Printer Ink now over $20,000 per gallon.
66The cost of printer ink for some inkjet printers is now costing the consumer the equivalent of over $20,000 per gallon. We are all currently worried about the increase in the price of oil, which could conceivably reach $150 per barrel, but this pales into insignificance compared to recent increases in the cost of printer ink.
How has this increase come about? Obviously some of the increase is related to normal price rises over the course of time, but the most significant rise has been due to the printer manufacturers producing cartridges that contain less ink. Most of the major manufacturers have adopted this trend, but it is best exampled by the leading printer manufacturer, Hewlett Packard. A few years ago the smallest three colour inkjet cartridge contained 19ml of ink, giving just over 6ml of each colour cyan, magenta and yellow. The comparable cartridge today only contains a total of 5ml of ink, that's less than 2ml per colour. Canon is the only manufacturer not to follow this trend, the Bci3 cartridge of the late 90's contained 13ml of ink and its modern day equivalent, the Cli8 still contains 13ml. So for consistency in levels of printer ink, the prize goes to Canon. And its competitors wonder why Canons current Pixma range of printers is selling so well!
So what can you do if you are currently using a printer not made by Canon? Well the first thing if you have a Lexmark or HP printer is to check if there is a larger capacity cartridge available for your printer, this can save you big bucks. You can for example save over 50% in the case of some HP printers by buying the largest capacity cartridge as opposed to the smallest one as supplied with your printer when you bought it. Many of these cartridges in both the HP and Lexmark ranges now carry the suffix XL and so are easy to identify. HP also state on the cartridge boxes the capacity of the cartridge, as do Canon. Epson used to do this, but their most recent packaging carries no such information, surely a retrograde step. Lexmark have always been extremely secretive about how much printer ink is contained in their cartridges and do not even reveal this information on their website, perhaps it is not surprising that in most printer reviews and tests Lexmark printers are usually the most expensive to run.
Bear this information in mind when you next replace your inkjet printer and you will probably end up with a Canon, this is no bad thing as generally they are consistently at or near the top of the best buy list for most price ranges.
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printer ink
- Printer ink updated Mon Jun 9 2008 4:05 am CDT
There is no way printer ink is worth this kind of figure, but it could well be that this is how much you paid last time you purchased an inkjet cartridge for your printer. It is probably the most expensive liquid you have ever bought and it is probably almost finished already. There is no doubt that the price of ink cartridges is high, but that has always been true, the reason the cost of the ink has risen to the above frankly ridiculous price is that less and less of it is being put in the cartridge by the manufacturers. As an example, a three-colour HP inkjet cartridge used to contain a minimum of 18ml of ink, 6ml cyan, 6ml magenta and 6ml yellow. HP currently supply a cartridge as used in many of their Photosmart printers contain only 5ml of ink in total, that is less than 2ml of each colour, print a few photos and low and behold you need a new cartridge. Hp are not the only manufacturer to be offering less ink in their cartridges, Lexmark and Epson cartridges today also hold less ink than those manufactured in the past. Canon alone among the major manufacturers has stayed consistent in the amount of ink contained in a cartridge. The old Bci3 cartridges contained 13ml of ink each and their modern equivalent, the Cli8, also have 13ml. As printer manufacturers make most of their profit from selling cartridges and not printers, it is easy to understand this trend. Fortunately there is a way to dramatically reduce this cost and maintain your printer in first class working order. When you buy your printer as new, it will come supplied with a low capacity cartridge which will quickly run out, do not be tempted to replace it with the same version, instead check for the largest capacity cartridge suitable for your model. This could save you over 50% and you will not be constantly replacing cartridges. In the past manufacturers did not make it easy to identify which cartridge represented the best value, with model numbers bearing little relationship to each other. Fortunately this is now changing and both HP and Lexmark are now attaching the XL suffix to the high yield, better value cartridges. You can also find the volume of ink in Canon and HP cartridges printed on the boxes and this used also to be true of Epson but this information was deleted from their latest packaging, surely not a good sign. Lexmark have never published the volume of printer ink contained in their cartridges and it perhaps comes as no surprise that in test and reviews their printers are often the most expensive to run. - 13 months ago
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MaxReviews says:
10 months ago
Yeah, that's pretty crazy. That's why we have to offset that cost by staying away from the OEM brand supplies! =)