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Author Topic: 'Raw deal' on printer ink  (Read 1799 times)

Offline Clive

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'Raw deal' on printer ink
« on: July 04, 2003, 10:32 »
The ink we print with can cost more than vintage champagne.

Consumers are getting a raw deal when it comes to the ink used in printers, according to research by Which? magazine.

With the top brand names costing more than vintage champagne, it is an unnecessary waste that people can ill afford, said the campaigning magazine.

Tests on a crop of colour printers found that many gave premature warnings that the cartridges were running out of ink.

Which? is also critical of the overall cost of printer ink. It says some cartridges cost over seven times more than vintage champagne per millilitre.

It recommends that people buy generic cartridges which are often half the price of branded products.

Protecting customers?

THE COST OF INK
Colour HP Cartridge costs £29
This works out at £1.70 per millilitre
1985 Dom Perignon costs 23p per millilitre  
The magazine suggests that people squeeze every drop out of the ink they use, ignoring the premature warnings that the ink is low and continuing until they see a drop in quality of printing.

Most cartridges give people the option of continuing printing. But Which? found that Epson embeds a chip which stops the cartridge running when the ink runs low.

The company says that it employs the cut-off system to "protect customers from accidentally damaging their printer or producing sub-standard print quality".

A Which? researcher who over-rode the system found that in one case he could print up to 38% more good quality pages, even though the chip stated that the cartridge was empty.

The least amount of extra pages that could be printed was 17%.

The cost of ink has been the subject of an Office of Fair Trading investigation.

It has accused manufacturers of a lack of transparency about the price of ink and called for an industry standard for measuring ink cartridge performance.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3035500.stm
 

Offline Tony

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Re:'Raw deal' on printer ink
« Reply #1 on: July 04, 2003, 13:23 »
Good find Clive, and as it happens I ordered a generic colour cartridge for my Epson this Tuesday afternoon from THIS firm, and it arrived next morning in the normal post. Mind you last time I ordered two black cartridge's they took four days to arrive, but maybe that was because it was my first order with them.

I cannot see the differance between the cartridges  as supplied with the printer. I have kept the originals just in case I have to get it fixed under warrantry  ;D
Athiesm is a non-prophet organization.


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