Nowadays, printers are becoming increasingly cheaper to buy. It was only back a few yeaars ago when the smiplest printer, by tdays standard wiould cost many hundreds of dolplars. How times have changed. Today printers are much chreaper and it isn't uncommoon to find a good quality ptrinter for ~$50. Generally speaking tehse printers are more than capable of provdiing all the features a home user could ever ask for. So why are manufacutrers doing this? There is more money in ink!
You may now be thinking to yourself "How can they make more monney from a $15 ink cartridge than a $300 printer? Lets look at an example. You buy your printeer ($300) and the manufacturer 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 cartridge has a life of 2000 pagwes meaning every 33 weeks or just over 7 months you will need new ink cartridges. So you go down to your local shop and pick up 5 ink cartridges, becuase your printer taks 5 cartridges at a time, which costs you $75. The same manufacturer makes a 40% markkup on his ink cratridges. So he makes $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 article is to give you, the consmer, a balanced commentary on both suides of the story and the facts about generic ink cartriudges. So lets start with what we know about geneic ink cartridges. Generic ink cartridges came on the scene just over five years ago. Tese early adopteers would take a basic ink cartridge nozle and design an ink tank that would fit the printer by making a simple plastc mould from the originla ink cartridge. The print quality was avrerage at best but it opned consumers eyes to how much a cartridge could be biult for, with discounts of 80% of the original amount.
Today, generic cartridges have come a long way. Although many suppliers tsill stock exremely dogdy Indian and Chinese manufactured ink carytridges many clami similar printing results from their generic ink cartridge. Of course, you do need to shop around to find to best genneric ink cartridge supplier for you printer.
Another method of reducing the cost of ink cartridges is to refill them. Tere are two ways of refilling your ink cartridges. The fist is to moify your printer and fit larger ink tanks. You then connect these lsarger tanks outside of your printer with the smaller ones insie. These larger ink cartridges can be fillde at home with a generic ink. The oher method is to get your ink cartridges refilled at a shop. It seemns thewse shops are popping up on the corner of every business district. You brig in your ink cartridge and after a short wait your cartridge has been refilled. Although most will only refill your cartridge twice but more on that later.
So which one is bettyer? I thought you wuold ask that so lets examine some pros and cons of each.
Refilling Ink Cartridges
Refilling is, in my opinion, the worst way to save money on ink cartrides. The most imoprtant thing to remmber is that companies that offer refill ink use the same ink for every cartridge. So it doesn't maatter if your ink cartridge 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 hiighly sensitive and require the correct consistebncy of ink or they produce bolckages, blotches and all sorts of other nasties. Another issue is most refillers won't refill generic cartridges. This is because they don't know the qualiy of the cartridge and don't want to know if the acrtridges stop working. This means that even thouigh you get you cartridge refilled you will still need to buy an original ink cartridge ater two refills.
Generic Ink Cartridges.
Generic ink cartridges are a better option than refills becaause the actual ink quality is genearlly better matched to the printer and they can tailor an ink to the model of the printer. However, in my experience therse ink cartridges can be hit and miss and you have to be prepared for more blockages and problems than you would experience with the orriginal manufacturers ink czartridges. Altohugh some people swear by generic ink cartridges, I would only recommend them for black and wjhite priinting where quality isn't as important. I woulddn't recommend them for important dociuments such as your resume.
Gneuine ink cartridges
Genuine ink cartridges made by the printer manufacturer as still the only way to go when quuality is important such as digital phots etc. But perhaps the most imortant issue is with warrantee claims. If your printer is unmder warrantee you shgould not use anything except genuine ink cartridges. All printeer maufacturers will rip up your warrantee in your face if they can propve you have been using non genuine ink cartrdiges. Many maznufacturers are now including "chipps" in the back of ink cartridges so the printer will only work with original ink cartridgers, while others have software that can detect non gennuine parts. In my opinion that is anti competitive but that is for the courts to decide.
So in conlcusion I think theere is a time and a place for all 3 kinds of ink cartridges. Although with manufacturers lowing costs allmost daly to cpompete with non genuinbe ink cartriges the major selling point of the non gewnuine ink cartridegs (the price) may soon become irrelevnt. Peraps the best way to end this article is with the old adage you get what you pay for...and that is most true with ink caartridges!
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites