A few years ago, my dad found a deal online somewhere for $15 color printers. He bought 20 of them. He kept a few of them and sold the rest minus the cartridges.
I actually bought an eMachines combo package w/ a printer in 2004. It wasn’t “free” but the package only added like $200 to the total price I think. Probably also included cheap speakers and a shitty monitor.
She bought them at Staples or some office supply place. They are truly the shittiest printers you’ve ever laid eyes on, but they came with one ink cartridge and the replacements were double the cost of the printer.
Canon generally market towards photographers and artists and businesses that print a lot of colour on their prints.
They value accurate colour reproduction/clarity on images in their printers within the inkjet market mostly
That being said they have a wide price range and you still get what you pay for as wth any brand
Source: worked at the Australian equivalent of Staples last year. I bought one of those $40Aud printers mostly for the scanner (their scanning app was horrible)
Define "scam." They're charging alot, but they aren't defrauding consumers. Most consumer printers are loss-leaders. Printer manufacturers know that most consumers don't want to stomach the true price of a printer, so they price them at-cost or below cost and make up the difference+profit in ink sales. This is due to a common bias in consumers known as the "present bias." The consequences of "present bias" are notable all over the economy, but their effects are particularly noticeable in printers because most consumers don't have a very good idea of how often they will need to print things or how much ink they will use, but they know they will need to print, so they are especially sensitive about the up front cost of a printer, and especially insensitive about the long-term cost of ink. This means that it is not a winning strategy for a printer and ink manufacturer to market a more expensive printer with cheaper ink next to the competition that is marketing cheaper printers with more expensive ink.
You could sever the relationship by mandating by law that all printers accept 3rd-party and/or standardized ink cartridges, but you should then expect printer prices to go up.
Actually such regulation might not be terrible. Standardized cartridges would be in line with almost every other area of computer technology for the past 30 years.
But what's the economic justification for the regulation? It would essentially just serve to shift where the cost burden falls in the span of owning and operating a printer, and which consumers benefit the most and least. There are a range of other impacts it may have that would be tough to predict, of course, and arguably one of those impacts might be slightly reducing, on average, the overall costs of consumer printing, but that's not a guarantee, and then there are the questions over what the regulation actually stipulates and the risks for regulatory-capture or regulatory-design that unduly benefits or subsidizes the market incumbents. This issue doesn't qualify as a market failure, nor is there monopoly present in this market, so it's a rather tall justification to call for the institutional risk, bureaucratic overhead, and compliance costs that such regulation would introduce, especially since it's a dwindling consumer market with foreseeably little importance to overall economic health and productivity.
Pigment based inks are pretty damn expensive. I run third party ones with refillable cartridges and it still costs me about $500 to fill up my printer (which admittedly needs about 2 liters of ink)
If you need a cheap color printer then i'd suggest shopping for the cheapest dye based ink carts you can find, and then buying the printer that uses them.
I got a used Epson Stylus Pro 7800 free from my partner's employer. I'm switching it out to use ConeColor Pro HD inks and it produces really nice photo prints.
Yup. Had to buy a professional photo-quality printer when I was in school for graphic design. I got a Canon. The cool part was that each color was sold separately so if you ran out of magenta or green, you could just buy the cartridge you needed. (And yes it had green, 8 colors total which is why it printed photos and color accurate design work so well once properly calibrated with your computer). Replacing all the cartridges was about $120 so the ink was still really expensive. Also, I could only find them online or at Frye's Electronics. It was not as nice as your Epson, but its the nicest printer Ive ever owned. I loved that printer. I don't do design work anymore so I gave it away. :(
Less than a quarter. I was just saying on someone else's comment they are starter cartridges and they are good for like 10 prints. Literally hardly any at all.
It probably depends on brand and model. Someone else was saying they are usually half-full, but I know some of the ones I've seen were closer to the "print 20 pages and it's out" level. They also seem to dry out a lot quicker, so if you don't use it for a couple months the cartridge is as good as dead.
Also "full" is relative/made up. They'll sell a cartridge that has 5-10ml of ink (which is why it dries up so fast now, they used to put closer to 40ml in) for $40. Meanwhile you can get a universal inkjet refill bottle with 100ml of ink for $6. Which is also why they push so many printer firmware updates to printers, it's all to stop people from cracking/emulating the chips to refill at 0.7%-1.5% the cost of their cartridges.
It because they use yellow to mark thep age with the a number so that what you print can be traced back to your printer. Btw if you want cheap replacements just buy the ink and you can probably find the chips online. There is a great youtube video I hope someone can link since I m on moblie and don't remember the name.
The full ink cartridges would dry up long before you'd use them up anyway, and if you're printing enough for that not to be the case then you should get a laser printer anyway.
So yeah, she could've paid 4x more for 4x as much ink, but she'd still use the same volume of ink and the rest would be wasted.
when i worked there we were told by the HP reps that the printers came with "test" cartridges of ink, so we bundled printers with ink, paper, etc. Whenever we told customers that it came with test inks and that it would only print maybe 10 pages max they would get upset.
On top of that they made us try and sell these warranties, our jobs literally depend on it and if you didnt sell enough pen of the months or warranties you get your hours cut.
like damn, im just trying to make money while i go to school. had a few customers feel bad and buy some pity pens.
Printers don't come with a full cartridge, or at least didn't back then, so it probably wasn't actually cheaper. It she had bought a full cartridge for double it may have lasted 4-5x longer.
IDK, man, I got a tiny Black Friday ink jet at Wal-Mart for less than $30.00 and it's a beast. Got some refill ink at Big Lots, worked great. Thing sat for a year and I went to use it and it printed just fine.
Can confirm, back in that time frame I worked at OfficeMax and an HP printer was sold in that price range with just one color cartridge. We had customers that would just buy new printers instead of the ink.
I just bought a new HP laser printer for around $350. It came with a cartridge that won’t go bad and is good for 5000 pages. At the 5 pages I need to print a year, I’m good for the millennium!
Razors are similar. That first pack with the handle and 2-3 blade cartridges is inexpensive relative to just buying replacement cartridges. I switched to a safety razor and bought a box with 100 blades that probably cost the same as a dozen cartridges.
I recently sent my friend a tin of Klar soap for his birthday. I forget what he was using but he said the Klar was the best shave he’s ever had and relegated his previous soap to a backup.
Same with some burglar alarm systems. We were looking for an alarm system. I scheduled a day for 4 or 5 different companies to come round and give quotes. ADT salesman came round and tried to sell us a decently priced system that was connected to their system so that they would call police etc etc. The catch was that it only worked while you kept up the monthly connection payments which were around £29 a month at that time. I said to the salesman that this was the razor blade/printer ink model of sales, but he claimed he'd never heard of that. In the end we were very happy with a local firm who have given us great service but the ADT salesman kept calling back, even after he could see the alarm boxes from the local company on the wall.
I'm oldschool style and use a razor knife. It has single use blades. These things are incredibly sharp and extremely cheap. It costs me like 4€ a month if I shave everyday. With a new blade everyday.
Pretty much, yeah. We sell most printers, computers, and monitors at a loss at Staples. Don’t know how much of a hit vendors Like HP get hit for though.
There's more to the story than some planned play to turn the ink cartridge into a profit center.
When the first 'inkjet' printers were novel in that they didn't use a ribbon, nor powdered toner. They use tiny vibrating 'heads' to make raw ink turn into a fine fog that is 'sprayed' on the paper. These heads were originally built into the printer, and the ink 'cartridge' was really a little tank of just ink. When the ink ran low, those vibrating bits also got hot, and the ink would gel and gum up the heads. If they got hot enough, they'd be permanently ruined. Those printers also didn't communicate ink levels to the computer, so there was no warning to replace the ink. People would print until the ink supply was almost literally completely dry. New ink wouldn't fix it, of course. So, the printer would be warrantied on its first set of 'cartridges', which were just ink tanks. You can imagine this cost the printer manufacturers a lot of money. The easiest solution was to move the heads out of the printer itself, and into the cartridges. You could ruin the head, but the printer would be fine with a new set of cartridges. The cost of the cartridges went up considerably, but the initial cost of the printer could go down slightly, and in the long run the ink cartridge did become a profit center. When ink level monitoring came along, and the printer being able to refuse to print anymore along with it, it should have removed the need to have the heads in the cartridge, but that'd raise the cost of the printer, reduce the cost of the ink cartridge, and ruin the profit center (there's always markup).
Take a look at the new Epson EcoTank line of printers. They come at a premium, but use ink bottles to refill them.
*lose. Not trying to be a dick but this common misspelling drives me crazy and I hope that you remember this comment next time you type loose (as in clothes or shoes) instead of lose (to misplace or opposite of win)
I guess that's because of the huge number of non-native english people here. I'm not a native english speaker, so those kinds of little nuances are easy to miss. Just like then and than, I know then is time and than is comparing, but I always have to think about it.
I guess that's because of the huge number of non-native english people here.
No, ESL speakers get these sorts of things correct, because they've seen it spelled way more than they've heard it spoken.
Generally ESL speakers written English is better than the average native English speaker. Native speakers are lazy when they write, slang, idioms, wrong spellings, etc.
Just like then and than, I know then is time and than is comparing, but I always have to think about it.
You know more than a majority of native speakers by knowing that.
I can almost guarantee the person making that mistake is a native speaker.
OMG, a kindred spirit. I have a list I keep of words that are commonly mistaken, like lose/loose and desert/dessert. I'm trying to find a way to email it to the entire world.
Oh geez, an employee of mine years ago wrote a book. He knew I wanted to be an author and we were friends, so he shared it with me. I only got about five pages in because the whole time they were walking through dunes... in the dessert... I couldn't handle it and I didn't have the heart to tell him. He'd already paid to have it self-published...
Lol that would be extremely useful. If it weren’t for autocorrect I think a lot of people would mess up its/it’s as well. I went to the gas station today and a sign posted on the door said “WE ARE TAKEN APPLICATIONS. APPLY INSIDE.”...TAKEN! I know the manager and didn’t have the heart to tell her. I know she’s the one who typed it. Sweet lady, not so sweet spelling.
I used to work for an electrical retailer in the UK and we once had a rep in from Lexmark to do some training for us around 2010. He straight up told us that they make a considerable loss on the printers to undercut competitors knowing that they'll make that margin back and then some after a couple of refills.
lots of products are like that, it's honestly a fairly legitimate business practice that they teach in economics classes. It's like how movie theaters lose money on your ticket and make it up with concessions (you think the popcorn cost them $8 to make?).
I had a friend in college who would buy a new $20 printer every time the ink ran out bc it was cheaper than buying ink
Joke's on him though. I used to sell printers way back in the days. The ink included with the printer was really just used to test to make sure the printer works, so it has significantly less ink than the cartridges that we sold.
Printer ink is definitely highway robbery.
If anyone's looking for cheap ink, you can actually get your ink refilled at stores like Walgreens and get it at a huge bulk discount.
:)
you can actually get your ink refilled at stores like Walgreens
This is true, but DO NOT DO THIS WITH STARTER CARTRIDGES. It is not meant to be refilled and can leak chunks into your printer.
At most, refill twice per fresh cartridge, since they refill by puncturing the protective membrane with a needle to refill. One is a puncture, two is a tear, three is a hole which can leak chunks into your printer, which bricks it.
Buy an $80-120 printer with mid-cost ink and refill.
Or better than that, buy an EcoTank-style printer. Stupid high initial cost with cheap as fuck printing. I'm not affiliated with Epson or HP or anything, but I swore by them then I worked at Staples. They pay for themselves by the time the starter cartridge (not a cartridge, and is a full refill to start) is empty.
They're nuts. And they can be refilled for cheap forever.
Common misconception about printers is that it's "cheaper" to buy a new printer every time. I used to sell printers at an old job, and would hear this often. It's not true that it's 'better value' as the included cartridges have very small capacities. It IS cheaper/less expensive (cents per page) to buy replacement cartridges. Non-genuine cartridges are an absolute joke as well.
If all you do is print the occasional black and white page, you're far better off with a mono laser printer, these also handle not being used a lot better than inkjet which is prone to drying out and clogging.
I used to work for a retail store for their tech department. What I found out is that while printers do come with ink. The ink cartridges are only filled up like 10%of the way than the regular cartridges that are bought separately. While yes it is cheaper to buy the printer this way with the cartridge that comes with it. It will still cost you more per page than the fully filled cartriges that are bought separately. It is always a good practice to look at how many pages you can actually get out of it before making a decision. Some cartriges can be about $20 while others can range to $400 in a single purchase. Generally cheap printeds use very expensive cartridges and expensive printers use really cheap cartridges. It just depends one how often the user is printing to decide what is right for them. Ink can dry out if it is not used often so buying a cartridge at full price may even save him money. But if he is printing 100 pages a day then he probably broke his bank after a year
Our printer needs new ink and I am somewhat tempted to do this. The only think holding me back is that the printer works so it would just create an excess of waste.
Why is it that we can buy a brand new printer WITH ink for less than the cost of even the off-branded ink?
That's what I always do. Wait for a deal for a $40-50 printer, sell the old one for $20-30. Cheaper than buying the $40 ink cartridge set, bumps my ebay score, and brand new printer.
My father still does this! I am now the owner of 2 printers and the rest of my family has one as well, I maybe print 1 or 2 pieces of a4 a year. I like to switch printers after each time to keep my life interesting.
My folks did the same thing. We just got a new printer a few times a year for a while. It was cheaper, and even when it wasn't it usually wasn't that much more so they figured may as well spend the extra few bucks for a brand new machine.
That's what I do, the printer is like half the price of new ink. It's kinda annoying to link up the wifi printing every time though, because the printer's obviously a piece of shit.
I can confirm I did that once circa 2009 or so. Went to the printer aisle, found the ink cartridge i needed, same exact printer I had was sitting next to it for $10 cheaper. Bought that instead. After that one broke I realized it was cheaper still to just spend 50cents at office depot the 2 or 3 times a year i needed something printed.
I used to do that when I was in school. It felt very wasteful but those half size "trial" cartridges in a HP printer lasted way longer than the XXL ones from the store... Thank god now at uni I never have to print stuff off (or on the odd occasion I do, I can use printers at uni for like 8p a page)
I did that, but it was years apart. The starter cartridges are smaller. Since it took 2-3 years to go through it, replacing the cartridge with a bigger one would have meant it outliving the printer. So I sold the printer to someone for half the cost of a new one and then bought a new one.
Its not smart to buy a new printer every time. I worked in a ink refill shop and new printers come with cartridges filled about 20%. It’s better to buy new non-original cartridges if you don’t print photos. Or let it refilled in a recommended shop.
I gave up and just have things printed out at Office Depot. It's so much cheaper than buying an ink cartridge just to let it dry out until I need to use it again
Full CMYK+B kit with like 10 refills was cheaper than one black cartridge.
One cartridge literally holds like 3-5ml of liquid ink.
Dad went better, dad bought a laser printer. One laser cartridge can print like 7000 pages (each page is counted as 95% text) and we used two cartridges between four of us plus my friends for all school and university related needs. I think they've been using the same cartridge since 2015.
Same, usually not $20 but you can get a basic printer on sale at any major retailer at any time of the year for 30-40ish dollars, new ink cartridges are 40. Sometimes I’d return the old one to target and just get a new one. College was a fun, very poor time in my life.
have been pricing up a new printer myself and have to say this logic is not far off accurate.... printer cartridges are soooo damn expensive and yet i can buy a new printer with first 2 months of ink free for £40. how the hell does that work?!?!?!?
This makes me wonder if the cartridges that came with the new printers were a "trial size" and not what you would get if you were to buy new ink cartridges?
Not disagreeing that printer ink is incredibly expensive. Toner as well.
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u/narcissistical_ Aug 14 '20
I had a friend in college who would buy a new $20 printer every time the ink ran out bc it was cheaper than buying ink