Can I just pause here to mention how much I detest Epson?
I have a little Epson printer, which I use for 90% of my printing. I chose it because it also prints on CDs, and this is very useful when you’re in the design and indie film business.
Anyway, it uses a whopping six cartridges, which at regular price adds up to about $70 every time it needs new ones. And that seems to be more and more often. I just put new ink in the thing in February, and now it is jonesing for more! And of course, I’m suspicious because of the little chips in the cartridges, which I can only assume are enforcing some kind of limit to how much I can print, whether the cartridge is truly empty or not.
About 4 years ago, at my old office, we got an Oce copier/printer. They mistakenly delivered it to the wrong office, and caused some headaches; by way of apology they gave us a complimentary color laser printer. It uses four toner cartridges, which are of course very expensive. But it shipped with “sample” toner, about half the amount of a regular cartridge. Four years later, I was only just running out. Now that is what I call value for money.
Costco has pre-packaged sets of ink for my printer at about $10 cheaper than buying them separately at Staples. Still, at $60 a pop every few months, my business account will dwindle to nothing just for printing.
Can you do the re-fill thing?
I feel your pain.
I run a Canon S800 6 color printer for beautiful, sharp, 8×10 glossy photographs but boy oh boy does it suck down the ink!
Oh, man — I also have a large-format HP printer for doing those 13×19 prints, and that uses a whopping NINE inks.
That’s gonna hurt.
I noticed you said you use the Epson for cd printing. I’ve been using an HP PhotoSmart D5160 for my Disc printing. I’ve been inclined to use HP sinply for the fact that the volume to price ratio is better. At 400 prints per cartridge (one black, one color) and between $40-$60 for the set it just seems to make better business sense. Plus, my supplier is a member of HP’s PurchaseEdge which gives me a (small) kick back in terms of rewards. Ususally I hate rewards programs, but if you’re going to buy it anyway, why not?
BTW, my wife does a lot of photo work, and the HP has done a very nice job of printing those as well.Just food for thought.
Hunter — this entry is more than a year old, I have since switched to an HP 5160. Although the cartridges still run me $60 for a set, I think that they seem to last a bit longer.
The downside on this printer is that the HP software is incredibily annoying and intrusive. It installs a slew of stuff I don’t need or want, and there is no way to customize the installation to just install the drivers. It also places a ton of crap into my Dock, and at least one of those items keeps returning to my Dock when I restart despite the fact that I remove it.
HP is tops on my list of companies that produce intrusive software.