Cartcon
CartconIf so it would make printer ink one of the most expensive liquids on earth and would make the $100 gallon of oil look like a bargain. So how do we come to quote this figure?Everyone always complains at the cost of replacing their ink cartridges in their printers, but how many realise just how little ink they are actually buying. A typical three colour inkjet cartridge from a major printer manufacturer like Hewlett Packard used to contain at least 18ml of ink, that is 6ml cyan, 6ml magenta and 6ml yellow and was certainly not cheap.What has happened recently however is that many of the main printer manufacturers have reduced the amount of ink they inject into the cartridge. In the case of HP this means that a three colour cartridge can now contain as little as 5ml of ink in total, less than 2ml of each colour, so if you happen to use a lot of a particular colour then the cartridge will last very little time. Although the cartridge contains less than one third of the old cartridges capacity the price has not altered, offering the manufacturer an instant 300% increase.HP is not the only company to have discovered this trick, Lexmark and Epson have also reduced the amount of ink contained in many of their newer cartridges. It would appear that Canon, amongst the major manufacturers are the only ones not to have employed this tactic. The cartridges, Cli8, that fit in the latest Pixma printers contain 13ml of ink which is exactly the same amount as was present in the previous two main cartridge ranges, Bci3 and Bci6.The most expensive cartridge to buy in either HP or Lexmark ranges is probably the model that came with the printer when you first bought it, the good news is that it is very likely there will be more economical choices available from the manufacturer.Both these companies used to give different product codes to the higher yield cartridges, and in some instances HP continue to do so, however for many models they are now suffixing the high yield cartridges with the XL logo. This can make a significant difference to the volume of ink available, for example: the HP350 ink cartridge contains only 4.5mlwhilst for a little more cash you could buy the 350XL containing 25ml, a huge increase of over 500%.So if you don’t want to end up paying over the odds for your ink, research which cartridges are suitable for your printer, this information is available from the manufacturers website or direct from Cartridge Concept.
