Schools have their own printers so that wasn't a problem back in the day, work wouldn't put you out of pocket and there's nothing I generally need to print since phones went smart.
 

Nym

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Blimey did you "liberate" that from WHS sounds like their pricing structure - or was it a "prize" at the BH :p

No, but if you want to look it up, my two printers (well, four, only use two of em) are...

HP Laser Jet 4200
HP Colour Laser Jet 3525 Colour Sphere

And not used...

Oki B4100 B&W Laser
HP F380 all in one, only now used for the scanner.

Anyway, I never liberated things from WHS, that's naughty ;)

EDIT:
Oh, sorry...

HP LaserJet 4200dn and HP Colour Laser Jet 3525dn Colour Sphere
 
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swj99

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Oki B4100 B&W Laser
I've got an OKI Laser 400 which the previous owner assured me worked perfectly. The only thing is, I've never been able to find the drivers to make it work.

I bought an HP scanner printer years ago, and it still works. I refilled the black cartridge about 48 times before it finally died. I bought a non genuine replacement black cartridge off ebay, and it's still going strong.

I bought a canon printer because I needed to be able to print DVDs, and it had seperate ink tanks for each colour. Great idea, cartridges lasted ages, and were easy to refil or replace. But it had a seperate print head, which failed. A replacement was nearly the same price as a new printer, so I binned it.

Next was an Epson which was second hand, but again it could print DVDs. The first page it printed had the remains of a dead moth on it, but apart from that, it's been great. I bought a cheap non genuine black cartridge but it leaked, so I refilled the original genuine one. This wouldn't print because the chip on it was telling the printer it was empty. Until I fitted it with the chip off the replacement one, and it was good as new after that.

I wouldn't bother, but inkjet ink is the most expensive liquid on the planet.
 

Peter Mugridge

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It's all a scam anyway, printers break within a year

There is one particular brand of printer which contains some "killer" software designed to make it fail after a certain time span. You can, however, get around this by switching it off completely and removing the CMOS battery for about 10 minutes or so; when you replace the battery and plug the machine in to the mains again it thinks it's a brand new machine...;)
 

richw

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I bought a new printer yesterday as it was cheaper than cartridges. My new printer 19.99 new ink 39.99 for colour and black! The printer came with a black and colour cartridge! only need to print all my documents for forth coming holiday!
 

bb21

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If you're desperate for printing on the cheap but cannot afford the initial outlay then always go for an Epson. There are always loads of dirt cheap cartridges for sale on ebay for all sorts of models.

My first printer (cost £35) broke down after 2 years due to being prodded unnecessarily. I decided that it was cheaper to buy a replacement than to repair it. In those two years it printed all my lecture notes and coursework and cartridges were about 80p each in bulk. I bought my current one for £24.99 and cartridges come at about £1.10 each for an assorted pack of about 12, although I don't print near as much now that I have an office at uni and a laser printer there.

Branded cartridges cost around £2000 a litre but you don't have to pay that price. Print quality of those bought from ebay is no worse for casual printing and although they may not last as long as the branded ones, they're not that far off. My advice for buying off ebay is that once you find a trustworthy seller, stick with him/her. Price differentials are small due to competition.
 
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