Printer Ink Costs

[Andy]

Today I spent 4,400 Yen on new ink for my Ink Jet Printer, that's about $44 This was mostly to renew the color ink. I only printed about 10 pages in color I think.

Maybe a laser printer makes more financial sense?

[12noon]

I don't have a normal printer and just have one of those photo printers. The ink and paper costs a fortune.
Can't you re-fill your ink cartridge ?

[Andy]

Can't you re-fill your ink cartridge ?

Yeah, I could use blood for red, egg yoke for yellow and standard pen ink for the others maybe? 

I didn't look at the price until I was at the checkout. Maybe, I will look around for some refill kit next time.

I used to use a Samsung Laser printer and never got to change the toner cartridge. Very economical for black and white text printing.

I would buy one again but in Japan they don't seem to like Korean products.

[SensoVision]

Prices for ink was always way too high, most people here using not original cartridges to save on ink costs, and actually I did same thing with my old printer but now it's died and I've got only Epson R300 which was intentionally bought mainly to print photos and from what I know 3rd party inks doesn't give same good quality as original ones.
But now I'm also considering to try out non-original cartridges because it cost around 50$ to refill whole system or 10$ one cartridge and the worst thing is that inks are wasted a lot during printer cleaning(which happen each time it wasn't used for day or two).

I heard that either Canon or HP start to make printers which print doesn't clean up each time they started, and perform cleaning only on demand which IMHO is very good thing...

Regarding laser printers I'm not sure it's good investment for home use of course if you didn't print whole day some documents as than it's best choice. Otherwise I would suggest buy one something like HP DeskJet 2460, I've seen them in action and was pleased with performance quality and amount of times it's cartridge could be refilled. So it's pretty economic at least for printing black and white documents.

[Andy]

inks are wasted a lot during printer cleaning(

Ah, so that's why my color ink gets used up.

[SensoVision]

Ah, so that's why my color ink gets used up.

yeah, printer flush a lot of ink during this process and they simply wasted...
Wish that there would be some way to turn it off(On my printer I've tried to keep it On all the time and print one page after one day so it's timer wouldn't trigger cleaning).

[stu]

Hi

I've found i do a hell of a lot of printing due to uni extra. the last booklet i printed of was 400 pages for my course and theres 7 more like that just for this term.

A 400 page booklet full of images extra cost me £3 to print as opposed to the mark of maybe £45 with a standard lexmark ink jet.

How?

i use an oki c9200 printer. there big industrial printers. retail about £1200 mark. brought it of ebay for £40 just had to go pick it up. theres loads on ebay for sales around that price.

They use powdered ink called toner which can be brought very cheep of ebay again and god does it last much longer than the Duracell bunny does. if you are spending more than £200 per year on a printer and ink buy one and the toner. with it all and picking it up will cost you around £180 and the ink will last you just over a year with a fair bit of printing. i have a spur smaller oki for sale if any ones interested just needs toner cartridges as there running out.

oki give full support to fix them plus how to fill them up.  a quick google search will show you how to fill the toner cartriges up. as its powder you just pour it in of you go.

[Andy]

I used to use a Samsung Laser printer and the Ink never ran out, now my mom is using it. They use powdered ink "toner" like you mentioned.

I need to turn off my color printer and buy another laser printer!