For laser printers there can be a wide variation in page yield (generally 2,000 - 10,000 pages) per cartridge. Before buying a laser printer, check the specific cartridge yield specifications on the manufacturer's web site. Lower cost printers tend to employ lower yield cartridges. Black and white laser printers usually cost less than inkjets to operate and print at significantly faster speeds, also because the toner is heat fused, the printout is water resistant. Some manufacturers have reduced the initial cost of color laser printers to very seductive levels (a few hundred dollars) but color toner cartridge costs are high and the yields are low and the color rendition is not as good as a photo grade inkjet printer.

     So let's expand and explain the reasoning behind these guidelines:-

Avoid buying an H.P. or Lexmark Inkjet Printer
     There are two basic designs in use on ink jet printers, print heads built into the ink cartridge (when the ink runs out, you discard the cartridge and print head) or permanent print heads built into the printer used in conjunction with disposable cartridges that simply contain ink (ink tanks). HP and Lexmark have chosen the former design approach and Epson, Canon and Brother use the latter. All the printer manufacturers heavily patent their particular print head designs and these patents have made it virtually impossible for third party manufacturers to copy HP and Lexmark cartridges because of the manufacturing patents involved in the process technology and fabrication of the integral print head. Consequently HP and Lexmark have a monopoly on their own complex cartridges and are able to charge very high prices typically $20 to $40 each (black or color). There is no question that these companies make excellent printers, but each time you need to renew the cartridges you are faced with a $40-$80 bill. (Note that most Dell printers are re-branded or special Lexmark models and Dell has made some subtle changes to the Lexmark cartridges so usually you have to buy Dell branded cartridges). The main advantage of including the print head in the cartridge is that you automatically renew the print head each time you replace the cartridge. If you use the printer so infrequently that the ink dries out on the print head and causes a massive clog up, then these cartridges can be a plus but you pay for this feature with a very high price. Also, each time you replace a combination print head and ink cartridge, you may have to perform a time consuming interactive print head alignment (because the geometry of each print head is a little different). You can save with integral print head cartridges by buying recycled or refilled versions and InkAmerica offers a line of popular re-manufactured HP, Dell and Lexmark cartridges. Refill kits are another cost cutting solution but they seldom give good results for a variety of technical reasons and can be very frustrating to use.

Stick to Epson, Canon or Brother Printers
     Epson, Canon and Brother have chosen a design strategy of using a permanent built in print head in their printers. In many ways a permanent print head can be more elaborate and much more optimized in design and performance than a disposable print head and this performance advantage is largely the reason they choose to design their ink jet printers in this way. Eventually the print head will wear out and the print quality will degrade but this usually takes a couple of years of heavy use. At that point, it is usually cheaper to buy a new printer and dispose of the old one (not so with the latest Canon models) although it may not seem to be the most logical environmental choice. Even though the ink is stored in simple tanks which are relatively easy for second source manufacturers to copy, these OEM's still charge high prices for their cartridges and promote their printers at or below cost in much the same way as razor manufacturers give away the razor and charge high prices for the blades. Disposable supplies are a big source of profits for these companies, over half of Lexmark's profits derive from the sale of cartridges. A typical OEM price for a cartridge is around $20 and it may well contain less than 15mL of ink, equivalent in cost to over $1 per mL (or cubic centimeter) of ink and will print 200 - 600 pages. If wine was priced the same way, you would be paying over $1,000 for a 1 liter bottle! To make matters worse, ink is mainly water, most formulations are typically 95% water, 4% glycerol (sugar) and less than 1% dye and isopropyl alcohol, so that you can see the prices that consumers are being charged are outrageous. Along with charging high prices for cartridges, printer manufacturers and retailers are eager to sell ever more expensive "photo" printers that use multiple ink cartridges which are more costly to replace and are also adding identification chips to the cartridges that barely improve functionality but do increase the cartridge manufacturing cost. Manufacturers are constantly introducing new printer models and cartridge types to try and thwart the low cost cartridge competition and maintain their high profit margins.

     Ink jet printers divide into 2 types, the basic "all purpose" or general purpose printers that use a 4 color system - black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks and "photo" printers that uses a 6 or more color system for improved color rendition - black, cyan, magenta, yellow, light or photo cyan and light or photo magenta. Despite the more limited color set, general purpose printers can give excellent results printing color photographs and are definitely the most economical choice for everyday printing of text, web pages and most color documents. Photo printers are more expensive to buy and operate, an extreme example is Canon's top of the line $499 i9900 photo printer which adds red and green cartridges for a total of 8 cartridges (a complete BCI-3/6 series cartridge set will cost you $95.60 at Canon's list prices - only $30.72 at InkAmerica). So the first rule is that unless you are especially interested in high performance photography, stick to general purpose printers and preferably to those that use just two cartridges - a black and a combination 3 color cyan/magenta/yellow color cartridge. These basic printers with 2 cartridges are getting harder to find but Canon has the iP1500 that uses the BCI-24BK and BCI-24CLR cartridges (InkAmerica's price for both cartridges is just $6.60). Epson used to manufacture 2 cartridge machines such as the Stylus Color C62 and CX3200 but they have become extinct in their current printer line. Some printers are specialized like Canon's miniaturized i70, i80 & i90 designed for portable (laptop computer) applications. These portables use tiny BCI-15 black and color cartridges with only 5.5 or 7.5mL of ink - they do not print very many pages compared to desktop printer cartridges. The best place to shop for lower cost printers is on-line, you will be lucky to find them on the shelves of office supply stores or computer stores who prefer to use their shelf space and advertising dollars to steer customers to more expensive and more state of the art models although you can sometimes be lucky with a "weekly special" closeout price at a retail store. For Canon printers visit www.canon.com, you can buy direct on their site or shop various Canon resellers on line. On-line retailers often offer small discounts from the Canon web site direct prices. Epson runs a clearance center on their site at www.epson.com and this usually features several bargains, most of their "refurbished" products are actually new. Brother specializes in multi-function machines - printer/copier/scanner/fax which can be an excellent choice in a small office (Canon also has the MPAS series) and you can find information on their line at www.brother.com. Brother has recently re-engineered its line of all-in-one + fax machines and the current model lineup MFC-210C, MFC-420CN, MFC-620CN, MFC3240C, MFC-3340CN, MFC-5440CN and MFC-5840CN all use the new LC41 series cartridges for which InkAmerica has compatible cartridges. Note that Brother has had a problems with print head failures on the earlier MFC-3220C, MFC-3320CN, MFC-3420C and MFC-3820CN all-in-ones that used the LC31 series cartridges (see Machine Code Error 41 at www.fixyourownprinter.com) so if you see any of these older models, it is best to avoid them. Brother only sells via retail stores (not directly on-line) and not all stores carry all models so check on the Brother web site for features, specifications, prices and which retailers stock which models before buying. Brother also makes a couple of ink jet plain paper fax only machines. Note also that not all so called “all-in-ones” have fax capability, Epson have only one inkjet model with the fax function in their current product line, the CX5800F. Many of Epson's all-in-one machines (some are photo quality) are priced at levels similar to their ordinary single function printer models. Their "print engines" are the same as an ordinary printer but additionally you will have copying and scanning (and possibly fax) features at virtually no additional cost compared to a plain printer.

Who makes the best printer?
     It is hard to make an objective comparison as different printers have different features that are optimized for different applications. The commonest print head technology used by HP, Lexmark, Brother and Canon is the thermal ink jet print head. In this design, tiny resistors heat up the ink to boiling point in a fraction of a milli-second causing a steam bubble that ejects the ink through fine nozzles. Epson uses a piezo-electric print head technology that uses the change in mechanical shape of a special material caused by an electric field to eject the ink. There is some evidence that piezo electric print heads are more robust. Thermal print heads are especially prone to rapid damage if you run them without ink as this causes the resistors to overheat. For this reason, it is best to renew the ink cartridge either just before or as soon as there is the slighest evidence of the ink running out - reduced density or lines in the printout. Most of Canon's printer user manuals include a warning such as "If you continue printing with an empty ink tank, it may cause problems" and the problem that is likely to occur is permanent irreversible damage to the print head. Because of the thermal cycling inherent in operation of thermal printheads, they typically have a life at best of some 10,000 - 30,000 pages (about 2 - 6 ten ream cases of paper). For this reason, most of the better thermal print head printers have some way of replacing the print head if it becomes damaged. User's often fall into the trap of printing only black documents and letting the color ink run out which can rapidly damage the color print head. You may be able to obtain a replacement print head from the manufacturer's web site or a spare parts vendor, typically replacement print heads are $30 - $50 and in some cases are more expensive than the original printer.

Who makes the most economical printer to operate?
     A recent article in July 2005 “Recharger Magazine” by Mark Hibbard, titled “Innovative Inkjets: A Technology Leader Retrospect” has a very objective analysis of printer operating costs. Here are his results for the 3 year projected cost of consumables (inkjet cartridges) including the cost of the printer. He assumed a fairly modest annual usage consisting of printing 500 pages of text, 300 mixed-color graphics and text pages, 150 4”x6” photos and 20 full page photos. Here are the results:-

* - Recharger Magazine's Numbers

     As you can see, the cost of ink consumables are likely to greatly exceed the initial cost of the printer over a 3 year period. Also, Canon and Epson printers are significantly less costly to operate than H.P. or Lexmark, in fact if you received one of these printers free with a computer purchase, before it puts a hole in your wallet, you might seriously consider disposing of it and buying a Canon or Epson instead. Canon has a slight edge over Epson using OEM brand name ink cartridges (except for the latest PIXMA models - see below) but an even bigger advantage if you use our InkAmerica compatible cartridges. You can expect a Canon printer used with our cartridges will only cost about a 1/4 of the 3 year costs detailed in the table above.

      For black and white printing, laser printers can be more economical than inkjets and can print faster. There are a wide range of choices in manufacturer's models, generally those with larger toner cartridges yielding 5,000 - 10,000 pages are going to give the lowest operating costs, many entry level low cost laser printers use small cartridges with lower yields. Our Canon L50 re-manufactured black toner cartridge provides a typical example of costs, our price is $69 (Canon's suggested retail price is $149) and the 5,000 page yield using our cartridge gives a per page cost of 1.4 cents (excluding paper). Although great progress has been made in reducing the cost of color laser printers they are still expensive to operate. A typical example is the HP Color Laserjet 1600 model that has a suggested retail cost of $299.99. HP's prices and yields for the cartridges used in this printer are $74.99 for the Q6000A black cartridge (yield 2,500 pages @ 5% coverage), $82.99 for the Q6001A cyan color cartridge (yield 2,000 pages), $82.99 for the Q6002A yellow color cartridge (yield 2,000 pages) and $82.99 for the Q6003A magenta color cartridge (yield 2,000 pages). As you can see a full compliment of replacement cartridges for this printer to print around 2,000 color pages will cost $323.96 (a bit more than the printer itself!) and the per page print cost is around 16 cents each page.

What should I look for when buying an inkjet printer?
     First, don't just run into your nearest office supply or computer store and buy what is on their shelves although sometimes their weekly specials can be good value. Usually retail stores promote the higher end models which are frequently overkill for general purpose use. There are other pitfalls and marketing mechanisms at work as well. For years, most of Canon's printers have used the BCI-24, BCI-3 or BCI-6 series cartridges for which we have very inexpensive compatible cartridges. Recently, Canon has decided to short circuit the third party cartridge competition by introducing a whole new series of PIXMA printer models that use a new family of high priced ink cartridges for which presently there are no inexpensive third party substitutes. These new PIXMA printers are the iP1600, iP4200, iP5200, iP6220D, iP6240D, iP6600D etc. which replace a whole earlier PIXMA series of printers the iP1500, iP2000, iP3000, iP4000, iP5000 etc. that were introduced about a year ago. The iP1600 uses two new cartridges, the PG-40 black cartridge (Canon price $19.99) and CL-41 color cartridge (Canon price $24.99), compare this to the older iP1500 which used the BCI-24BK and BCI-24CLR cartridges (our compatible prices $2.85 and $3.75 respectively). What do you want to pay for a set of cartridges, $44.98 or $6.60? The iP4200 and iP5200 use new PGI-5BK (Canon price $16.25), CLI-8BK ($14.25) and CLI-8C, CLI-8M, and CLI-8Y (all $14.25) so a set of Canon cartridges for these models will cost $73.25 versus our $19.20 for a set of the older BCI-3/6 series cartridges for the iP3000 or iP4000. Of course our Chinese suppliers will eventually produce equivalents to these new cartridges (probably in a few months) and their prices will be much lower but it will still take a long time to get the prices to the level of the older BCI-24 or BCI-3/6 series. So if you are out shopping for a Canon printer, try and find an older model in stock and on clearance sale somewhere. Both for Canon and Epson, start shopping on their web sites at www.canon.com or www.epson.com and look up the specifications for the printer models that are of interest to you and find out which cartridges they use. Next, check our site to see if we have compatible cartridges available. If we do not list them, we do not have them. Check our prices versus the brand name prices and you can estimate what you will save each time you have to replace cartridges. The important point is that the initial cost of the printer is just the tip of the iceberg, the lifetime cost of consumables are going to exceed the printer cost many times over and that is where there is a real opportunity to save. Find the right printer models, check their web prices and then shop on-line or at a retail store for the best bargain. The inkjet printer manufacturers have been steadily increasing the number of cartridges in their printers and the cost, making bigger and bigger profits from the replacement market. Their marketing line for these multi-cartridge printers is a suggestion of economy as you can just replace the individual cartridge that you need, but the reality is that you will need more cartridges and are going to be making frequent replacements. You can greatly reduce the impact on your wallet by making the right decisions about which printer to buy, fewer cartridges usually mean lower operating cost.

My printer has failed, fix it or nix it?
     When your inkjet printer fails, should you try to repair it? Your printer is warranted for the first year, so if it fails during the warranty period, you should be able to obtain a free replacement. After that, the usual rule of thumb is that if the printer cost less than $150, the cost of a service labor and repairing it is not going to be justified. If you are lucky, you may be able to fix it yourself for very little cost (apart from your time), try www.fixyourownprinter.com for advice and technical assistance.

What is a good choice for a fax machine?>
     To keep the print head operational, inkjet fax machines automatically perform intermittent cleaning cycles whether they are printing or not and in order to receive faxes, these machines are usually never turned off. For a fax machine that is printing daily, this is not a problem but for infrequent use you will find that you are printing nothing and still using up ink cartridges. You can print color faxes with inkjet machines but you may not need this capability in which case a black and white plain paper laser fax machine can be a better choice. If you want a fax machine that will be used infrequently (less than every day or two), a machine that uses thermal paper can be the best choice. Despite the disadvantages of thermal roll paper (darkening and illegibility with time), these thermal machines can sit around idle for months with zero maintenance and work perfectly when called upon and cost very little to operate.

What about the ink volume in cartridges?
     Ink volumes vary from cartridge type to cartridge type so that simply comparing cartridge costs can be misleading. For instance, comparing black cartridges, an HP # 27 (our price $15.95) contains 10mL (milli-liters = cubic centimeters) of ink, a Canon BCI-24BK contains 9.5mL (our price $2.85), a Canon BCI-3eBK contains 30mL (our price $3.84) and an Epson T040 contains 20mL (our price $5.95). As a rough rule, 10mL of ink will print 1 ream of paper (500 sheets) although there are considerable variations depending on the printer model and print mode. Even so, larger cartridges generally print more and often are less costly on a per page basis.

What about the stability of inks?
     If you are printing in color, you may be concerned about the stability of the colors over time. The three factors most likely to cause color change are ultraviolet light (UV), atmospheric ozone and the stability of the paper on which the print is made. The Sun is the most serious source of high energy ultraviolet light which will break down the dyes in the ink, so keeping your color prints away from direct sunlight or covering them with glass (which blocks UV) is the best way to minimize this effect. Ozone is everywhere at low concentrations as an atmospheric pollutant. Ozone is a powerful bleaching agent and will gradually degrade the dyes in the ink. Keeping your color prints enclosed or in some sort of sealed package is a good idea. Finally if you print on ordinary paper, it will very likely yellow over time and cause a color shift. Inkjet printer manufacturers are eager to seize the lucrative color photography market and are making some rather optimistic 25 or 90 year guarantees of the color stability of their inks. In all cases their testing is performed under fluorescent light which emits a tiny fraction of the UV of the Sun and usually no account is taken of ozone degradation or paper deterioration (see our FAQ's). Unlike the thermal printheads used by Canon, HP and Lexmark, Epson's piezo printheads do not heat the ink and they have taken advantage of this property to introduce pigmented inks under their "DuraBrite" trademark. Pigmented inks contain color particles which are less easily degraded by UV and ozone compared to soluble dyes. On the other hand, the pigment particle sizes have to be very carefully controlled to pass through the inkjet printer nozzles which have a diameter less than 1/5 of a human hair. Also, the ink chemistry has to be carefully formulated to prevent the pigment particles from coalescing and settling which would clog the nozzles. Thermal printheads "boil" the ink (actually superheat it to over 300 degrees centigrade) and the physics of their operation make it very difficult to produce a pigmented ink (apart from black) with adequate stability to endure the temperature changes and pass through the nozzles. Epson's piezo printheads have a definite advantage here but pigmented inks tend to produce less sharp and vivid color prints than dye based inks so the durability advantages are obtained with some tradeoffs. All of InkAmerica's inks are dye based and will give excellent results printing black and white text, mixed text and color prints such as web pages and good color photographs. If you want ultimate performance and are using expensive fancy photo papers then the cost of OEM inks may not be much of an additional factor but for day to day printing, our inks can save you hundreds of dollars and our thousands of satisfied customers are a testimony to the quality and performance of our compatible cartridges.

     Laser printers have major advantages in permanence of their prints. Laser toner is a resin coated solid pigment that is fused by heat to the paper. Because of the toner pigment particles and the printing process, the prints are inherently water resistant and fade resistant although the paper can decay over time. If maximum permanence and stability is an important consideration, then laser printers can be an excellent solution although color laser printers do not provide as good a color range and rendition as inkjets and are costly to operate.

      A further consideration for customers who want ultimate quality, perfection and permanence in their digital photo prints is the use of online printing services such as HP's Snapfish at www.snapfish.com and Kodak's Photo-Gallery at www.kodakgallery.com (these are just two, there are many other on-line photo printing services). Although not providing the convenience of immediate prints, these services are often more economical than producing your own and as they use professional quality papers, printing technology and materials, the results can be superior. The cost of these services is very competitive and comparable to or lower than you can accomplish by buying your own equipment and supplies.