Hi Declan, sure sometimes the ink is more expensive than the printer itself nowadays. But that#s not because ink has become so much more expensive, but because printers have become so cheap. From my own expereinces at home AND at work: if you consider buying a laser, go for HP, but if you consider buying an inkjet DON'T. !
One alternative would be to refill the cartridges yourself, another one is to buy cheaper third-party cartridges instead of original ones. The latter works nicely with most printers. Then there is one big difference to consider: in case of Canon, HP and Lexmark(?) the ink cartridge is intimately coupled to the print head and you will always exchange both at a time (except for the series of HP business ink jets...). In the case of Epson, the ink cartridges are just that: ink cartridges... Make sure to buy a printer with separate cartridges for all colors and black. These normally have a larger volume and you don't have to throw away half full cartridges just because one color ran out. My father has one of those cheap Epson printers, where ink is more expensive than the printer. But using third party cartridges, the cost per page is low. He also has an Oki LED printer for those pure black-white print jobs. That printer is actually about 10 years old now and still in prime condition. I personally have an Epson Photo 2100 where the printer is much more expensive than the ink. But I use to buy my ink (advertisement follows!) only at www.inkclub.com - considerably cheaper than on the street. I used their third-party ink for my former printer without any trouble or problem, but the new one actually gets its original food.... Uwe. DM> That's the query. 2 of us here in 2 separate cities require a change of DM> printer. Both thinking of inkjets, but willing to consider any jet or DM> laser. My brother dopes a lot more colour than I do. He of us is a DM> strictly windows man, I have dual boot. DM> When you buy three colour & one black cartridge for a Lexmark, it runs DM> to nearly the price of the printer. Ditto HP with the newer models. DM> No huge special demands on complexity, networking, or dpi. One of us DM> does a number of large volume jobs. A dot matrix seems to be the DM> cheapest to run (remember those ribbons?) but noise rules it out. DM> Anybody research this thoroughly? DM> -- DM> With best Regards, DM> Declan Moriarty. -- Author: Uwe Zimmermann INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Hosting, San Diego, California -- http://www.fatcity.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB CHIPDIR-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
