Ink More Expensive Than Champagne

laing writes "According to this story, ink for home printers is now seven times more expensive than vintage champagne.Ink in a typical replacement cartridge costs about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre." Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!

Hardcore dupe action

[mao che minh (611166)]

This was all covered earlier. The story posted by Michael earlier today [slashdot.org] about Lexmark's DMCA suit contained a link to a BBC article [bbc.co.uk] showing the price of ink to be higher then that of vintage champagne. The 1.70 per millitre thing was even covered.

You guys are editorial juggernaughts.

Re:Hardcore dupe action

[snazzed (591487)]

I found the repost useful. Reading the Headline and summary on the HP - DMCA article, I had no interest in reading the full article. Hence, I never read anything about the cost of Ink.

Reposting the story with a different theme may get the attention of people who may not have been interested in the original story... people like myself. The link may be a Dupe, but the idea behind the posts were not.

Thanks
Snazzed

Re:Hardcore dupe action

[dark-br (473115)]

New /. slogan: "News that mattered. Stuff for the amnesiac." ;)

Reassignment of terms.

[Ignorant Aardvark (632408)]

Ink costs more than champagne? What?! That's not the natural order of things. To correct this problem, the French must immediately start drinking printer ink and printing with champagne. That should kill a few problems with one stone (sorry for the mixed metaphor). To clear up the resulting confusion we will call printer ink "Freedom Champagne" and champagne, "printer ink 2: full-speed".

Re:Reassignment of terms.

[Uart (29577)]

what will really blow your mind is when you realize that gasoline is cheaper than bottled water...

Re:Reassignment of terms.

[Enraged_jawa (641736)]

"Evian" spelled backwards is "Naive" .. the French knew all along

Please see Penn & Teller, "Bullshit"

[jridley (9305)]

They did an episode on bottled water. It turns out that bottled water is NOT tested or regulated by any government agency unless it crosses state lines, but tap water is constantly tested. The federal government has over 100 people that test tap water, but less than one person to test bottled water.

In an independent study that they quoted, more than half the brands of bottled water would not have passed tap water quality specs.

The funny part of the ep was when they went to a NYC restaurant and had a "water steward" BS'ing people into paying $8 for a bottle of water from the hose in the alley with a phony label on it; people were making up all kinds of BS about how "sparkling" and "crisp" it was, and how they each had a different character even though we knew they all came from the same hose.

Around here (Ann Arbor, MI), the tap water is VERY good tasting; I bought some bottled water in Chicago a couple of weekends ago and it tasted FAR worse than what comes out of the tap here. I actually think the tap water tastes better than the bottled stuff, but people still buy the bottles.

Also, Aquafina/etc is NOT distilled, it's merely filtered. Taste distilled water sometime; it's nasty. Aquafina is just Pepsi with no carbonation or flavoring; really, it comes from the same lines, it's the water that they normally use to mix soda. So you can pay $1 for a bottle of Pepsi, or $1 for a bottle of Pepsi without the additives.

Re:Price of bottling

[EnderWiggnz (39214)]

no, it tells you that people are idiots to be paying $1 for a pint of water.

its all profit. water is dirt cheap. plastic bottles are dirt cheap. distribution method is already in place for the big guys.

Bottled water is almost pure profit.

Re:Price of bottling

[nathanh (1214)]

It's only a ripoff if you don't consider the whole picture. Consider that soft drink for $1 a bottle is easily 10x the cost of the materials (mostly sugar and water). But what you're paying for is the FRIDGE at the store that keep it cold and the CONVENIENCE from not lugging around a bottle of water until you needed it. Convenience has a price. You can't simply look at the raw materials to determine value.

Look at it this way, there is 2c worth of wheat and yeast and water in a loaf of bread. They charge $2 for it. Where did the other $1.98 go? Into the cost of preparing and cooking and packaging and marketting and transporting and storage and the sales clerks salary. So what if there is 0.01c worth of water in a $1 bottle? You've still gotta pay for all the other costs including a much more expensive storage cost (refrigerated).

PS: I don't buy bottled water, I prefer juice :-)

Re:Price of bottling

[suwain_2 (260792)]

Mmmmm. Nothing like a good bottle of gasoline. ;)

Market Forces

[RatBastard (949)]

I wirked for California Coolers for a while (anyone remember them?) and let me tell you, bottliing is cheap. After the initial capital investment is earned back, it's pretty much a minimum cost operation.

What this fact tells us is that people will buy just about anything. We've gotten so condition to the $1.00-$1.25 bottle of soda (talk about a pure profit market!) that we willingly accept a $1.00 bottle of water. Add in the snob appeal of certain brands of bottled water and you've got yourself a massive money-maker.

One thing you have to remember is that price is NOT a function of cost. Price is a function of market forces. It is whatever people are willing to pay.

Consider: I used to wirk for a computer store eight years ago. A regular six-connector 50-pin SCSI1 internal ribbon cable was priced at $60.00. You know how much it cost the store to buy it? $5.00. Yep. $55.00 markup. Why? People beleived that SCSI was more expensive.

Re:Reassignment of terms.

[by Anonymous Coward]

$0.25 a gallon? Wow, where do you get gas from?

He said "Bottled Water", not water from refilling stations where you can get a gallon for 25c.

To explain the water>gas phenomenon, you just have to look closely in urban areas. In California, bottled water such as evian, dasani, arrowhead in tiny or medium tall bottles are more of an accessory than something which serves a specific purpose - thirst quenching; rehydration.

It is psychological behaviour and water-distributing mafia knows this. Historically homo-sapiens always had the need to carry around something. Whether it was a rock, a spear, sword, etc; later became smoking and morphed into the idiotic bottled water trend. It is the ideal successor to smoking, because it repeats the 2 basic patterns cigarettes serve - hold it in hand, intake into the body through the mouth. And thus we have companies exploiting it with inflated prices and we get bombarded with constant advertisements on TV, billboards, etc.

I'm no psychologist, but I think I've narrowed it down to why the bottled water costs more than gas.

Re:Reassignment of terms.

[dcmeserve (615081)]

Historically homo-sapiens always had the need to carry around something. Whether it was a rock, a spear, sword, etc;...

[Ooog walks into cave]

Bogg: Hi, Ooog! I see you have your rock with you.

Ooog: Yeah, I know, it's kinda heavy, but, well, you know, ya gotta carry something...

Bogg: Oh, I know! Believe me!

[Bogg picks up his rock]

Bogg: I've had this sucker for 3 days now. It really fills the void left when I threw my last rock into the river...

Ooog: What'd you do that for, anyways?

Bogg: Oh, well, you know, gotta throw something...

Ooog: Oh yeah, I hear ya!

Boog: Hey, can you believe they're charging three squirrels for a good rock nowadays?

Ooog: Oh, man, that sucks! That's even more than a good clay pot -- those are 2 squirrels, maybe 2 and a half max!

Bogg: Yeah, man, why are there so many idiots who would pay so much just for a rock?!

Ooog: Well, ya know, gotta carry something...

Bogg: Oh, yeah, I hear ya!

Re:Reassignment of terms.

[Golias (176380)]

Uh, no, gas is $1.60-1.90 / gallon and clean water comes out of the sink.

Quite correct. In almost every city in America, clean drinking water is available from your city water tank almost for free.

The reason bottled water is so expensive in the US is because almost nobody pays for ordinary drinking water unless their local supply was contaminated by a flood or something.

At local convenience stores, you can buy distilled water such as Aquafina (bottled by the Coca-cola company) for about a dollar for 20 ounces or imported mineral water like Evian for about the same price. When an American says "bottled water," they are usually talking about that sort of thing... And yes, it is more expensive than gasoline. Drinking bottled water is looked upon by many Americans with a certain amount of scorn for lack of thrift, and perhaps a little bit of class-envy.

Some people in some parts of the US buy distilled water out of fears about chlorides or other additives in the municipal water (for a humorous reference, watch the movie "Dr. Strangelove,") but most Americans just drink what comes out of their tap, leaving very little demand for $0.25 gallon jugs of water from the store.

And the buzz is better

[Lane.exe (672783)]

Plus, the rad high you get from sipping ink completely blows away that bubbly kind of drunk you get when you pound the Christobal.

On the other hand...

[Raindance (680694)]

People are taking this so negatively; just revel in the fact that champaign is so cheap!

Re:On the other hand...

[EinarH (583836)]

Yeah, I know this was meant as a joke but you made me think.

The other day HP introduced [com.com] their new DeskJet printers. Their prices start on something that would have been almost unbelievable a few years ago; *$39*. Isolated that's just freaking cheap for a printer capable of printing medium quality photos.

However the only reason they go so low in pricing is because they have managed to trick the public into almost exclusively buying HP-ink. Ink is a substance that's *pretty* generic. And still people still buy HP cartridges even if they could get ink elsewhere at 1/3 of the HP price-tag. That's beyond me.

AFAIK these printers don't contain chips that makes it impossible to use generic ink or third party cartridges.

I guess that the price on HP-ink feels right to many consumers as long as they are still willing to pay the price.

And BTW about the Champagne; the price on this former exclusive goods has been falling steadily after the Y2K buzz about the world running out of it. Basically the price curve on some brands like Dom Perignon looks like a stock chart for a dot-com.

how much ink

[kardar (636122)]

I was looking at the HP 3420 - it was on sale recently for something like $40 or so.

I had always used second-hand DeskJet 500's, 560's etc... with the "26" cartridge - that cartridge holds 40 ml and prints out about 800+ or so pages. These "51626" cartridges are right around slightly less than $30 US. I have printed thousands of pages of material using these old HP DeskJets and have had no problems. I like those printers. They are kind of slow, but very reliable.

The black cartridge for the HP 3420 holds 10ml and is expected to print about 200+ pages. It costs slightly less than $20 US. The color cartridge for this printer holds 8ml and produces slightly less than 200 pages.

The higher quality (and more expensive) printers have larger page number counts for their refills, but many of the less expensive brands and printers had page counts of less than 500 pages per cartridge, and even though the cartridges have dropped in price, they hold a lot less ink and you can hardly get anything printed with one cartridge. These bargain printers are probably an excellent solution for those who just need to print out an occasional web page or order confirmation here or there. They probably are not designed for people who print a lot. And, paying 18 dollars for a cartridge just kind of feels better than paying 28 dollars for a cartridge, despite the fact that there is only 1/4 as much ink in there!!! The boxes are all the same size on the shelf, who would guess that one cartridge has 10ml and the other has 40ml?

I have come to expect over 500 pages from one deskjet cartridge. Closer to 1000 would be better - some printer can do this. The HP DeskJet 1200 (which is an older model) - this black print cartridge was rated at 1100+ pages before it ran out (42ml). Same price as the others - about $30 US.

I don't doubt that the quality of the printed pages is good - I love Hewlett Packard printers, it's just that if you print a lot of stuff, you really need to get a printer (even second-hand, if you can find one) that was originally designed to do some serious printing. I found a second-hand HP printer (I love HP printers) that is rated for 12,000 pages per month; not like I would ever print that many pages per month, but it is kind of cool to know that you could if you wanted to.

Office Depot's site has page counts on all the refills - I found it helpful when shopping around for a printer. To some people, page counts per cartridge don't matter - they don't print enough stuff to have that matter. But to many of us, it does make a big difference, and it is surprising how expensive the ink is for the really inexpensive printers.

Slashdot is too UK-centric

[bdesham (533897)]

But seriously -- anyone mind providing conversions to USD?

Re:Slashdot is too UK-centric

[dinog (582015)]

USD $2.84

Thanks to : http://www.xe.com/ucc/

So a bottle of Lexmark ink would cost USD 2132.00. Unfortunately, it doesn't taste nearly as good, and goes rather poorly with lobster. The initial bouquet is bad, the nose just aweful, and the horrid taste sticks to you tongue like, well, ink.

Dean G.

Re:Slashdot is too UK-centric

[mickwd (196449)]

"Unfortunately, it doesn't taste nearly as good, and goes rather poorly with lobster."

Since it's ink, perhaps it would go rather better with squid ?

Re:Slashdot is too UK-centric

[mdielmann (514750)]

Unfortunately, it doesn't taste nearly as good, and goes rather poorly with lobster.

Well, yes, when you use the blue ink. If you try the red ink, I'm sure you'll be much happier.

Ink is too expensive

[jared_hanson (514797)]

I've long held the belief that ink for inkjet printers is way to expensive. I bought a cheap laser printer 4 years ago, for about twice that of a nice inkjet printer. However, I am still using the same toner cartiridge that came with it. I've probably saved myself 10 times the money by going with a laser printer. Yeah, I can't print in color but that does not bother me. I'm not sure how the price of toner compares to ink cartridges, but laser is the way to go.

Re:Ink is too expensive

[Wraithlyn (133796)]

Agreed for B&W absolutely... I have had a laser printer for about 8 years or so, and the original toner cartridge just ran out last year. Sure the cartridge costs $150 (CDN), but it lasts forever, and the text is sharp enough to shave with, and blacker than hell.

However, colour has its place, so when I finally bought an inkjet printer to print out photos from my digital camera, one of the primary factors was long term operating cost.

Epson printers are the top of the line for visual quality, and a very cheap initial purchase, but they gouge you on replacement cartridges later... so I went for a Canon (s820 [steves-digicams.com]) instead, and am extremely pleased with both the print quality, and ink economy. It has SIX refillable cartridges (photo, or "light", magenta and cyan in addition to standard CMYB) as opposed to Epson's microchip crippled, non refillable 1 or 4 cartridge solutions.

The Canon is also way faster and quieter to boot, and everytime I show someone a photo I've printed, they want to know what professional Photo Lab I went to. :)

Re:Ink is too expensive

[wideBlueSkies (618979)]

Personally I see no need to print in color. Most documents that I would actually print (word, visio etc) look fine in greyscale. And I've had the same experiences with toner, the cartridges are expensive, but they last forever.

I just dumped a 10 year old Epson laser last year. Only because I needed more memory(the 1 meg printer was choking on large documents and flowcharts). Epson memory for my model was like $50 a meg And the printer had a 4 meg max. (Would have been $150 for 3 megs of memory) So instead I got a new HP for $450.(16 megs, 1200 dpi).

Interestingly, the toner cartridge for the old Epson was 25% full. If I didn't have the memory requirement, i probably could have gotten another 2 years out of the toner.

The only thing I can think of reasonably needing a color printer for is photographs. And I figure: why bother? If I need a print of digital photos, I just send them off the service. They come back on photographic paper, looking almost as good as prints from my SLR.

Some numbers

[freeweed (309734)]

I've been pricing out toner/ink comparisons lately, because I spend way too much on ink, and end up just printing stuff out at work anyway.

In Canada, a $100 toner cartridge gets you around 5000 sheets on a low-end laser printer. The same price cartridge for a more expensive printer (same toner, but different cartridge shape for obvious reasons) gets you well over 10000 sheets.

Most inkjet cartridges here are in the $40-$50 range (assuming all black printing). You get anywhere between 200 to 500 pages per cartridge.

So basically:

• a $300 laser printer + $100 toner = 5000 pages, or about 8 cents per page, with any extra pages costing 2 cents a pop.
  
  
• a $600 printer + $100 toner = 10000 pages, or about 7 cents per page, extra pages around 1 cent each.
  
  
• a $99 inkjet + $50 ink = 500 pages (I'll be optimistic here), or about 30(!!) cents a page. Extra pages are 10 cents each.
  

Note that I'm ignoring any ink/toner that comes with the printer; usually these are extremely low-yield 'samples', and in any case the initial toner cartridge almost always outperforms what you get for free with an inkjet.

So basically, unless you're planning on only printing a few hundred pages EVER, it makes no sense to buy an inkjet for B&W printing. Never mind the fact that if you rarely use an inkjet, the ink nozzles eventually stop working even if there's plenty of ink inside. At least, no amount of cleaning can fix the ones I use in my Epson Stylus 700, if I don't print for more than 3 months.

just buy a laserjet

[SweetAndSourJesus (555410)]

My annual operating cost for an $800 HP LaserJet 2200 is about a $100 for toner.

Sure, I paid a lot more up front, but having to spend $100 every two months to maintain an Epson Inkjet added up quickly.

Bootlegging

[retto (668183)]

Does this mean people are going to start bootlegging ink? Will the great crime families ditch the drug trade for the undergound ink market? I fear the day our great cities are brought under the heel of the ink barons.

Ink

[nother_nix_hacker (596961)]

I tend to find the 86' Lexmark ink has a fruity taste which can be complimeted only by a good mature cheese and a decent toner cartrige.

Re:Ink

[nick_davison (217681)]

Personally, I prefer fava beans and a nice Epson. Thththththththth.

lucky drunks

[abe_is_fun (320753)]

Even though ink is more expensive than fine champagne, and therefore is better than fine champagne (proof by induction), you shouldn't drink it.

It would stain your teeth some ugly color like #006666, and you would never get a date and you would die cold and alone, a pitiful 30 year old virgin.

Instead, drink beer -- it's been helping ugly people get laid for over 200 years!

also

[abhisarda (638576)]

Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!.

Sending booze by mail across state lines is not legal in many places.

Other shocking comparisons..

[L. VeGas (580015)]

Pound for pound...

Poodles cost more than horses!

Crack whores cost more than fatties!

Eardrums cost more than eyeballs!

The sheer wastefulness of ink marketing

[robogun (466062)]

I usually get the generic cartridges for my pre-chip Epson. When they ran out of those, I had to buy the "economical" two-pack of genuine Epson.

Aside from the $40 cost (deep-discount, as I understand), just getting the cartridges out from all the packaging was a chore. It was like peeling an onion. It was time- consuming. I needed a knife to get past the hard shell. There were slick-coated 4-color ads in and on the packaging.

The resulting stack of garbage took up half the wastebasket -- not including the spent cartridges, which I am starting to save for refilling.

Knowing I paid for all that glossy, 4-color trash makes me highly reluctant to buy those genuine cartridges again.

Get Smart

[Shadow Wrought (586631)]

Chief: This desk runs entirely on ink.

Max: But chief, that's incredible. Do you realize what this could mean to our energy supply?

Chief: Unfortunately its an extremely rare type of ink that can only be found in the Middle East.

Yes I'm paraphrasing, but that's the first thing that came to mind;-)

Stupidity makes sense at last

[Cali Thalen (627449)]

This has been going on for a while, it shouldn't surprise anyone. Manufacturers are getting cheaper (not all their own faults, but it's a fact of life for most consumer grade items). The make crap and hope to keep selling it, because other manufacturers are finding cheaper ways to produce the same goods (usuallt with offshore labor, but not always).

So...in the end, they produce crap and try to make up profits elsewhere. In the printer business, that's either paper or ink. And not a lot of printer manufacturers are selling much expensive paper. And, they're not liekly to beat the paper industry at inexpensive paper either.

Me, I cut printer costs by saving everything on $0.50/GB hard drives instead of printing, always cheaper in the end.

Newsflash: Apples and Oranges vary in price!

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

Is this one of those tests?

Champagne is to printer ink as:

a) Automobiles are to shoes.
b) Doorknobs are to bedpans.
c) Beach sand is to integrated circuits.

The answer is c because integrated circuits are computer related and this is slashdot...

But How Much is Inside

[the_pooh_experience (596177)]

Well according to this [cockeyed.com], ink costs about the same as Chanel No. 5 Eau Du Parfum, but when was the last time you tried to print porn with parfume or champagne?

Inkjet vs Laser Printer

[divide overflow (599608)]

Explains why I get daily spam about toner, but none at all for booze!

Actually, it says nothing about toner and everything about the high price of ink. Note that:

1. Ink is for inkjet printers.
2. Toner is for laser printers.
3. Toner is usually MUCH cheaper per page than ink.

I've been waiting to find a color printing option that approaches the cost per page of a laser printer with the color quality and resolution of a good inkjet printer. So, has anyone here on Slashdot found an optimal solution that offers reasonably quick printing? Extra points for built-in network support.

Well which lasts longer?

[donutz (195717)]

I mean, you drink some champaigne, take a piss an hour later, and it's gone.

You print out your term paper...and behold! It's still there! Way to go ink manufacturers!

Of course, you could always try your luck with pissing on a piece of paper...but I don't think your instructor would like to read your essay that you printed that way....

Not the only thing with surprisingly high prices

[mnemonic_ (164550)]

It was reported several months ago that many prescription drug cost more than their weight in gold [naplesnews.com]. An excerpt (emphasis mine):

Lipitor, the anti-cholesterol medicine, costs about

20 times as much as gold, based on late-2002 prices from www.drugstore.com. Prilosec, used to treat ulcers and gastric reflux, costs 35 times as much. Prevacid, used for the same purposes, costs 25 times more.

Zocor, an anti-cholesterol medicine, is worth 33 times its weight in gold.

My New Businessplan

[sherpajohn (113531)]

1. Develope color printing technology that is cheaper than ink-jet.
2. Make scads of money
3. Buy one of the really prestigious Champagne "Houses" - they are so funny...they do not call them estates, but houses!
4. Hire the best chef in France to make lots of Hot Grits
5. Invite Natalie Portman over
6. Enjoy 3 course meal of Fine Champagne, hot grits and Natalie
7. Print out pictures of #6 on cheap color printer
8. Sell copies of pictures
9 Profit!!!!!

$17 for 24 refills

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

Refill your Canon i320 printer that you bought for $40 (U.S. price) with this refill system: http://www.ims-ink.com/ [ims-ink.com]. It costs $17 at Costco and refills the black cartridge an estimated 24 times. The system also comes with bottles of colored ink; haven't calculated the color refills yet.

The comparison is useless

[John Jorsett (171560)]

I buy a drink mix that, added to water, yields a liquid that's more expensive than gasoline. Does that say anything about the high cost of the mix, or the low cost of gasoline? NO! They're two different things and thus have two different prices. Telling me that a little tub of ink costs more than champagne on a per-unit basis is similarly useless information, unless I can substitute champagne for the ink.

What the hell have I been doing?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286)]

I need to stop printing and start drinking. Its "cheaper". Yeah honney. I was thinking about printing out the manual for your new stairmaster, but I wanted to save money so I drank a case of cris and then put it together.

Printers

[pokka (557695)]

One interesting fact about ink cartridges:

As you all probably know: ink prices average around $30 US per cartridge.

Did you know that most of the $50 printers use 10mL ink cartridges, while the more expensive ones use 40+ mL cartridges?

The strange thing is that when it's time to refill the ink, the 10mL cartridges cost almost the same price as the 30 mL that are used in more expensive models. So while you saved a little money by getting the dirt-cheap printer, you're now paying 3 times as much for the ink!

This is (in my opinion) a very unethical way to trick consumers into thinking that they are saving money by buying a cheaper printer. I've heard many people say that "it's cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy the refill cartridges". But it turns out that this is not true.

Don't believe me? Check out the HP deskjet 3300 series [hp.com] ($40 printer). It uses 10mL cartridges that cost $17.00, which is $1.70 per milliliter.

Now check the Deskjet 6127 [hp.com], a $299 printer. It uses 42mL cartridges @ $29.00, which is only $0.69/mL! The ink for the $40 printer is 2.4 times as expensive.

By the way, this does not apply to Canon printers, but does apply to most others.

Ink piracy

[Decimal Dave (411182)]

These high prices are just a result of rampant piracy in the ink industry. College students are especially guilty of downloading ink from Kazaa and sharing it with their friends.

I guess it's a good thing

[cyclist1200 (513080)]

that your printer doesn't require a magnum of ink!

Re:Quick!

[SharpFang (651121)]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of drunken soviet cartritges that refill YOU!!!

Re:You don't get any for booze because...

[dasmegabyte (267018)]

Which is why we need a bureau of Printer Ink, Natural Viagra Supplements, Genital Enlargement, Nigerian Banks and Obscure Domain Name Registrars.