Ink Wars

Wed Apr 25, 2007 11:21AM EDT

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Yesterday I wrote about Kodak's new All-in-One printer, which promises to slash the cost of home printing in half. Today's news? Not to be undone, HP announced their new strategy for saving you money on printing. Its new pricing for inkjet replacement cartridges is based on shopping in bulk: The more you print the more you save.

HP will be color coding its ink cartridges to meet the needs of three different types of users. Standard cartridges (the blue package) will be priced at $14.99. They're designed for "the bulk of us" who don't do a ton of printing. The green package is the "Value" or "XL" package. The cartridges will be bigger and hold more ink (they'll cost around $30). Green is targeted at those of us who are intense printer users. Finally, in the red package, HP will offer their "specialty" cartridge designed for those of us who really need professional quality prints.

The strategy is sort of like asking whether you're a Costco shopper or a grocery store shopper. If you buy in bulk with the jumbo sized cartridges, you'll pay more initially but the cost of printing will be lower. Right now, if you buy HP ink cartridges you're spending about $30 for a regular sized cartridge, so either way, HP is cutting the cost of ink significantly.

Of course Kodak is pooh-poohing the HP strategy. An email I received from Kodak stated the company felt consumers would be happier with its approach, which is to charge $9.99 for a black cartridge and $14.99 for a color cartridge. Kodak's approach is cheaper overall, but no jumbo sizes.

Who wins? We do. Finally inkjet replacement cartridges cost less than a tank of gas!

 

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  • 6 Posted by rouseb0750@sbcglobal.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:52PM EDT Report Abuse

    I have the cheapest way to fill my ink the dollar store. Yes sir, get enough black ink to refill about 2x3 times. I just want to know which is the best printer for the money that does photos and has individual colors on the color cartridge so I can purchase one of those and refill my own colors. Can Anyone tell me? Of course as soon as I get enough room to set up my black printer Epson 24 dot matrix ribbon printer, I am going back to it. Those ribbons last a lonnnng time. I don't like being gouged on the inks. Brenda

  • 7 Posted by haidabucks@sbcglobal.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:15PM EDT Report Abuse

    hey as long as I can ALSO re-full the tanks myself that would be even gooder!!..but i suspect HP will have made that a hard thing to do for the new tanks. But at that price I should just buy a new tank eh?? lol great news

  • 8 Posted by cole_msmith on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:28PM EDT Report Abuse

    great news for most of the printing world.....but what about those of us that are under the reign of epson and their ink guzzling printers???

  • 9 Posted by mdevanz on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:14PM EDT Report Abuse

    So, how big are the new "blue" cartridges for $14.99? Are they smaller (less ink) than the current cartridges? Are we gonna be paying less per cartridge, but in return, receiving a smaller cartridge? I hope not.

  • 10 Posted by cobraxt on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:28PM EDT Report Abuse

    canon is the cheapest. generic ink can be found online for $1-3 shipped. quality is on par with canon ink as well.

  • 11 Posted by zmon400 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 11:01PM EDT Report Abuse

    Yippee!! It's about time! I once bought a Lexmark all in one and then found out that the replacement ink cartridges were more than I paid for the printer! I wound up giving it away and getting another HP.

  • 12 Posted by grungex on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:13PM EDT Report Abuse

    I had someone I knew that would go and buy a new cheap printer instead of ink... It cost less, and he donated all the old ones to a local school to resell cheap.

  • 13 Posted by alfred5877 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:50PM EDT Report Abuse

    well what about Lexmark ink cartrides. I tell you want. They do not take about the comsumer. Why? It is all about the money.

  • 14 Posted by dantesevera on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:35PM EDT Report Abuse

    Choose a printer that can be fitted with bottomless ink system. Ink refill is one good alternative to save money.

  • 15 Posted by but@swbell.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:15PM EDT Report Abuse

    Is their such thing as a laser color home base printer out in the market? just curious

  • 16 Posted by brislteach on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:13PM EDT Report Abuse

    We always buy Canon printers--the quality is excellent for what we need (printing documents and resumes and things), they're inexpensive, and the refill cartridges are super cheap!

  • 17 Posted by r1beauch on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:25PM EDT Report Abuse

    The bigger ink 'tanks' makes lots of sense. This is because when you run out of ink, it is gradual so you lose the last 10-15% of the ink volume. This is also true of laser. I am a retired ex-HP R&D engineer and i will make a list of comments to provide some insight... 1.) The hardest part of re-filling are trapped bubbles while re-filling. When HP refills at the factory, lots of special steps are taken to avoid bubbles in the ink jet cartridge. The priming step by the refiller is their attempt to avoid this problem (but they can never do as well as an HP Manufacturing ink fill assembly line. 2.) The HP Printhead can actually fire ~10x the amount of ink inside of it. This is because in the beginning the ink volume was sized for the old heads and we figured out how to make the printhead last much longer. 3.) Epson Bubbles: Epson has problems with bubbles. They prime (=waste) practically 1/3 of their ink trying to avoid bubbles. 4.) Laser is Cheaper (Myth): laser typically prints text while inkjet will often print images. Images use 10x more ink (toner) than text. One full page of image will use the ink of 10 pages of printed text. I bought a laser printer (HP1022n) thinking i would save money, but I soon discovered this was not necessarily so. The REASON I like laser NOW is that it is faster and the text does not run when wetted. I actually think the black ink jet printing is a 'little' cheaper. OK That is enough for now...good luck and when i go to the store I would buy the largest ink cartridge even if I were a casual user. I hooked up a 10x ink BAG (remember I am an engineer who can do what normally cannot be done) and the printer went 1.5 years with our family printing continuously and no problems! It was GREAT!

  • 18 Posted by _intrepid on Thu Sep 3, 2009 11:02PM EDT Report Abuse

    This is good news for the average consumer that never really knew how to comparison shop what they are buying... its never been about the price of the cartridge... its about the cost of the ink that you're getting... cheap cartridges have less ink, and cost a little less, but the price per mililitre of ink was ALOT higher. So you'd have to buy 2 cartridges to get the same amount of ink as the more expensive cartridge, but you'd ending up spending much more than twice the price of the big cartridge. Hopefully this will provide those with cheap printers a little bit of relief.

  • 20 Posted by dwishnuff on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:50PM EDT Report Abuse

    look for store rebate programs. staples has a great program. they give you $3 off for every used cartridge you turn into them for recycling.

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