Here's How to Save Money on Printing Costs - Comments Page 1

Many printer manufacturers have put in firmware to block using 3rd party inks. HP and Epson are notorious for this and have been sued many times. I don't know the current status of the lawsuits. Some 3rd party ink vendors use genuine cartridges and refill them to try to work around this.

HP has a great "instant ink" program. I am signed up for their 300 copies a month option for $10.99 plus they supply new replacement cartridges and NO CHARGE mailers to return used cartridges to HP.

Of course printer manufacturers charge a lot for their ink cartridges, they do so because they are selling their printers for not a lot of money.

I will take some convincing that even a simple inkjet printer costs less than $50 to manufacture and retail.

One of the major problems is the user, how often do they actually look at the cost of ownership over the likely life of their printer? If my experiences with users are anything to go by the answer is never.

They buy a cheap printer and then are scandalised at the cost of ink. They never think that buying a more expensive printer that uses less expensive ink might actually be less expensive in the long run.

They never even think about buying "last year's model". Like their cell phone, it must be the latest and greatest.

What price laziness and vanity?

If you are not afraid of getting your hands dirty (from easy to wash ink) also consider refilling your own cartridges.
First time out buy a refill kit for your printer model, that will have all you need to refill and re-prime the cartridges at around $5 each for Black and Colours; after that, just buy bottles of ink-jet ink at $2 or $3 a shot.

I'm surprised you didn't list the Epson ET2550. My cost for 2 years of a lot of printing has been 2 black bottles for $12,00 each. I estimate I've printed 2500 pages (I issue four 2-page newsletters each week to a service club each week = 1600 alone.) Yes the printed cost ~$280.00

One problem with non-OEM products is that the printer keeps bugging you with messages about your ink not being OEM each time you print. Any way to get rid of it for good?

I use HP's instant ink program. I pay $4.99 per month and don't have to worry about ink. And the ink tanks are bigger than their XL tanks.

Your brief reco for a laser printer is an understatement. For BW printing a laser printer is far more economical. A plain jane laser printer can be had for $100-125. The initial toner cartridge is good for over a thousand pages, and replacement cartridges rated at 2500 copies are $25-35 delivered.

I tried an LD cartridge and it skipped. Head cleaned numerous times but no improvement. Installed a oem cartridge ran head clean once and no more skipping

In the UK, I've been using Go Inks compatibles for my 2 Epson inkjets for several years. Available via Amazon. Excellent, consistent quality. Tried others and had problems with poor quality, duff cartridges etc, so am sticking with Go Inks from now on! My last consignment (October 2019) cost under £15 for 4 (yes four) sets of inks, with free delivery.

I had the luck of ordering ink cartridges for my 10 year old Dell printer. Upon changing cartridges the cartridge carrier broke (shattered) and turned to junk. I took the opportunity to buy an Epson tank printer. I had been ordering photo prints from my local Walgreen's. Now I can print photos cheaper than what it cost from Walgreen's and it came with a 2 year supply of ink. I'm surprised that Bob didn't mention investing in a tank printer.

I use HP's instant ink program. I pay ~ $10.00 a mo. for 300 pages. What I like is if you are printing pictures it is still about 31/2 cents per photo, you pay by the page not by ink used.

I haven't had much success buying so-called "re-manufactured" ink cartridges. More often than not some of the little ink nozzles don't work. I don't believe the sellers "re-manufacture" anything, but instead just refill the ink and don't test the cartridge. I've had much more success with my own refills of good working ink cartridges. Plus I can refill a cartridge to about 2x the ink capacity of a new OEM cartridge.

Another GREAT place to buy from is Ebay. A friend told me about them, and I've never found ink cheaper. I have a Canon MP560. It takes 3 color, 1 black, and 1 double capacity black. I bought 40 cartridges, 8 of each, for $21.89 with free shipping. That's about $.55 per cartridge. All with OEM quality, and 2 year shelf life. No problems, and the printer never has blocked me from using them.
Give Ebay a try. Just search for ink under your printer and prepare to be surprised.

My HP black & white duplex printers last for a long time. I bought the HP Laser 2200D in 2001, and after the duplexing started jamming 15 years later (not bad!), I bought the HP M402dw in 2016. It's 4 years old now and a great printer. It came with a toner cartridge and I'm still on the original one. I don't print a lot but I print mostly every day. I bought a spare cartridge at the time for $177. They're supposed to get 9,000 pages. I have to learn how to see how many pages I've printed but it's still dark and perfect.

I used a great company in Atlanta for many years who sold remanufactured cartridges. I'd send him my old cartridge. He must have retired. American Laser Cartridge Service, Al Ritter. If you search, you'll find my yelp review from 2012.

Bob, thanks for the great article. I will certainly try your companies when my spare very expensive cartridge goes kaput. Let's see how much longer I get from the first cartridge!

Agree with Bill, Changed to a laser printer a few years ago and have not regretted it. Downside is no color printing, but that has not been a factor for my needs. Particularly don't miss the messy ink problems both in cartridge change and any moisture that happens to hit the paper and destroy any print. This printer also prints both sides of the paper which I really like.

We tried using non OEM cartridges in our HP printer and had a lot of issues with errors and it refusing to print.

We decided to buy a Brother Printer after checking Bob's recommendations, and we are extremely pleased with how much longer the OEM cartridges last (for a similar cost to the HP OEM cartridges)
We always had to quickly buy the next set for our HP to be sure to have them ready when needed.
The new ones for the Brother have been sitting waiting for a LONG time, and still not needed.

Only thing I don't like with the Brother is you cannot scan or copy if any of the cartridges are deemed to be out of ink. That is a frustration as ink is not needed for either job, but is easily fixed with forward planning.

The inkjet cartridges were drying out all the time because I rarely printed. The salesman at Best Buy suggested I go with a hybrid printer which was $349 or a color laser which was on sale for $429. I went with the laser. I have had it for 3 1/2 years and am still using the original toner cartridges. It is a Canon 933cdw. I love it. Best printer I ever had. I have gone through probably 15 printers in my life. The first being a dot matrix printer. This will probably be the last printer I ever own. The only downside is I have a lot of inkjet labels that won’t work in the laser printer.

For years now I've been using a little applet called 'Printliminator'. The applet sits just below the address bar. Click it when wanting to print any web page and it's easy to remove all photos/graphics with a single click. You can continue clicking to remove titles and other text you might not want. Has an undo if you get a little click happy.

I use a a CISS system. Tanks containing 100ml of ink feed via tubes to the cartridges. Some printers better than others especially brother where cartridges slot into front of printer. Cartridges supplied by CISS are normally preprogrammed but sometimes may just have to partially remove cartridge and replace to reset printer.
Cost of CISS was less than one set of OEM cartridges. Ink available in 100ml and 1000 ml quantities. Inks are only direct dyes in water with a touch of wetting agent.