Manufacturers make very little
profit from the sale of their printers. The profit
is made on the replacement ink cartridges. Once you
have the printer you have to buy ink in order to
print. If you use your printer a lot, the cost can
be considerable.
There are two types of
inkjet printers.
The first uses true cartridges. Companies
such as Hewlett Packard and Lexmark use this system.
Cartridges consist of a tank of ink, a head (The
copper colored metal strip) and sometimes a chip
that gives back data on the levels of ink. The
cartridges for this system, as owners know only too
well, are expensive.
The other system as employed
by companies such as Epson, Canon and Brother, uses
headless cartridges. This means that when you buy a
cartridge for these types you actually get a tank of
ink and sometimes a chip but the printer head stays
within the printer. Replacements are marginally less
expensive for these types of printer. Neither system
has any significant print quality advantages.
Another point worth remembering is that print
quality is measured by Dpi, (Dots per inch), and the
printing media and not simply by the ink used.
Laser printers work on an
entirely different system utilizing a large
cartridge containing toner and not ink. Toner is a
powder containing heat sensitive pigment. Most,
though not all, laser printers are used to print
text and therefore use only black. Replacements are
expensive but some are capable of printing up to
20,000 pages of text from one cartridge.
For owners of Epson, Canon and
Brother Printers one answer is to use compatible
cartridges. These are cheap and carry superb
guarantees as to their quality. Most will last at
least as long as the originals. For Hewlett Packard
and Lexmark owners there are remanufactured
cartridges. Owing to the patents on these cartridges
it is illegal to manufacture compatibles.
You could always try refilling
the originals but this can be messy and sometimes
leaks can occur resulting in permanent printer
damage.
Epson inkjet
cartridges
Before you purchase a new
printer find out the cost of
replacement cartridges.
You’ll be amazed at how much they vary. Look for a
printer that uses tanks of ink and best of all one
that uses separate tanks for black and the colors.
In so doing when you need to replace a cartridge,
say yellow, you need only replace this one color and
not the whole color cartridge.
A cheap printer laden with
incentives such as rebates does not always pay in
the long run.
Discount ink cartridges or compatibles
will always save you money and if you buy them from
a supplier that only handles higher quality
compatibles, there will be no loss of print quality.
Naturally, we believe your
best choice will be an
Epson inkjet printer & our
Epson compatible cartridges.
Keep that
Epson
printer doing what it does best ..... Printing!
