By Rhodri MarsdenThis blog entry over at Popular Science has rallied internet users across the globe over the last couple of days, and has caused not a little spleen to be vented about the absurd cost of running an inkjet printer. After reading it, I had a look into my own printing habits, and was astounded.
First, bear in mind that I never print out photos – just normal work-related stuff, and the odd article to read on the train; now, while you can pick up my printer for around £30 these days, in the past 12 months I've got through seven black and seven colour cartridges, which – buying from the cheapest source I can find – has set me back £199.36. Ouch.
As the piece points out, printers are sold on the razorblade model – i.e. your initial purchase is as cheap as chips, but you'll be coming back to the same company for an essential replacement part for as long as you own the thing. In fact, the initial price of a printer is almost totally meaningless, and almost not even worth considering when weighing up your options down at PC World – the real cost is hidden in a complex calculation involving the number of pages you're likely to print, the number of carts needed to print that number of pages, and the cost of the carts.
This tends not to be information we have at our fingertips. And while many carts display a "pages per cart" statistic on the box, when have you ever put those numbers to the test?
We're completely at the mercy of the printer companies; printers only accept certain carts, and chips embedded within those carts prevent any other companies from muscling in with their own versions and undercutting. Other stats in the Popular Science piece are eye-opening – ink in a typical cart works out at $5,000 per gallon, and it's actually cheaper to send off your photographs to be printed using an external service than printing them at home by yourself.
So is there any way out? I remember I used to see a chap on the QVC shopping channel years ago, flogging ink which you could actually inject into your existing empty carts; that always seemed to me to be the last desperate refuge of the penniless computer user. But if I'm going to be spending another £200 this year on ink, I might start trying to hunt down that chap with his magic syringes.
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I'm sure I read somewhere that ink in cartridges is more expensive than the same amount of gold. To be honest though, I hardly print anything any more. My printer is up the swannee at the moment and I'm seriously considering not getting another - the only things I really print at the moment are things for my children off the interweb.
Posted by: Hobgoblin | Thursday, 06 March 2008 at 01:43 PM
There are cheaper replacement carts for most models. I use www.systeminsight.co.uk, their compatible carts work well and they even send you a reply paid bag to return empties for recycling.
Posted by: Phil Thane | Thursday, 06 March 2008 at 02:02 PM
Most older models, maybe. But as I say, companies are wising up to this and including chipsets within the carts themselves. Sadly, all that System Insight have for my Canon (about 18 months old) are the original Canon carts.
Posted by: Rhodri Marsden | Thursday, 06 March 2008 at 02:20 PM
Getting cartridges refilled works well for me - there seems to be a Cartridge World on every street corner these days, and it's better for the environment (or so I believe) than just discarding cartridges every time they run dry
Posted by: Robin Parker | Friday, 07 March 2008 at 09:12 AM