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My New Printer…aka My Latest Grudge Purchase

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Yesterday I bought a gadget that I didn’t have much interest in buying at all…another printer. I have a large-format Epson Sylus R1800 and an HP Photosmart all-in-one that’s about two years old. I don’t print a whole lot, but when I do I use the HP all-in-one for printing documents and small photos, while the Epson is  reserved for printing high-quality photos at up to 13″ x 19″.

I have a couple of Amzon.com return shipping labels to print and both printers are fresh out of ink at the moment. While shopping for groceries at Costco I remembered that I was in need of ink and headed over to the electronics section in search of ink.

A pair of XL printer cartridges cost $47.99 and a set of XL color cartridges was $65.99. I really wasn’t in the mood to spend $113.98 on ink for an outdated printer.  I’m guessing I could locate a single black cartridge for less elsewhere, but I was in a hurry and really needed a quick solution for printing a handful of pages.

Just around the corner from the Ink I found a pile of HP printers that actually cost less than the ink I was looking at. Sure, they only come with standard (non-XL) cartridges, but I felt better about walking out the door with a big box with a WiFi-enabled printer than a couple of ounces of ink. I threw one the HP Photosmart Premium E printers in my cart.

I completely understand that HP (and its competitors) nearly give away the hardware in order to win the opportunity sell high-margin supplies to customers over and over again. But it just feels wrong to pay so much fo the stuff. The contrast between what you get for the price of the ink compared to the hardware makes it even more painful.

Usually I get excited about buying new gear, but that wasn’t the case here. This is the fourth HP printer that I’ve bought in a row after its predecessor ran out of ink. You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but they always seem to run out of ink when I don’t have time to research alternatives. If you really want to get your blood boiling, open up one of your ’empty’ inkjet cartridges and see how much ink is actually remaining.

Document and casual photo printing isn’t nearly as important to me as it used to be now that I lead a mostly paperless existence. The cost of ink and running out of the stuff on too many occasions are two of the reasons why I’ve printed fewer and fewer documents over the year.

I’ve got to print a few shipping labels, then I’m going to start looking at alternatives. Fortunately, Costco has one of the best electronics return policies out there. The retailer allows returns on electronics for up to 90 days.

When it’s time to buy a high-quality printer for my photography, I enjoy researching high-end printers. But I really haven’t kept up on what the best solution is for home and home office document/casual printing. I’ve head some good things abou Kodak’s low-cost printing solutions and I should probably explore getting a basic laser printer.  What do you use and what do your recommend? Are printing supplies a grudge purchase for you?

13 Comments

13 Comments

  1. Benjamin Ries

    12/09/2010 at 3:15 pm

    Go with greyscale laser. I’ve found that to be far more efficient.

  2. Jonathan Cohen

    12/09/2010 at 4:44 pm

    Is this the one with the detachable Android tablet?

    • Tim Hutchinson

      12/10/2010 at 2:44 am

      No, looks like the one bought is the Photosmart Premium. The detachable one is the Photosmart eStation.

  3. savagemike

    12/09/2010 at 5:14 pm

    Get thee to a mid-level or so black & white, laser, duplexing, networkable printer.
    It’s a lot less stressful than constantly getting bent over by inkjet pricing.
    I find there is very little in the world I ever need to print in color.

    I bought a nice sturdy $200 brother laser like 6 years ago.
    I’ve never changed the toner and never had any more problem than the not very often at all paper jam.
    It hangs handily off a wire on my wireless router with no worries at all.

    If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

  4. rent a car

    12/09/2010 at 6:21 pm

    Wooww.. Very good. I Love HP

  5. Sfwrtr

    12/09/2010 at 6:35 pm

    Costco offers cartridge refilling. Check at the photo printing desk.

    • Xavier Lanier

      12/09/2010 at 8:33 pm

      Thanks for the tip. That would of course require planning/thinking on my part…

  6. Steven Hughes

    12/09/2010 at 8:01 pm

    This has been the case for like 10yrs it is bad for the environment, but cheaper to purchase a new printer(most of which come with half capacity cartridges) than to buy an inkjet cartridge.

    We got a networkable color laser jet printer many years ago for volume printing and printing shipping labels. Still have yet to replace the toner cartridges, since color printing is only for the kid’s school projects.We still get inkjet printers usually free with a new computer purchase and cycle through them when needed… :(

  7. Steven Hughes

    12/09/2010 at 8:01 pm

    This has been the case for like 10yrs it is bad for the environment, but cheaper to purchase a new printer(most of which come with half capacity cartridges) than to buy an inkjet cartridge.

    We got a networkable color laser jet printer many years ago for volume printing and printing shipping labels. Still have yet to replace the toner cartridges, since color printing is only for the kid’s school projects.We still get inkjet printers usually free with a new computer purchase and cycle through them when needed… :(

  8. Flash

    12/09/2010 at 10:51 pm

    Yep. That’s what we need. More landfill. Well done. And you get less pages printed for the money you spent.

    Xavier, I’m a fan, but this kind of wastage really pisses me off.

    Gordon

  9. Tim Hutchinson

    12/10/2010 at 12:10 am

    Lessons from an OD employee:

    1) The ink included with the printer is almost never full-capacity, even though it may have the same number.
    2) In general, the more you pay for the printer, the lower the ink costs are **PER PAGE** (it seems everyone tries to just compare ink by the price of the cartridge, never factoring the size in).
    3) Again in general, and especially obvious with HP: Companies tend to have two lines of printers: A photo line and an office line. The photo line (HP’s Photosmart, for example) will give better image quality, but cost more per page in ink. The office line (HP’s OfficeJet) will have a bit worse image quality, but will have lower ink costs per page.

    The ink for the Photosmart you have is the 02, which is only about $10 for a standard cartridge, but the cartridge is tiny, and thus per page you pay a ton.

    Since you’ve already got a high quality photo printer, I would be recommending you look towards a printer from the office lines. I sell mostly HP’s so they’re the numbers I know off the top of my head: An HP OfficeJet 6500 is a mid-range printer, about $100-$200 depending on specific model and sale, and the XL black for it runs $31.99 in my store. That cartridge is estimated for 1200 pages (I typically advise to consider it good for 2/3 of that number, to be on the safe side of calculations). Moving up to the OfficeJet 8500, which can sometimes (aka now) be had for $199, with various models going up to $399, you get an XL cartridge for $35.99 estimated to 2200 pages.

  10. Jonathan Alligood

    12/10/2010 at 12:24 am

    I noticed along time ago that 98% of my printing is black and white. So I bout a Brother Laser printer (On black Friday) for $50, 3 years ago. Best investment I ever made. Toner cost me 35 bucks on Amazon. last’s about 1.5 years. and I print a lot. I also have a strict rule on All-In-One’s don’t buy them… LOL

  11. Anonymous

    12/10/2010 at 1:00 am

    I never buy ink for more than 10 years. I just buy clearance printer when my ink gone. I got good printer for less than $50.

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