InkJet Printers Lying, Or Just Wrong?

akkarin writes in about a study reported at Ars Technica on how accurate ink-jet printers are when they report that cartridges are empty. Not very, it turns out. Epson came out on top of the study (and Ars rightly questions how objective it was, given that Epson paid for it), but even they waste 20% of the ink if users take the printers' word for when to get a new cartridge. On average, the printers in the study wasted more than half the ink that users bought.

Re:Not buying a printer...

[gameguy56]

Get a Color Laser then.

Inkjets are so 1993

This is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I chisel all of my important documents in stone.

Re:Considering how expensive ink is

[kalirion]

Don't you see, you don't buy the ink, you license it. Once the license runs out, you have to renew, and by ignoring the "out of ink" warning you are no better than the pirates costing the industry $10000000000000000000000000.

Re:People Have Too Much Disposable Income...

[jimicus]

Inkjet ink works out to be more expensive, by volume, than the most expensive Bollinger champagne

Agreed. That's why I don't bother refilling ink cartridges with ink any more. I use vintage champagne instead.

The results are disappointing, but I can drink anything that's left over in the "refill kit" after I've finished refilling the cartridge.

Re:Several semi-plausible "reasons" for this

[javaxjb]

...so if it's a trui-color cartridge, unless you're printing a lot of "skin tones", the yellow section will tend to still be mostly full when the other ones have run out, or at least "low".

So, what you're saying is that tri-color cartridges are best for printing lots of porn?

Re:Laserjets do this too..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, because I had for years a Lexmark laser that just would never run out of toner. I'm not a heavy user, but it's like it was magic. Eventually gave it to my dad; he prints considerably more than I do and it still hasn't run out. Again, not a heavy user, but we've definitely done at least 30,000 pages without ever replacing the toner cartridge.

I think that most of us probably don't do nearly as much white-text-on-white-background printing as you and your dad. So our cartridges don't last nearly as long.

Re:People Have Too Much Disposable Income...

[spun]

As for me, when I really want to show of my extravagant wealth, I throw an ink-tasting party. Sure it tastes like crap, but so does caviar and you don't see rich people complaining about that.