Q2612a cartridge
ink technology, computers & printers

OEM Cartridge Capers.

You may have heard that printer ink cartridges contain the most valuable liquid on the planet. You may have dismissed the report as ugly rumor or urban legend. This time, however, you may believe what you heard.

Ounce for ounce and gallon for gallon, the ink in a printer cartridge numbers among the most precious commodities on Earth. The price of ink in a printer cartridge makes expensive perfumes seem like outright bargains, fossil fuels seem downright cheap, and the finest vintage champagnes appear little more than carbonated grape juice. Depending on your make and model, you are paying somewhere between $22(US) and $60(US) per ounce for the ink in your printer cartridges. At the higher price, that works out to slightly more than $7000(US) per gallon.

It’s not an accident or a miscalculation.

Printer manufacturers understood the game from the beginning. They routinely have sold their machinery at a small loss, knowing they would recoup their “promotional” costs in ink sales. The last time you bought a full set of ink tanks for a Canon, Epson, or HP printer; did you pause to consider the cost of those “refills” as a percentage of the printer’s current “fair market value”?  You probably spent more for barely 1.5 ounces of ink than you could get for your machine on e-Bay or at a garage sale. You see how well the manufacturers’ strategy worked out.

But wait! Now how much would you pay? 

Wait! There’s more. And now how much would you pay? Epson makes it almost impossible to knock-off imitations of its printer cartridges, because they contain patented chips and circuitry essential to their smooth operation with the printer carriage. Recycling and remanufacturing will work, but Epson so heavily emphasizes the importance of using only factory authorized parts that few business people will risk it. All the gold in that circuitry drives-up the price considerably even if it did come from reclaimed jewelry and dental fillings.

But wait. There’s still more. And, now, how much would you really pay? Repeated testing indicates that your printer signals your computer “ink tank low” when it still has approximately 40% of its usable ink remaining. Naturally a little intimidated by the machinery and its artificial brilliance, most printer users will not risk it, buying new cartridges without regard for how many more pages they might print with the old one. Veterans probably have experienced catastrophes when they have pushed their printer-cartridge luck.

Rookies and veterans alike seem oblivious to the fact they have printer cartridge options. Nowhere in the rules of the game does it say that you must buy printer cartridges from the printer’s manufacturer. As a matter of fact, the best practices ought to stipulate always buy remanufactured or recycled printer cartridges, paying less than half the MSRP and getting a better product.

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