Printers and Ink

Recently there was an article in MacWorld regarding usage of ink in printers and if we are paying through the nose for it. Here is the opening:


Printer ink: Tired of feeding the cash cow?

Inkjet refills typically cost significantly more than the printer itself.

By Lamont Wood
March 28, 2012 06:00 AM ET



Computerworld - Human blood costs about $17.27 an ounce, silver about $34 an ounce. But both are bargains compared to the ink sold to the owners of inkjet printers, which can exceed $80 an ounce. Meanwhile, the ink used to print newspapers costs about 16 cents an ounce.
Today, color inkjet technology offers essentially photo-realistic output from consumer or home-office printers that cost less than $100. But even those who print out as few as 20 pages a week will probably have to buy several ink refills a year, at minimum, costing way more than the original price of the printer. Those who understand the issues can avoid the worst shocks. (See "Shopping advice," below.)
"Everyone complains about the price of ink, but consumers do not do a net-present-value analysis when shopping -- we only do it with higher-ticket items," explains Federico De Silva, an analyst at Gartner, a market research firm. "They are going for a $49 printer, but when they have to refill it they realize they are spending $50 to $60 just on ink."

We use a laser printer (black and white) here, ever since my husband's professor mentioned that it would stop the ink spots on his papers and would cut down costs. That was 8 years ago and since then we have only gone through 3 toner cartridges since then (with LOTS of colouring pages, church printouts, school papers and newsletters being printed) and saved a substantial amount. There are times that I do miss having a colour printer -don't get me wrong- but the savings are fantastic.

How do you save money with your printer?

Enjoy!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hear you on the ink issue, we bought a laser printer about 7 or 8years ago too and have only bought maybe 3 cartridges with 3 school age kids and everything else it is GREAT! We also bought and inkjet printer for one of the kids for University and I am sure that after only 2 years we have bought ink at least two or three times and it costs almost as much as the toner cartridge for the laser printer! CRAZY!