cony25

I barely finish buying the new cartridges in, print a couple of papers, and the machine is telling me that the ink is low. I am tired of buying cartridges, it seems that the ink disappears like magic.

Any suggestions for this ink sucking machine to make it more affordable? or a printer that has a much better ink value?

Thank you.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Cony, show me a printer that doesn't suck ink and I'm sure we will all beat a path to its door.
I was printing a bunch of B&W's and used more photo magenta than black !!
There are continuous ink systems(CIS) that are cheaper to use. Would depend on your purpose for printing I guess.
Some use compatible inks from the Internet, much cheaper at least.
Otherwise, we'll all just suffer together.
Good luck
SS

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Whenever your ink cartridges go on sale, buy a whole batch of them! Keep each sealed in its wrapper until you actually need it. They should hold quite a while if you don't unseal the wrapper. I usually get a year's supply when they go on sale.

Nikon_DonB Loc: Chicago

Check E-bay for bargains on your particular ink. Then stock up. No tax and the purchase is guaranteed by E-bay.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Most cartridges come in small and large sizes. The large ones last longer of course. I recently bought a refill kit for my canon printer, and should have been doing that from the get go. I always go through black 3 times faster than color. The canon gives me a low on ink message which I ignore. The black ink is at LEAST as good as original, and it is really easy to do. I just printed some photos with a lot of black backgrounds, and they came out awesome. I'm super happy with the refill kit. A hogger mentioned it a while back which pushed me into finally trying it. Thank you fellow hogger...

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I've gone through a number of printers over the years, and damn if the things don't like to die after ordering a batch of ink. Just the opposite of your hard drives crashing right when you were about to do a back up.

normanhall Loc: Leslie Missouri

I think it is way cheaper to send the image to a print shop than to print at home. i bought a printer for school and i have not used it since. to me it is just a hole to throw money in.

SpeedyWilson Loc: Upstate South Carolina

I agree with normanhall. For quality prints I go to the local UPS store and use their expensive, well-maintained printer.

For everyday printing I bought a Brother MPC-J435W all-in-one printer. It is not an ink sucker, compared to other printers I've had. I found I can buy generic ink on Amazon for very low prices. I've had no problem with the quality of the ink or the performance of the printer.

The only thing I don't like is the envelope printing. So, if you do a lot of envelopes, you might not like this printer as much. My previous printers were top loading, and printing just one or two envelopes was very easy. This Brother printer has a bottom loading paper tray, and printing just a few envelopes is more involved.

MikePixx Loc: Sunrise, Fl.

I have Used HP printers for years now and they seem to be as thirsty as all the other printers out there ...Until I purchased the Photosmart 7520 which uses the 564 cartridge. My houe is now in Foreclosure

miamithom Loc: Cutler Bay, Florida, USA

I use Hotzone360.
Here is the link: http://www.hotzone360.com/printerswciss.html
I have been using it for my Epson 1400 for more than a year.
Basic setup with ink and filled new cartridges about 35 american dollar.
you can get single color refills and a complete reset.
Use the complete color refill first to see what colors are used the most.
I have ended up getting 5 of one color.
You can get larger bottles of color and save even more.
You can also get a pigment replacement. A little more money but then you can print archival inkjet prints.
Very important to get a custom icc profile for the various papers you will be using.
Have fun,
Thom Elliott

floridamet

I'm been buying ink for my two Canon printers from Grand Image out of Walnut,Ca (909 595-9282) for a while. Never had a problem. Their ink is cheaper than other companies.
Give them a try

John. B Loc: Essex, United Kingdom

Interesting subject this, I use a continuous supply system from this company here in the UK.
(and have never again looked at another cartridge.)

Ink Express‎
20 Fallings Park Ind Est
Park Lane, Wolverhampton, West Midlands WV10 9QB
01902 307111
inkexpress.co.uk‎


They have CISS systems for Brother, Canon, Epson (which I have) HP and Kodak.
Their refills range from $36.80 for 100mls to $200.62 for 1 Ltr, and when you consider how much ink there is in a catridge it works out very cheap!
If you don't mind a little read here's an article from one of our national newspapers the Guardian.
It is very interesting indeed.


Graphic: Guardian
It's a busy morning at Cartridge World in Aylesbury, part of a chain of almost 200 outlets across the UK that sell branded and refilled printer cartridges. It's a thriving business. The shop has seen turnover double in the past five years.

But store owner Martin Dyckhoff says customers come to him time and again with the same complaint: the branded inkjet cartridges they have bought run out of ink too quickly.

The sky-high price of printer ink – measure for measure more expensive than vintage champagne – has been well documented. Less well-known is the fact that the amount of ink in the average cartridge has shrunk dramatically. "Newer cartridges contain a fraction of the ink a similar product contained a decade ago," Dyckhoff says. "The amount can be minuscule."

For example, the Epson T032 colour cartridge (released in 2002) is the same size as the Epson colour T089 (released in 2008). But the T032 contains 16ml of ink and the T089 contains just 3.5ml of ink. It's a similar story with Hewlett Packard (HP) cartridges. A decade ago, the best-selling HP cartridge had 42ml of ink and sold for about £20. Today, the standard printer cartridges made by HP may contain as little as 5ml of ink but sell for about £13.

Cut open a HP inkjet cartridge and you'll find what is going on. The size of the sponges inside, which hold the ink, have progressively reduced over the years. The rest of the cartridge is now simply empty space. In Epson cartridges, meanwhile, the ink tank has been systematically reduced in size.

"The strategy has been to nudge the consumer towards a high frequency of purchases," says David Connett, editor of The Recycler, a trade magazine covering the remanufacturing industry. "The big printer manufacturers have reduced the amount of ink in a cartridge, encrypted the chip technology, and used aggressive marketing tactics to discourage refills."

Chris Brooks, technical director of industry group the UK Cartridge Remanufacturers Association, is more forthright: "The big printer companies do all they can to squeeze ever-increasing amounts of cash out of the poor consumer in exchange for less ink."

Worst value, say the experts, are the colour cartridges. All three leading players, including Canon, sell single tri-colour cartridges – cyan, magenta and yellow – often with less than 2ml of ink per colour. "They're very bad value because when one of the three colours runs out the entire cartridge stops working," Dyckhoff says. "We always recommend people buy a printer with a separate cartridge for each colour."

HP300 printer ink cartridge from 2002 (left) and 2010 (right).
HP300 printer ink cartridge from 2002 (left) and 2010 (right). Photograph: David Robinson
The shrinking amount of ink in cartridges has enabled manufacturers to offer a remarkable new product – called "XL" (extra large) but almost exactly the same size as the standard cartridge. For example, HP makes the HP300, which contains 5ml of black ink and sells for about £13. It also makes the HP300XL, which has more ink – about 16ml – and sells for around £20-£25. But both are nearly identical in size. Indeed, some makers' "XL" cartridges may contain less ink than standard cartridges issued a few years ago.

XL cartridges are an "insult" to the consumer, says Patrick Stead of cartridge recycler Environmental Business Products: "HP sells half-full cartridges, then sticks an 'XL' on, fills them up, and sells them for even more money. The difference in manufacturing costs is pennies. It's a shocking rip-off."

The printer companies dispute that they are squeezing consumers to ramp up profits. "Focusing on any single factor such as the point of purchase, the up-front cost of the cartridge or printer, the cost per page, or the millilitres of ink in a given cartridge is not an accurate way to measure the cost of printing," HP said in a statement. It says consumers should focus on the cost per page of printing. It claims that on its Officejet Pro models, ink costs on a per-page basis have been maintained at the same levels since 2009.

Epson, meanwhile, argues that print heads are more efficient compared with 10 years ago because of advances in technology. "They are able to produce a greater number of pages with an equivalent amount of ink," the company said in a statement.

Of the leading manufacturers, Canon has been the least aggressive in its ink reduction, but volumes have still shrunk. Its recent PGI-525BK inkjet cartridge, for example, contains 19ml of ink compared with its 26ml BCI-3BK issued in 2005. The company has also introduced standard and XL cartridges.

Critics accept there have been improvements in technology and modern print heads are more efficient. "But these improvements cannot justify a five-fold decrease in the amount of ink in a cartridge," Brooks says. "The cost of printer ink is the lowest it's ever been, a few euros for a litre. Many cartridges cost less than 50p to make. The mark-up is enormous. The consumer is paying far more pro-rata today than a decade ago for cartridges containing very little ink."

There is an intense battle between manufacturers (HP, Epson and Canon) and "remanufacturers", represented by Brooks, who refill cartridges to sell at a discount. Remanufacturers have grabbed a third of UK sales, at the same time as counterfeit cartridges from China are flooding into the country.

In addition, aggressive competition from new entrants such as Kodak, which threw itself into the market in the mid-2000s offering cheap plastic printers and even cheaper cartridges, has eaten into their bottom line. (Kodak said last year that it was pulling out of the inkjet market.)

"The big three have seen a year-on-year erosion of their market share," Brooks says. "They had to do something drastic."

The response has been to sell cheaper printers and recoup the money on low-ink cartridges, which consumers have to replace more often. A decade ago, the average household printer cost upwards of £150, but today they retail for as little as £30.

Many new printers come with "start-up" cartridges that contain tiny amounts of ink so the owner has to buy new cartridges almost immediately. Others have embedded technology to block cheap refills. "The logic is simple," Stead says. "Once a consumer buys a HP printer they have to buy HP cartridges, no matter what they cost."

Save while you print

• Beware really cheap cartridges, which run out in no time. XL cartridges cost more but do provide better value in the long run.

• Don't buy printers with single tri-colour cartridges. When one colour runs out the entire cartridge stops working even if there is plenty of ink left in the other two chambers. Buy a printer with a separate cartridge for each colour.

• A DIY kit – £5.47 at Asda, £8 at Tesco – provides enough ink to refill a cartridge up to six times. Jettec and JR have kits with 90ml of black ink, enough to fill some cartridges 45 times, for £8-£10. But DIY refilling can be an incredibly messy business.

• Buy refilled cartridges, saving 20%-70% on branded originals. Try cartridgeworld.co.uk and viking-direct.co.uk.

• If you print mostly black-and-white documents, a laser printer uses toner, which lasts longer than ink. Page yield is in thousands rather than hundreds.

• Sign up to the Guardian's Money Talks email for all the week's news and deals

John. B

Lorendn Loc: Jackson, WY

Great timing - I just threw my HP inkjet printer in the trash because of a clogged black print head. HP had me go through 2 sets of 5 ink cartridges to 'troubleshoot' the issue. Finally, they said to try a new head but it would only be 50/50 if it would solve the problem. The print head and shipping was over have the price of the printer and would take 7-10 days to receive it. I bought a new (disposable) HP printer that would use the same 564 cartridges - since I had 10 open and unused now. I spent two hours setting up the new HP printer only to find out that the previously opened cartridges cannot be used for a new printer set-up - you must open the new cartridges that came with the printer. This would mean 15 open cartridges.

I blew up and repacked the HP and took it back to Staples who were wonderful in taking back the 2 hour old printer, refunding the cost of one set of ink cartridges and selling me a much better printer of another brand.

HP used to be a good company now they only sell disposable printers and expensive ink. I would never buy from them again. And, by the way, it is far cheaper to have quick prints made at Staples. When I submit the JPEGs electronically, they are usually ready to pick up by the time I drive to the store.

Bpace Loc: Alabama

Same here, I have his CISS on all of my printers.
They list one for the 564. $60 with 4 full tanks of ink.
Email Michael at sales@hotzone360.com
http://www.hotzone360.com/ciss-cis-ink-system-for-hp-920-cartridge-prin920.html
He also sells bulk inks.

Or as said above, the cheapest option is have a local lab print them.

Birdog9999 Loc: New Jersey

Be careful of buying large amount of HP ink if you don't use them by the expiration date Hp will not honor the warranty this is also true of almost all refill companies. The cartridge will sill work but if it fails you are out of luck. Most refillers allow one year. I do some club work that requires me to do large amounts of printing(mostly club newsletters) twice a year. So I need to have ink on hand for these times. I used to buy large amounts to have on hand until I ran into problems with some cartridges only to find out that the company wouldn't stand behind them.