Kodak's New Printers Cut Ink Costs by 50 Percent

The word that consumers are tired of spending more on their printer inks than they spend on a "shot of the finest whiskey" hasn't fallen on deaf ears at Kodak. Today the company announced a new family of All-in-One (AiO) printers. Kodak claims that these printers can save as much as 50 percent on the total cost of printing, whether you're printing a business document or a 4 x 6 glossy photo. The printers are a tad bulky looking and by no means sleek, but they seem like practical choices with built-in scanner and copier functions and dual paper trays for documents and photo paper.

Kodak says it's lowered print costs in a few ways. First, they've removed the print head, the most expensive part of the replacement ink cartridge kit. Instead, the print head permanently resides in the printer. Next, they've created a new pigment-based ink technology with nano-particles. Kodak says that a color ink cartridge with their inks will provide 105 photo prints where the competition only offers 48. The cost of a cartridge replacement is only $9.99 for a black ink cartridge and $14.99 for a five-color cartridge, about half the cost of competitors' cartridges. The inks are waterproof and guaranteed fade resistant.

Kodak made their announcement live from NBC Studios with Kodak's chairman and CEO, Antonio M. Perez, hamming it up as a faux Saturday Night Live host, accompanied by guest comedian Molly Shannon, musical talent The Nerds, and a pair of hapless talk show hosts, Max Blumm and Nathan Bannigann. It's worth checking out the accompanying web site, Inkisit.com, because it's darn hard to take an amusing look at the world of inks, and Kodak's done OK.

At the announcement, Molly Shannon made lots of jokes about her kids' obsession with printing ink-eating unicorns in full color, all day long. She called printer ink the heroin of the geek world. Based on research, her jokes rang true. According to InfoTrends, more than 70 percent of people limit their own printing or their children's, and about 30 percent say they would print more if ink were priced lower. Many studies have been done about why people don't print. If Kodak is right that price is the major obstacle, then the AiO printers should make a lot of folks happy. I suspect that many of us know printing is a pain even with the cost obstacles removed.