A digest for conscious living
Six years ago I bought a Canon Pixma Ip8500, an inkjet printer with fantastic color capabilities, according to all the reviews and feedback online. Indeed, the color printing is gorgeous. Canon has this 8 color printer ink system, where red and green ink are added to the traditional CMYK set of inks that most printer owners have to buy. But Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black are only four inks. The extra FOUR inks that I had to purchase to operate my printer are: Photo Cyan, Photo Magenta, Red, and Green. At an office supply store like Staples, each cartridge costs anywhere from $12 to 15$. So I was looking at a $100 dollar tab just to feed my printer the ink it needs. And what a pig that thing is! I usually print gray-scale, yet the color inks always run out after 5 months or so, sometimes sooner if I print color. Even if I turn the printer on 3 times in 4 months, the ink levels magically drop. I’ve been watching them very closely, out of suspicion that something fishy is going on inside. The constant disappearance of ink, even under the lightest of uses, seems contrived, yet the manual justifies it by mentioning a little amount of printer ink is used every time the printer ‘calibrates’ the nozzles before a job. Riiiiiight.
Time to feed the relentless pigment hog
I have 5 years of systems administration experience, and feel confident in saying that printer manufacturers sell you their printers on the cheap, but will RAPE you with the ink… For a long time, I bought into the manufacturer propaganda that warns consumers against buying after market ink. Of course, as doing so thwarts their profit taking scheme.
Eventually, I stopped printing, unless it was important and urgent, at which point I usually would go to Staples down the street and begrudgingly shell out a large sum in exchange for a little plastic vial of pigment. If you weight just the ink they sell you without the cartridge it comes in, that stuff is probably more expensive that Cocaine… I started resenting Canon big time. That said, they are not the only ones guilty of overcharging for ink.
Recently, out of desperation, I went online and looked for generic printer ink. I figured I wasn’t going to replace my printer with another brand so that another manufacturer could rip me a new one the same way Canon does. Instead, I wanted to try a cheaper alternative, with the added benefit of being delivered to my door, thereby saving me errand time and fuel. To my astonishment, for a reasonable $45, I was able to purchase and receive from Inkfarm.com an entire set of 8 inks for my little pigment pissing machine. The same set of Canon brand ink would cost me over $100 dollars at Staples. Already, I had saved 50%, time, and effort. But wait, there’s more!!!
A brand new cartridge from Inkfarm
Take a look at Canon branded ink cartridges, and then check out the generic ink cartridge I bought. Notice how Canon’s ink container is tiny, and the cotton wad makes up most of the cartridge. The ‘generic’ ink cartridge seems to contain almost twice as much actual ink, and a much smaller wad. Really, Canon? How greedy do you have to be?
As for the performance of this new ink, I can say that so far, so good. I have not noticed any degradation in performance, and have cut my ink expenses by 70%, when all is taken into account. Inkfarm’s delivery was prompt. These guys made a believer out of me. Check them out for yourself if you have the inkjet printer blues… You will notice, on their front page, that they proudly display their Better Business Bureau accreditation. Feel free to try other generic ink sellers, and don’t buy into the printer manufacturer fear mongering about buying generic ink. The ink I received had no brand. Also, if you are a little more enterprising, you can find bottled inks that work well with your printer. While this is a process of trial and error, there is a great resource on refilling. It’s the Inkjet Printer Forum. You will find information about your specific printer and a ton of helpful people as well. And if this article saved you some money and dignity, I wouldn’t mind a little donation!
Raphael
Left: Canon's pathetic ink tank. Right: A much more generous ink cartridge
Thank you for the acknowledgment! =)