Ink More Expensive Than Champagne 587
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
just buy a laserjet (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, I paid a lot more up front, but having to spend $100 every two months to maintain an Epson Inkjet added up quickly.
also (Score:5, Informative)
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.Model car kit paint is astronomically pricy. (Score:1, Informative)
You think that's pricy? I advise you not to look at the cost of perfumes or colognes then.
Inkjet vs Laser Printer (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Slashdot is too UK-centric (Score:3, Informative)
£1.70 = $2.84
23p (£0.23) = 38 ($0.38)
Re:Reassignment of terms. (Score:2, Informative)
$17 for 24 refills (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reassignment of terms. (Score:3, Informative)
He's probably a Merkin, where gas is cheap, but clean drinking water is expensive. In the US, the only thing that is cheaper than gas is donated blood... [americasblood.org].
Re:Ink is too expensive (Score:5, Informative)
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:I read this in the metro this morning (Score:3, Informative)
Slashdot is always showing things a little later. They don't *post news*, the post links to *other peoples* news. Been like this forever. Deal with it.
The comparison is useless (Score:5, Informative)
Price of bottling (Score:3, Informative)
Compare bottled water to bottled gasoline, or pumped water to pumped gasoline to get a fair comparision.
Re:Price of bottling (Score:5, Informative)
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:Reassignment of terms. (Score:2, Informative)
liter gallon
Some numbers (Score:5, Informative)
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:
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.
Re:Reassignment of terms. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Printers (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Ink is too expensive (Score:3, Informative)
Ink != Toner (Score:4, Informative)
Toner is an powder mixture used to develop images in photocopy machines and laser printers working as follow:
* A copier drum is given a positive charge.
* The image from the original copy illuminates the charged drum and a latent image is formed.
* Static electricity attracts toner to the drum surface and a visible image is formed.
* Toner on the drum is transferred to paper by positive charging.
* After the image transfer process is completed, the paper is separated from the drum surface.
* Toner on the copy paper is firmly fixed when the paper runs between heat and pressure rollers.
* A cleaning blade wipes off excess toner.
* The drum is exposed by a neon lamp to erase remaining static charge.
Re:Cutting costs on printing supplies (Score:3, Informative)
Umm, no. How about you try PDF995. It's free and works great. I use it all the time.
Wishful thinking, I'm afraid. (Score:3, Informative)
The costs-more-but-will-save-you-money-later printer will wither and die next to the costs-less-but-will-eat-you-alive-later printer. Once people buy something they'll pay through the nose to keep that item viable, if for no other reason than to convince themselves they didn't get ripped off.
how much ink (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Bizarre (Score:4, Informative)
Overrated? I think not. This is the only sane comment to this bizarre article. I'll never drink ink, no matter how expensive it is.
Re:Market Forces (Score:3, Informative)
Go to the distributer in town, and they sell the same cable in bulk for $6. The only difference? It's not packaged in a plastic windowed box with full-color labeling and "instructions for use" (ya, plug it in!).
Of course, as soon as the store repackages the bulk product, they charge over 5x the price. For probably about $1.50 worth of additional packaging.
Consumers are stupid and companies are there to squeeze the money out of the stupid ones as fast as possible.
N.
Re:Market Forces (Score:3, Informative)
Continuous Ink System [inksupply.com]
Works great, and I bet it scares printer manufacturers like hell. I can print all day on these things and when the ink runs low, I just unscrew the top of the bottle and pour a little more in.
I was printing 11x14s by the dozen without worrying about it. Great stuff!
N.
it's not necessarily a sanitation issue (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Reassignment of terms. (Score:2, Informative)
Very often bottled water is really just tap water, or worse. Just look at this article. [nrdc.org] Some bottled water is actually from very dangerous sources near industrial waste sites, and the FDA requires significantly less frequent testing for bottled water sources than does the EPA for tap water.
Some standards, though, like the maximum permissible amount of lead, are actually lower for tap water, but only by a miniscule amount: a difference of 10 parts per billion. [fda.gov] If you're really nervous about that insignificant amount of lead, though, you can always get a Brita or Pür water filter to remove it, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying water by the bottle (refer again to FDA article for that).
There is also the consideration, though, that the minerals in mineral water make it taste better, not to mention make it possibly better for you, than probably the tap water of your region. But a lot of bottled water, like the Coca-cola company's Dasani, ain't mineral water ("Ingredients: water, magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride, salt"). Be sure about the significance, or lack thereof, to your health of what you're buying. I think that for most intents and purposes bottled waters by varying degrees are scams, and for that matter so are sodas, at the prices we get charged.
Please see Penn & Teller, "Bullshit" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Why buy name-brand ink? (Score:3, Informative)
The old way of refilling these carts was to buy a chip flasher and a bunch of ink, refill the original carts, flash the chip, then reseal the carts... major pain in the ass.
That's no longer necessary.
So I ordered a few carts at around $7 each from eink4u.com and paid $40 for 3 black and 2 color carts with shipping. No problems to report thus far.
Fuck Epson.
Oh, and there are MANY places other than eink4u selling cheap ink. Look around on Foogle [google.com], or better yet, go to BizRate [bizrate.com].
Not the Ink (Score:2, Informative)
HowStuffWorks [howstuffworks.com] explains more.
The real scandal here is that the heads can last far longer than one batch of ink. Refilling should be properly endorsed and encoraged by the printer manufacturers, and practices [slashdot.org] like [slashdot.org] these [slashdot.org] should be stopped.
Of course what should actually happen is that people get out of the habbit of printing unless it is absolutely necessary. Most printed pages in the companies I've worked in end up in the bin fairly quickly anyway. What ever happened to the paperless office?