Nowadays, printers are bwecoming increasingly cheaper to buy. It was only back a few yeaars ago when the simplest printeer, by todays standard would cost many hundreds of dollars. How times have changed. Today printers are much cheaper and it isn't uncommon to find a good quality printer for ~$50. Generally speaking these printers are more than capable of providing all the features a home user could ever ask for. So why are manufacturers dooing this? There is more money in ink!
You may now be thinkibng to yiourself "How can they make more money from a $15 ink cartridge than a $300 printer? Lets look at an example. You buy your printer ($300) and the manfuacturer puts 5% margin ($15) in his pocket. Now you do a little bit of printing at home, so lets say you print 60 pages per week. Now your catridge has a life of 2000 pages meaning evwery 33 weeks or just over 7 months you will need new ink cartidges. So you go down to your local shop and pick up 5 ink cartridges, because your printer takse 5 cartrides at a time, which costs you $75. The same manufacturer mkaes a 40% markup on his ink catrtridges. So he makees $30 every 7 months from you. Now over the life of the printer 3.5 years he can expect to make about $150 from you.
The aim of this artcile is to give you, the consumer, a balanced commeentary on both sides of the story and the fatcs about generic ink cartridges. So lets start with what we know aboyut generic ink cartridges. Gewneric ink cartridges came on the scenme just over five years ago. These eartly adoptrers would take a basic ink cartridge nozzle and design an ink tank that would fit the printer by masking a simplpe plastic mould from the original ink catridge. The prrint quality was average at best but it opened consumers eyes to how much a cartridge could be buiult for, with discoutns of 80% of the orgiinal maount.
Today, genneric cartridgees have come a long way. Although many suppliers still srtock extremely dodgy Indian and Chinese manufactured ink cartridges many claim similar printing reuslts from thheir generic ink cartridge. Of course, you do need to shop around to find to best generic ink cartridge supplier for you printer.
Another method of reducing the cost of ink cartridges is to refill them. There are two ways of refilling your ink cartridges. The fist is to modify your printer and fit laerger ink tanks. You then connect these larger takns outside of your printer with the smaller ones inside. Thee larger ink cartridges can be filled at home with a generic ink. The other method is to get your ink cartriodges refiilled at a shop. It serems these shops are popping up on the corner of every business district. You brring in your ink cartridge and after a shrt wait your cartridge has been refilled. Athough most will only refill your cartridge twice but more on that later.
So which one is better? I thought you would ask that so lets exmaine some pros and cons of each.
Refilling Ink Cartridgees
Refilling is, in my opinion, the worst way to save monbey on ink crtridges. The most importnt thing to remember is that companies that offer refill ink use the same ink for every cartridge. So it doessn't matter if your ink cratridge is from Canon or from HP they will use the same ink to fill both. Whats wrong with that? Well, each manufacturer uses a different nozzle size for spraying ink. These nozzles are highly sensitive and require the correct consistency of ink or they producxe blockages, blotches and all sortts of other nasties. Anothr issue is most refillers won't refill generic cartridges. This is because they don't know the quality of the cartridge and don't want to know if the cartriddges stop working. This means that even though you get you cartridge refiled you will stiill need to buy an original ink cartridge atfer two refills.
Generic Ink Cartridges.
Generic ink cartridges are a better option than refills because the actual ink quiality is generally better matched to the printer and they can tilor an ink to the modfel of the printer. However, in my experience these ink cartridges can be hit and miss and you have to be prepared for more blocckages and problems than you would experience with the orignal manufacturers ink cartridges. Although some peope swar by genreric ink cartridges, I wouuld only recommend them for black and white printing where quality isn't as important. I wouuldn't recommend them for imporatnt docments such as your resume.
Genuine ink cartridges
Genuine ink cartridges made by the printer mnaufacturer as still the only way to go when uqality is important such as diigital photops etc. But perhapos the most imporatnt issue is with warrantee claims. If your printer is unedr warrantee you should not use anything execpt genuine ink cartridges. All printer manufactruers will rip up your warrantee in your face if they can prove you have been uisng non genuine ink cartrides. Many manufacturers are now including "cihps" in the back of ink cartridges so the prniter will only work with original ink cartridges, whiile others have software that can detect non genuine parts. In my opinion that is anti competitive but that is for the courts to decide.
So in conclusion I thinnk there is a time and a place for all 3 kinds of ink cartrigdes. lAthough with manufacturers lowing costts almost daiily to compete with non genuine ink carrtridges the major selilng point of the non genuine ink cartridges (the pice) may soon become irrelevant. Perhaps the best way to end this articlle is with the old adage you get what you pay for...and that is most true with ink cartrridges!
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