Urgh, that's just pure greed. I've got an old crapola Epson printer at home which doesn't have all the evil software, but it is really nasy quality for anything other than text. Although my dad's office has 2 colour and 1 black and white lasers if I ever need a decent print job .
The cost varies with life and model, but the printing cost is usually under 2p a sheet (B&W) with laser. My HP toner does around 4,000 pages for £55. Unfortunately the so-called "intelligent" HP software tells me it's nearly empty after 2,000 copies, it's not programmed to recognise the (official HP) long-life cartridges. Colour laser uses 4 toners, same as colour inkjet. But bigger.
SSC works alongside the Epson software, I can still print on CDs with no problems. In my experience,there's no difference. I only use ink that is specified for Epson printers rather than a generic ink. The if the pigment isn't designed for the printer, the quality is not as good. Try a compatible cartridge to see if you're happy with the inks, if so buy the bulk inks from that company, otherwise try another.
printer manufacturers make no if not very little money on consumer printers that they sell, the margins are squeezed stupidly thin by all the components and manufacture and trying to be competitive in the market place. that being said the margins on ink cartridges are bigger and hence the perfect money making opportunity for manufacturers as they have got to make their money somehow.
I've just bought an HP colour LaserJet for cheap (couple of hundred quid) I also have a B&W laser, which I've had about 4-5 years, and have only changed the toner once. I'd expect a slightly shorter lifespan for the colour printer (the toner cartridges look smaller), but that's still considerably longer than inkjet cartridges last. It's not good enough for photo printing, but it's good for day-to-day printing and printing draft photos before the final version is printed on the inkjet.
I have used Epson and Canon inkjets for the past 12 years. These are my experiences and observations-- The printer goes into a cleaning cycle when you turn it on. Cleaning cycle essentially squirts a certain amount of ink out and the heads are wiped off with a squeegee (no kidding). There is a pad in the bottom of the printer which (ideally) soaks up all the ink. It's the same type of material the hazmat guys use to soak up hydraulic and fuel oil spills on land and water, BTW. Whenever an ink cartridge is replaced, the printer does a cleaning cycle. In some brands, the inket will print black using the color cartridges if the printer isn't set to black-only. Printers with the inkjets on the cartridges are preferable because you get a new set of jets every time you change a cartridge. Print quality is better when one uses the machine often-- less time for the ink to dry out and clog the jets and less dust clogging up the machine. Pulling the cartridge out and reinstalling it will fool the program into thinking it's brand new and full, for a while. Note the second statement. Laser printers cost less per page than inkjet, but laser photos don't have the same quality than inkjet of the same resolution (inkjets are better). Best thing for photo printing is thermal-wax transfer, but it's expensive. For B+W printing, laser is good. If you aren't concerned about quality fonts and stuff, impact printers (old school dot-matrix) are cheap as heck-- great for coders and writers who kill a lot of trees for drafts.
I have one question for yall before I continue. What are you talking about replacing just the cyan or just the magenta. Dont all your colors come in the same ink cartridge, at least every printer I have ever bought has the all in the same package. As for printers, I dislike lexmark. Their printers are exspencive. And most wont let you refill your cartridges, so you have to pay 30 bucks for theirs. Now the company I like is canon. Their printers are cheap, you can refill their cartridge (only about 5 times max but oh well), and the last time I had to get a new cartridge it was 8 bucks.
*thinks your printer is either broken or the drivers ar borked* did you try to reinstall the drivers or RMA the printer? (sory if that was already asked)
Printers intended for photo printing come with 4 or more cartridges. For example, instead of 1 black cartridge and 1 tricolor cartridge, my printer has 1 black (for documents), 1 photo-black, 1 yellow, 1 magenta, 1 cyan. Other printers add in photo-cyan and photo-magenta. Even further, at least one printer out there uses green, and red as well.
I was thinking of buying this Bulk Ink system from eBay, which would cost about $65 with shipping, and it includes ink. Other sites say they won't touch the cheap ones and usually pay around $150 for a decent bulk ink system. Their reasoning is the cheap ones use sponge nozels, but the cheap one I Found doesn't. Does that look worthy? I figure I can always drain it later and put pigment-based ink instead of the cheapy dye-based ink if I have issues, but I don't do a whole lot of photo printing, primarily just documents and vector art. (and the ink isn't one-size-fits-all, at least thats not how they are selling it anyway, they sell separate inks for separate printers) Would this be a monumental waste of money, or a budget saver? Oh, and yes, ink does make the manufacturer money, which is why I'm glad I bought 3 sets of ink cartridges from them, but from now on, I'll probably just buy 3rd party inks elsewhere.
Hi OneSeventeen, I have that exact continuous Ink system for my R300, it's pretty good value and the colours last quite well, only problem I have found is that the colours from it appear a touch more 'vivid' than the epson ones, so you might have to faff around calibrating it for the new inks for the first few hours, but after that, it'll save you so much money, you won't care about the initial setup Oh, and like you said, it's definately worth refilling it with pigment ink after the first set has emptied, mind you, that probably won't happen for another 8 months One quick note though if you do buy, be very careful with the cartridges when you initialy install them, the angled plastic that connects the piping to the carts is very very fragile, i snapped one by accident, luckily you get a few spares. Also, the sticky pads they give you to route the piping into the printer are crap, the piping kept falling into my R300 jamming the print head, so i stuck it in using gaffer tape, much better
I knew i'd read this somewhere: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnew...eid=50143&headline=liquid-gold-name_page.html Some one told me that Printer Ink was actually more valuable than liquid gold, but i'm not sure. Check these figures:
Anyone know if selling printers with these modded onto the outside would be legal? That'd be pretty cool to resell modded printers, knowing I'd have to offer any warranties myself, as the manufacturer's warranty would be shot to hell by modding it.
