Printers are cheap! Ink is expensive. So expensive, I don’t need to tell you. The entire Ink Refill On-The-Cheap industry proves it. Hell, printer ink is probably the most expensive liquid substance you can buy. But that’s not my topic.
\n
\nI confess that I buy brand-name ink. Yep, I overpay for that HP ink and toner for my HP printers. Lots of money, down the drain. I expect it, so I don’t gripe about it that much.<\/p>\n
Okay, I do gripe about it, but during the buying process this week I pondered a more reasonable question:<\/p>\n
Do I buy the color ink cartridges individually or in a package?<\/p>\n
It’s a serious question. For example, when you go to the grocery store, do you buy all the groceries you need at once every time, or do you just re-stock?<\/p>\n
In my color inkjet all-in-one silly printer, there are five ink cartridges.<\/p>\n
Yep: Five.<\/p>\n
There are the traditional color cartridges: Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta. Then there are two black cartridges. There is a skinny black cartridge and a fat black cartridge.<\/p>\n
Why are there two black cartridges? They both have the same color ink, right? Maybe they just want you to double-down on black ink. Whatever.<\/p>\n
When I go to buy replacement ink, I have many choices. Primarily, I can buy the all-in-one package, which retails for $50 at Staples. Or I can buy each ink cartridge individually for $18 a piece.<\/p>\n
Using the consumer math you avoided learning in High School, that means that you can save $22 by purchasing the $50 package that contains the four ink cartridges. But should you?<\/p>\n
Most modern printers have an ink meter. You can summon the meter from the printer’s control panel. On my HP PhotoSmart printer (which I bought because it’s the only Bluetooth printer they had), the LCD control panel graphically shows the ink level in all five of the ink cartridges.<\/p>\n
If the Cyan ink cartridge is low, mostly because I’m going through my “Blue” photography phase, then why should I pay the $50 to replace all the carts when I can pay only $18 to replace the Cyan cart? Of course, that further implies that later I’ll have to pay $36 to eventually replace the Yellow and Magenta carts, plus another $18 to replace either one of the Black ink carts.<\/p>\n
Aw, well, too hell with it: Just pay the $50 and replace all<\/em> the carts and get it over with, right?<\/p>\n Still, I hate throwing out that expensive ink. So I bought the carts individually, figuring I’d save money. Or did I?<\/p>\n Maybe it’s just cheaper to throw out the printer when the ink runs dry and buy another printer. That may actually save money in the long run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Printers are cheap! Ink is expensive. So expensive, I don’t need to tell you. The entire Ink Refill On-The-Cheap industry proves it. Hell, printer ink is probably the most expensive liquid substance you can buy. But that’s not my topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3320"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3323,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions\/3323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}