View Full Version : Now HP goes after third party ink infringers
Epson has been vigorously protecting its ink-jet technology interests (http://dpnow.com/2461.html) recently and now it's the turn of HP.
HP has issued a press release confirming that it has filed a complaint against a Korean ink-jet ink manufacturer, InkTec (http://dpnow.com/3176.html), because it believes InkTec has violated HP patents in the formulation of its replacement inks.
What I find interesting about the HP move is that it would appear that InkTec is actually making its inks using some technology that HP believes it originally developed. This would kind of imply that InkTec is far from a 'coloured water' back-street ink mixing-up operation.
Epson on the other hand, I believe, was protecting the design of its cartridges and the pressure venting system these cartridges benefit from.
Looks like third party ink manufacturers are getting increasingly bold!
Ian
Surely the consumer must take some of the blame.
Even though these compatable inks perform below the standard of originals and, the question mark over quantity per cartridge alway exists, there still appears to be a huge market for them.
I have an Epson RX520 which requires 4 cartridges and confess to having tried a compatable brand. Even to an untrained eye the results were inferior and their life appeared to be greatly reduced.
Anyone else used compatable ink. How did it perform.
Surely the consumer must take some of the blame.
Even though these compatable inks perform below the standard of originals and, the question mark over quantity per cartridge alway exists, there still appears to be a huge market for them.
I have an Epson RX520 which requires 4 cartridges and confess to having tried a compatable brand. Even to an untrained eye the results were inferior and their life appeared to be greatly reduced.
Anyone else used compatable ink. How did it perform.
90% of the time for me. Yes it is below par but only for printing photographs. If you use your printer for run of the mill printing as I do then it makes sense to use cheap ink. If I want quality then I put the Epson originals in do a head clean and all is fine. Do you realize that ounce for ounce printer ink is one of the dearest liquids you can buy. More expensive than petrol, beer, and even perfume. It's well know that most printer manufactures sell their printers cheap so as to get you started on the life long expensive ink replacement train.
90% of the time for me. Yes it is below par but only for printing photographs. If you use your printer for run of the mill printing as I do then it makes sense to use cheap ink. If I want quality then I put the Epson originals in do a head clean and all is fine. Do you realize that ounce for ounce printer ink is one of the dearest liquids you can buy. More expensive than petrol, beer, and even perfume. It's well know that most printer manufactures sell their printers cheap so as to get you started on the life long expensive ink replacement train.
Yes and I think 'Lexmark' are the biggest culprits for that. You can actually buy a Lexmark printer for less than replacing both ink cartridges.
Yes and I think 'Lexmark' are the biggest culprits for that. You can actually buy a Lexmark printer for less than replacing both ink cartridges.
Dell at one time were giving printers away free. They were Lexmark with a dell badge. Supplied with enough ink to print 10 pages, then charged way over the top for replacement Ink. Personally I think competition is the only way prices will drop. Take that away and we are over the barrel so to speak.
Anyone else used compatable ink. How did it perform.
A friend of mine bought a compatible black cartridge for her Epson 895 (from the high street, so it wasn't particularly cheap). She'd always used Epson OEM before this, I can't recall why she bought the compatible - probably thinking they can't be as bad as she'd read, or being convinced by the counter staff that it's the "same as Epson". :rolleyes:
Anyway, she couldn't get the black to print. No amount of head-cleaning would get ink out of it. I went to see if I could sort it out but there must have been something seriously wrong with it because nothing would print. Having done plenty of nozzle checks and head cleans herself, I feared that the printhead could have been damaged.
Having used Epson printers for a while, I knew the 895 used the same black ink as my 1290. The only spare cartridge I had on the shelf was a "light" cartridge (half-filled). It was about 4 years old, at least two years past its "use by date" but at this point it didn't really matter.
I put in the Epson cartridge, did a quick nozzle check and head clean, and the 895 fired up printing beautifully again.
She vowed never to be tempted by compatibles again. ;)
Story ends.
[QUOTE=lumix;3447]90% of the time for me. Yes it is below par but only for printing photographs. If you use your printer for run of the mill printing as I do then it makes sense to use cheap ink.
I gotta go along with that one. The same marketing concept has been used for years by razor blade manufacturers. Give away the razor for little or nothing, then sell expensive blade cartridges. Consumers need some recourse. I've noticed ink refill kiosks in shopping centers lately and they seem to do well. Good for them.
Michael
90% of the time for me. Yes it is below par but only for printing photographs. If you use your printer for run of the mill printing as I do then it makes sense to use cheap ink.
I gotta go along with that one. The same marketing concept has been used for years by razor blade manufacturers. Give away the razor for little or nothing, then sell expensive blade cartridges. Consumers need some recourse. I've noticed ink refill kiosks in shopping centers lately and they seem to do well. Good for them.
Michael
While no one would suggest that OEM inks are cheap, there's another way of looking at it. If printer manufacturers didn't make so much money on their inks, they wouldn't have enough money to invest in R&D. We wouldn't have seen the radical improvement in printer technology and inks that we've enjoyed over the last 10 years.
Just what does the owner of the ink refill kiosk contribute to the improvement of printer and ink technology? Nothing, because all he has to do is sell the ink for a penny more than he pays for it and he's made profit. Not so for the actual printer manufacturer.
Each to his own. Personally, I have no quarrel with anyone who buys a £30 printer and puts cheapy ink in it - but it is worth remembering that without all those people paying OEM prices, there wouldn't be cheap printers for you print with in the first place. If OEM prices were not so high, the price of the printers would be higher to compensate. Today's £50 printer would actually sell for £300, and a £300 printer would cost £1000+.
Patrick
10-11-06, 08:46 PM
A friend of mine bought a compatible black cartridge for her Epson 895 (from the high street, so it wasn't particularly cheap). She'd always used Epson OEM before this, I can't recall why she bought the compatible - probably thinking they can't be as bad as she'd read, or being convinced by the counter staff that it's the "same as Epson". :rolleyes:
Anyway, she couldn't get the black to print. No amount of head-cleaning would get ink out of it. I went to see if I could sort it out but there must have been something seriously wrong with it because nothing would print. Having done plenty of nozzle checks and head cleans herself, I feared that the printhead could have been damaged.
Having used Epson printers for a while, I knew the 895 used the same black ink as my 1290. The only spare cartridge I had on the shelf was a "light" cartridge (half-filled). It was about 4 years old, at least two years past its "use by date" but at this point it didn't really matter.
I put in the Epson cartridge, did a quick nozzle check and head clean, and the 895 fired up printing beautifully again.
She vowed never to be tempted by compatibles again. ;)
Story ends.
This thread is repeating a thread we had a couple of weeks ago, I posted then there are third party inks and third party inks. There is the cheap and nasty (not always that cheap), and not so cheap high quality, think again before dumping all third party inks into one basket.
I run two printers one A4 for office stuff and use cheap Inkrite inks .
The other is my Epson R2400 which replaced a Canon 9000, for photography I have always used the print manufacturers owns inks, until I installed a CIS the Permajet Eco-Flow system. These are not cheap inks as such simply more economical, and are still high quality inks.
To underline the fact buy or borrow a copy of this months Black & White Photographer and read the review of this system.
Basically its not easy to install but to use the reviewer Jerry Lebens words “well worth the effort” He finishes the article by saying, “Would I recommend the Eco-Flo? Yes absolutely- once it’s operative, the results are nothing less than stunning”
I can fully vouch for that myself the results are stunning, another point he made this system does not seem to dry in the print head if left for longish periods unused. He didn’t use the printer for over 2 weeks and then did a print without cleaning the heads and it printed perfectly thus laying to rest the head blocking argument.
If you believe all the hype about print development then fine, I am more cynical and take most of it with a pinch of salt. I don’t say on very cheap models that there isn’t any truth in the fact buying manufacturers own inks helps pay for the printer, the Lexmark is a good example. But when you start paying £500+ you have paid for the printer and no mistake.
We must bear in mind the point made earlier in this thread that manufacturers own printer ink is the most expensive liquid available to the general public.
That’s one hell of a lot of profit, sorry research.
Patrick
We must bear in mind the point made earlier in this thread that manufacturers own printer ink is the most expensive liquid available to the general public.
That’s one hell of a lot of profit, sorry research.
Patrick
I don't think this is really fair on the printer industry. I'm going to visit HP's print head and cartridge manufacturing facility in Dublin on Monday. I have been there once before and to Canon and Lexmark plants in Scotland (now no longer there because they became uneconomical) and Epson's cartridge plant in Milton Keynes.
These facilities are (were) extremely sophisticated and, by definition, expensive to set up and operate. You simply can't compare a millilitre of ink with other commonly sold liquids.
The cost of the ink reflects not only the manufacturing cost of the ink, but the whole printer, cartridge and ink package. As the debate recognises, it's usual for a printer to be sold at near to 'cost' or even below cost. This cost is then recouped through the sale of ink refills throughout the life of the printer.
Don't blame the printer manufacturers for this situation - it's the market that dictates it. It's much harder to sell a printer for $500 and ink cartridges at $5 a go than $99 for the printer and $30 for the cartridges.
This ends up being bad news for high consumers of ink, so I'm very sympathetic with Patrick's situation. Alas, people like Patrick are in the minority and so the industry has less incentive to serve people like him.
What the industry needs to do is offer a discount incentive for higher consumers of inks, but that would probably be deemed anti-competitive and so illegal.
Having seen first hand how printer manufacturers formulate and make their inks, how they engineering of the print heads to marry with the physics and chemistry of the inks and the cartridge designs, I'm in awe of what they do.
And then I see so many people saving a dollar/pound or two on a third party cartridge and earn themselves bad colours that fade in no time and sometimes damaging the printer, and then they have the cheek to get the printer manufacturer to fix it under warranty.
Naturally, specialist high capacity ink systems aimed at professionals don't fall into this category of complaint - though not everyone has had such a happy experience as Patrick, it has to be said.
In the end, if anyone thinks the printer manufacturers are trying to rip us all off, they are deluded. It's an incredibly competitive market that is badly distorted by us, the consumers.
Ian
My printer manufacturer Epson offer Durabrite ink for use with Durabrite Paper. Both these are quite expensive. For some time I only ever used the Durabrite settings in the driver software when I wanted top quality prints on Durabrite paper. Then by mistake I selected this setting when I was using cheap ink and paper from a generic source. The printed results were as good as I would have expected from using genuine Epson paper/ink. I now believe that Epson have set the quality below its best so as to make you think Durabrite paper is something special when in fact it is the software setting. I now use the Durarite setting by default on all paper/ink combinations and get very pleasing results.
My printer manufacturer Epson offer Durabrite ink for use with Durabrite Paper. Both these are quite expensive. For some time I only ever used the Durabrite settings in the driver software when I wanted top quality prints on Durabrite paper. Then by mistake I selected this setting when I was using cheap ink and paper from a generic source. The printed results were as good as I would have expected from using genuine Epson paper/ink. I now believe that Epson have set the quality below its best so as to make you think Durabrite paper is something special when in fact it is the software setting. I now use the Durarite setting by default on all paper/ink combinations and get very pleasing results.
Epson Durabrite ink is a pigmented ink that was primarily developed for optimal use on plain paper. It's water resistant and very fade-resistant, too. It's not really aimed at photo printing, though Epson has refined the Durabrite offering over the years so that it produces passable photos on photo quality paper.
Wilhelm Imaging tested third party Durabrite replacement inks and discovered that they were all dye-based inks, so were not water resistant and some rated as fade resistant for just a few months compared to Durabrite at around a hundred years.
Dye-based inks are also much less good than pigmented inks when printing on plain paper - there is more ink spreading along the paper fibres resulting in less saturated colours and more feathering of detail.
Ian
Patrick
10-11-06, 11:34 PM
I don't think this is really fair on the printer industry. I'm going to visit HP's print head and cartridge manufacturing facility in Dublin on Monday. I have been there once before and to Canon and Lexmark plants in Scotland (now no longer there because they became uneconomical) and Epson's cartridge plant in Milton Keynes.
These facilities are (were) extremely sophisticated and, by definition, expensive to set up and operate. You simply can't compare a millilitre of ink with other commonly sold liquids.
The cost of the ink reflects not only the manufacturing cost of the ink, but the whole printer, cartridge and ink package. As the debate recognises, it's usual for a printer to be sold at near to 'cost' or even below cost. This cost is then recouped through the sale of ink refills throughout the life of the printer.
Don't blame the printer manufacturers for this situation - it's the market that dictates it. It's much harder to sell a printer for $500 and ink cartridges at $5 a go than $99 for the printer and $30 for the cartridges.
This ends up being bad news for high consumers of ink, so I'm very sympathetic with Patrick's situation. Alas, people like Patrick are in the minority and so the industry has less incentive to serve people like him.
What the industry needs to do is offer a discount incentive for higher consumers of inks, but that would probably be deemed anti-competitive and so illegal.
Having seen first hand how printer manufacturers formulate and make their inks, how they engineering of the print heads to marry with the physics and chemistry of the inks and the cartridge designs, I'm in awe of what they do.
And then I see so many people saving a dollar/pound or two on a third party cartridge and earn themselves bad colours that fade in no time and sometimes damaging the printer, and then they have the cheek to get the printer manufacturer to fix it under warranty.
Naturally, specialist high capacity ink systems aimed at professionals don't fall into this category of complaint - though not everyone has had such a happy experience as Patrick, it has to be said.
In the end, if anyone thinks the printer manufacturers are trying to rip us all off, they are deluded. It's an incredibly competitive market that is badly distorted by us, the consumers.
Ian
Sorry Ian I don’t believe fully the stories these manufacturers sell, and I use the word sell. I have realized long since these big companies tell the story, not exactly lies but shall we say play down the bits they rather we didn’t focus on and dwell on the bits that suit them. I’m not talking about just this industry but many other industries and yes throw in the politicians as well.
The fact they invest multi-millions of dollars, pounds, yens or euros into production facility’s is because they can then make an item cheap and in vast numbers and sell vast numbers to make high profits, not for your good or mine that is a by product of their quest for profit. Even more in this day and age.
The competition is what drives research forward in an effort to get a bigger market share, if they were a monopoly market would they spend such big research dollars, I think not.
Ink is fare more expensive to buy than petrol, without our punitive UK tax it sells for just over a £1.00 a litre. Costs don’t get any higher than finding oil and refining petrol is an expensive game, 10’s of millions of pounds is small change in that industry.
Many of the horror stories regarding third party Inks are from years past rehashed over again and are usually the very cheap inks. I remember many published horror tails from people using only manufacturer’s inks from the same period. Much has improved by both the big boys and the third party world since then, the very cheap inks I agree with you and still see them as very risky. In this debate there is a tendancy to lump third party inks together regardless of quality, and clearly there are some good and some bad.
That can apply to branded printers, I wouldn't touch a Lexmark again with a burnt chip.
As you point out it would be difficult getting a working discount scheme for heavy users, but it is still in the hands of the branded manufacturers, they could offer high capacity ink cartridge options or even acknowledge the existence of CIS’s and offer for sale bottled ink that could be used in these systems or even offer their own CIS.
The truth is there is room for both in an ever expanding market, there will always be those that will insist on branded inks and those that will try others, that is actually healthy. Come the day the market stops expanding and perhaps even shrinking you just watch those prices start to fall. I’ve seen it many times with various products in my 63 years.
Look at the television market, not that many years ago a 19inch colour TV made with a tube would have been around £250-£300 now because they have new toys to offer LCD & Plasma a 19 inch colour TV with a tube is around £99.00 the same can be said of monitors, production of this type of TV is dropping but still cheap even with the reduced economy of scale.
Patrick
It could be said that there is already a discount scheme for heavy users. Spend more money upfront, get an Epson 4800, and use 220ml carts to produce prints much more cheaply than from the cheaper printers. That's rewarding heavy use. It's also the old adage about getting what you pay for. Pay the costs up front, print for cheaper; don't pay the costs up front, print more expensive.
The cheaper printers aren't designed for heavy use. There are countless posts over the web of people asking what to do about the waste pad. Under normal use, the waste pad would be sufficient but using cheap inks means you become a heavy user on a light-use printer.
Colour laser printers are going the same way. The cheaper ones cost a small fortune to run, the expensive ones don't. Pay upfront, or pay by toner. Like inkjets, lasers can be refilled but a lot of the current generation of cheaper colour lasers have components that are not user-replaceable. Where once you could replace the transfer belt or photo-conductor, now you can't. Use the printer for its intended purpose (light-to-medium use) and it'll serve you well, refill it and use it heavily and those non-replaceable parts will run out quicker. It stands to reason.
I have no issue with anyone using a third-party solution where that solution is not accomodated by the OEM (it's what I do with my 1290S), but that's a different issue to the market being flooded with cheap generics leading to the consumer believing that they neither have to pay for the printer or the inks. Someone has to pay something, or else what pays for progress?
Sorry Ian I don’t believe fully the stories these manufacturers sell, and I use the word sell. I have realized long since these big companies tell the story, not exactly lies but shall we say play down the bits they rather we didn’t focus on and dwell on the bits that suit them. I’m not talking about just this industry but many other industries and yes throw in the politicians as well.
At least in this part of the world, we live in a 'free market' socity. That doesn't mean manufacturers can impose what they want against the wishes of the market. If you are arguing that the market is stupid, on the whole, I'd agree with you :) We ought to pay a bit more for the printer and enjoy much cheaper inks and we'd all be printing loads more. But the fact is that a large percentage of printers are not only sold at a loss but are a permanent loss because the owners don't buy enough ink to enable the shortfall to be made up. These people either don't buy ink from the manufacturer or simply don't use the printer enough to buy much ink during the lifetime of the printer.
You're right about other industries - look at mobile phones, for example. Here in the UK you can get a phone and an account for nothing, but you pay through the nose for calls (whether or not you use the phone) for the duration of the contract - unless, ironically, you use the phone a great deal. So what is a mobile phone company selling you? Air, liquid? They are selling a service. My point is that with printers the ink you buy should not be measured in ££s or $$s per ml, it's part of an overall package; the print quality, speed, ease of use, design, variety, functionality, etc. To me that's akin to a service.
The fact they invest multi-millions of dollars, pounds, yens or euros into production facility’s is because they can then make an item cheap and in vast numbers and sell vast numbers to make high profits, not for your good or mine that is a by product of their quest for profit. Even more in this day and age.
And what is your point? Isn't it the purpose of a manufacturer to be profitable? How can they be profitable if they don't gauge the market's needs and control costs at the same time?
But I repeat, the ink jet printer industry is extremely competitive. If it were a gold mine, don't you think there would be more than just four primary players (Canon, Epson, Lexmark and HP). Kodak was rumoured to be entering the market but the news has gone awfully quiet on this. Look at how many laser printer manufacturers there are compared to ink-jet.
The competition is what drives research forward in an effort to get a bigger market share, if they were a monopoly market would they spend such big research dollars, I think not.
Ink is fare more expensive to buy than petrol, without our punitive UK tax it sells for just over a £1.00 a litre. Costs don’t get any higher than finding oil and refining petrol is an expensive game, 10’s of millions of pounds is small change in that industry.
I really don't understand the logic of comparing the oil business with ink-jet printers and consumables. Fuel is a commodity that doesn't even come packaged. It's used in high volumes and although a refinery is a very expensive thing to set up and run, the very high throughput enables a low, per litre cost. There are really only two types of fuel available for our cars (ignoring LPG) - diesel and gasoline (petrol). So car manufacturers have to design and make their cars and engines to suite what is available. This is probably why we're all still driving around in vehicles powered by 19th century technology and killing the planet. Any junior business student will recognise that comparing petroleum and ink is nonsense, sorry.
Many of the horror stories regarding third party Inks are from years past rehashed over again and are usually the very cheap inks.
Patrick, that simply isn't true. Just this summer Wilhelm Imaging published a report that really shamed the third party ink market in Europe (http://dpnow.com/2776.html).
If anything, it's getting worse as more and more entrepeneurs cash in on a rapidly growing market - all at the expense of both the customers and the manufacturers. OK, yes there are some decent third party inks, but who is to tell who they are apart from some very specialist suppliers in the professional sector?
I remember many published horror tails from people using only manufacturer’s inks from the same period. Much has improved by both the big boys and the third party world since then, the very cheap inks I agree with you and still see them as very risky. In this debate there is a tendancy to lump third party inks together regardless of quality, and clearly there are some good and some bad.
That can apply to branded printers, I wouldn't touch a Lexmark again with a burnt chip.
I'm in full agreement with you on this. Just a few years ago, photo print quality from manufacturer inks was pretty poor, inks were very expensive and hardly fade resistant too. Lexmark certainly did their reputation no good at the time, but I have to say that even they have raised their game and the quality you can get out of a Lexmark printer with their ink cartridges is now surprisingly satisfactory.
As you point out it would be difficult getting a working discount scheme for heavy users, but it is still in the hands of the branded manufacturers, they could offer high capacity ink cartridge options or even acknowledge the existence of CIS’s and offer for sale bottled ink that could be used in these systems or even offer their own CIS.
Of course the bigger pro printers do have much larger ink tanks and ink costs are cheaper per square inch printed.
The truth is there is room for both in an ever expanding market, there will always be those that will insist on branded inks and those that will try others, that is actually healthy. Come the day the market stops expanding and perhaps even shrinking you just watch those prices start to fall. I’ve seen it many times with various products in my 63 years.
Look at the television market, not that many years ago a 19inch colour TV made with a tube would have been around £250-£300 now because they have new toys to offer LCD & Plasma a 19 inch colour TV with a tube is around £99.00 the same can be said of monitors, production of this type of TV is dropping but still cheap even with the reduced economy of scale.
If I'm asked about this, my recommendation is that for photo printing (plain paper printing is a bit different) it's not worth the risk to buy third party inks that don't have an established reputation, especially in re-filled cartridges that have integrated print heads. And that kind of locks out the vast majority of the third party market.
The third party ink industry needs to earn more credibility but that takes a huge investment, one that the printer manufacturers make.
Until (and I think it will probably never happen) consumers see sense and avoid the temptation of cheaper rubbish inks and ridiculously cheap printer hardware, the mass consumer printer market will continue to work to to the model of subsidising the cost of the printer through ink sales.
Patrick - I can't even begin to imagine you popping down to the local supermarket or an ink-jet refill shop to buy their own brand ink in order to print your family snaps, which is why I'm very puzzled at your robust defence of this very practice.
Ian
It could be said that there is already a discount scheme for heavy users. Spend more money upfront, get an Epson 4800, and use 220ml carts to produce prints much more cheaply than from the cheaper printers. That's rewarding heavy use. It's also the old adage about getting what you pay for. Pay the costs up front, print for cheaper; don't pay the costs up front, print more expensive.
The cheaper printers aren't designed for heavy use. There are countless posts over the web of people asking what to do about the waste pad. Under normal use, the waste pad would be sufficient but using cheap inks means you become a heavy user on a light-use printer.
Colour laser printers are going the same way. The cheaper ones cost a small fortune to run, the expensive ones don't. Pay upfront, or pay by toner. Like inkjets, lasers can be refilled but a lot of the current generation of cheaper colour lasers have components that are not user-replaceable. Where once you could replace the transfer belt or photo-conductor, now you can't. Use the printer for its intended purpose (light-to-medium use) and it'll serve you well, refill it and use it heavily and those non-replaceable parts will run out quicker. It stands to reason.
I have no issue with anyone using a third-party solution where that solution is not accomodated by the OEM (it's what I do with my 1290S), but that's a different issue to the market being flooded with cheap generics leading to the consumer believing that they neither have to pay for the printer or the inks. Someone has to pay something, or else what pays for progress?
I'm actually a great fan of own-brand goods where I know there is little or no difference between the branded an unbranded versions. I do the grocery shopping every week and you should see what's in my trolley at the supermarket. I'd say it's around 80-90% non premium branded goods. But I won't knowingly buy rubbish and with consumer inks there is no way of knowing if a third party ink is any good at present.
Ian
Patrick
12-11-06, 05:17 PM
At least in this part of the world, we live in a 'free market' socity. That doesn't mean manufacturers can impose what they want against the wishes of the market. If you are arguing that the market is stupid, on the whole, I'd agree with you :) We ought to pay a bit more for the printer and enjoy much cheaper inks and we'd all be printing loads more. But the fact is that a large percentage of printers are not only sold at a loss but are a permanent loss because the owners don't buy enough ink to enable the shortfall to be made up. These people either don't buy ink from the manufacturer or simply don't use the printer enough to buy much ink during the lifetime of the printer.
You're right about other industries - look at mobile phones, for example. Here in the UK you can get a phone and an account for nothing, but you pay through the nose for calls (whether or not you use the phone) for the duration of the contract - unless, ironically, you use the phone a great deal. So what is a mobile phone company selling you? Air, liquid? They are selling a service. My point is that with printers the ink you buy should not be measured in ££s or $$s per ml, it's part of an overall package; the print quality, speed, ease of use, design, variety, functionality, etc. To me that's akin to a service.
And what is your point? Isn't it the purpose of a manufacturer to be profitable? How can they be profitable if they don't gauge the market's needs and control costs at the same time?
But I repeat, the ink jet printer industry is extremely competitive. If it were a gold mine, don't you think there would be more than just four primary players (Canon, Epson, Lexmark and HP). Kodak was rumoured to be entering the market but the news has gone awfully quiet on this. Look at how many laser printer manufacturers there are compared to ink-jet.
I really don't understand the logic of comparing the oil business with ink-jet printers and consumables. Fuel is a commodity that doesn't even come packaged. It's used in high volumes and although a refinery is a very expensive thing to set up and run, the very high throughput enables a low, per litre cost. There are really only two types of fuel available for our cars (ignoring LPG) - diesel and gasoline (petrol). So car manufacturers have to design and make their cars and engines to suite what is available. This is probably why we're all still driving around in vehicles powered by 19th century technology and killing the planet. Any junior business student will recognise that comparing petroleum and ink is nonsense, sorry.
Patrick, that simply isn't true. Just this summer Wilhelm Imaging published a report that really shamed the third party ink market in Europe (http://dpnow.com/2776.html).
If anything, it's getting worse as more and more entrepeneurs cash in on a rapidly growing market - all at the expense of both the customers and the manufacturers. OK, yes there are some decent third party inks, but who is to tell who they are apart from some very specialist suppliers in the professional sector?
I'm in full agreement with you on this. Just a few years ago, photo print quality from manufacturer inks was pretty poor, inks were very expensive and hardly fade resistant too. Lexmark certainly did their reputation no good at the time, but I have to say that even they have raised their game and the quality you can get out of a Lexmark printer with their ink cartridges is now surprisingly satisfactory.
Of course the bigger pro printers do have much larger ink tanks and ink costs are cheaper per square inch printed.
If I'm asked about this, my recommendation is that for photo printing (plain paper printing is a bit different) it's not worth the risk to buy third party inks that don't have an established reputation, especially in re-filled cartridges that have integrated print heads. And that kind of locks out the vast majority of the third party market.
The third party ink industry needs to earn more credibility but that takes a huge investment, one that the printer manufacturers make.
Until (and I think it will probably never happen) consumers see sense and avoid the temptation of cheaper rubbish inks and ridiculously cheap printer hardware, the mass consumer printer market will continue to work to to the model of subsidising the cost of the printer through ink sales.
Patrick - I can't even begin to imagine you popping down to the local supermarket or an ink-jet refill shop to buy their own brand ink in order to print your family snaps, which is why I'm very puzzled at your robust defence of this very practice.
Ian
No they don’t impose there wishes on us but they do a bloody good job of selling their wishes.
If some printers are sold at a permanent loss then the strategy is arguably failing.
Yes I do expect them to make a profit that’s what they are in business for, I am just under no elusions they are doing it for the consumers benefit out of the goodness of their hearts. The consumer does benefit from their products so they can make their profits, an important difference.
If Epson could be getting away with selling 10 year old printer model technology to make profits and keep their market share I don’t doubt they would. The reality is they just can’t stand still the stiff competition you refer to from Canon or HP and even Lexmark would take the sales.
The logic and reasons for bringing petrol into the equation is simple.
1. It’s a extremely high investment industry where a lot of the money charged goes back into reinvestment. Oil as a raw material starts as a commodity but it becomes a product we as motorists buy.
2. The same can be said of the raw materials used in the manufacturers of ink, for example the plastic the cartridges are made from are oil based.
3. Someone calculated that the ink we use is something like £1000 a litre, which is the real nonsense as fare as we the consumers are concerned.
As to which are the decent third party ink companies
Permajet, Lyson, Fotospeed, and Jet Tec are all being used very successfully without any problems. All these companies offer full end user services including help desks and very good selections of printing media, not back street suppliers by any stretch of the imagination.
All these are cheaper inks rather than cheap inks, I do recognise the very cheap stuff available usually on markets or computer fairs, including some cheap CIS systems are best avoided.
You are quite right I wouldn’t pop down to the local supermarket to buy refill bottles, I tried it once for my very first printer (not photographic, just office use) it worked OK but it was so messy to do, ink all over the place.
No, Ian my argument is not for cheap, its for value for money and I don’t think we as consumers are getting that with print manufacturers own brand inks, I firmly believe they could sell at lower prices or at least give us more ink for our cash quite easily.
Or as I said in an earlier post offer the inks bottled for the CIS that are out there or even make their own CIS. Buying in bulk like this would give us a better deal.
That in itself would clip the wings of many third party suppliers and possibly encourage many of us to print more thus increasing ink sales and paper sales.
In fact I bet if just one of the printer makers broke ranks and produced a CIS, the others would follow very quickly.
Patrick
One point worth considering is the colossal markup retailers get from selling ink. Not to mention the VAT that the government is raking in. Only a small percentage of the selling price goes into the manufactures pocket. As genuine Epsom, Canon etc inks are mainly sold by the likes of PC World, Stapples and other large companies, it is them that we are really subscribing to when we make our purchase. What R&D do they do to improve the product? As said by others it's the competition that pushes companies to invest in their product and only if the quality is significantly better does it warrant a premium price. For me it's a case of buy what is suitable for the job requirement. And I don't need a Rolls-Royce to run the wife to Tescos.
If Epson could be getting away with selling 10 year old printer model technology to make profits and keep their market share I don’t doubt they would.
I'm sure Epson would be quite happy with selling 10 year old printers. With their profits coming solely from ink, and no need to improve on the product, they would have made far more money by now. Fortunately, we have benefited from R&D and improved products. I, for one, am glad I'm not still using my Epson Stylus Color 600 from 10 years back - I get better quality out of my colour laser printer (yep, it's an Epson ;) ). How has Epson funded their improvements in colour laser technology? They haven't had too many colour lasers from which to make enough money to invest in R&D, so it's got to be those inkjet ink sales again.
The reality is they just can’t stand still the stiff competition you refer to from Canon or HP and even Lexmark would take the sales.
The trouble with that is that it's not solely competition that's driving Epson any more. With their pigment ink range, they forged well ahead of the competition. It's them creating the competition that has forced the likes of HP to come up with the B9180 - and it took them years to do it. If anything, Epson are well ahead of the competition. Look at a company that sells cheap inks that have been *very* easy to replace with even cheaper compatibles - that company is Canon. Once they were at the forefront of printing - rivalling only HP. No one looked at Epson back in those days. Now it's Epson that's at the forefront and it's their advances that have made HP and Canon sit up and take notice, with Canon really struggling to catch up. That must have a lot to do with Canon not having sufficient funds from inkjet ink sales to invest in R&D.
If Epson were not in this position (probably thanks chiefly to their high ink prices), there would have been nothing new coming from HP or Canon because without Epson pushing the boundaries we'd all be sitting here with quick-fade dye printers. Not even the third-party companies like Lyson would have bothered with competitive pigment inks. Maybe there's a case for using 10-year old technology with cheap inks, personally I'm glad that there's been progress.
The interesting time will be over the next year or so. As each of the major manufacturers release printers that are increasingly similar to each other, with fade-resistance no longer an issue, and as improvement in quality slows to a crawl, the battle will have to come down to cost-per-print. People will not upgrade unless there's something *better* - look at how the 6-year old Epson 1290 is still selling today even though there are many other A3 printers around. Epson haven't just replaced it for the sake of replacing it, there simply has been nothing better.
If a cost-per-print price war starts, because that'll be the only thing left to compete against, then we could see some interesting things happening. Epson's 3800 could be the start of that happening even now - a nearly affordable printer (particularly in the US) with cheaper cost-per-print. Should be fun to watch what happens next.
As said by others it's the competition that pushes companies to invest in their product
As I mentioned above, this doesn't explain the Epson vs Canon scenario. Both companies want to compete, yet only Epson have forged ahead. Canon went into a technological tailspin and still haven't caught back up. The difference is not the will to compete, the difference is that Canon didn't have sufficient money to fund R&D quick enough. Epson did, primarily because of ink sales (probably). If it was just competition driving the market, Canon and HP wouldn't be years behind Epson today - because competition would force all three companies to be equally agressive and so they would have progessed equally.
Regardless of one's view of the extortionate markup of printer ink, the fact remains that printing out of an inkjet printer is not all that expensive. Compare the cost of a 16"x12" from an Epson R1800 and an online store - on most comparisons, it's the R1800 that's cheaper. That doesn't excuse Epson's high prices, but it does make them more palatable.
And I don't need a Rolls-Royce to run the wife to Tescos.
Very well said. One of the reasons I don't notice the high price of ink for my R1800 so much is because I only use it for its intended task. For other tasks, such as regular printing and normal photo printing I use laser printers; for 6"x4" snapshots I use a Picturemate (which, despite using Epson inks is comparatively an incredibly cheap runner). If someone was to buy printers like the R1800, R2400, B9180 etc and use them for everything from day-to-day printing and photographs, they'd soon notice the ink disappearing.
Back onto the original topic of HP going after third-parties, I will reiterate what I've said a number of times before. The likes of HP and Epson could wipe out most third-parties easily - just by dropping their ink prices. They wouldn't need to sue anyone to do it. Just charge us the same for ink as what Epson charge Japan customers, and most cheap compatibles would be off the market tomorrow. Pity they can't see this.
Back onto the original topic of HP going after third-parties, I will reiterate what I've said a number of times before. The likes of HP and Epson could wipe out most third-parties easily - just by dropping their ink prices. They wouldn't need to sue anyone to do it. Just charge us the same for ink as what Epson charge Japan customers, and most cheap compatibles would be off the market tomorrow. Pity they can't see this.
Now that's a whole new argument. Why do we have to pay so much more for our photographic supplies in this part of the world. As you say Epsom sell far cheaper to other countries than here. Are we the only ones paying for there R&D? This applies to other companies/products and is what makes surfing the web so important before making a purchase.
Alchemist
30-12-06, 06:16 AM
Epson must be concerned about their design and formulation patents not stopping third party suppliers. Some of their claims may not past muster, when one looks carefully at prior art. Epson is now filing patent applications, in the EU, that claim almost all possible refilling processes for their inkjet cartridges. Again there is prior art for most refilling processes and I hope that these applications are challanged by the refilling industry.
Alchemist
guymclaren
30-12-06, 07:46 AM
Canon have started this trend too. Less ink than needed to print 5 photos on a Pixma I bought and the cartridges are more expensive than the F%^king printer
guymclaren
30-12-06, 07:48 AM
I would rather pay more for the prointer and less for the inks thank you very much
Can you honestly recommend refilled cartridges to people to use?
Ian
Epson must be concerned about their design and formulation patents not stopping third party suppliers. Some of their claims may not past muster, when one looks carefully at prior art. Epson is now filing patent applications, in the EU, that claim almost all possible refilling processes for their inkjet cartridges. Again there is prior art for most refilling processes and I hope that these applications are challanged by the refilling industry.
Alchemist
Have you got any links to information about this? I'm always keen on what manufacturers are trying to sue over. It strikes me that most publicised cases of printer manufacturers suing third-parties have been successful. The most notable one is Epson's smart-valve cartridge technology which some third parties tried to copy and then pass off as their own. Epson won those cases.
Ultimately, the "refilling industry" is unlikely to challenge anyone. Their inks are sold so cheaply that they don't want to squander the profits they make fighting court cases - particularly ones they know they have a good chance of losing. That's why you tend to see certain cartridges disappear from the shelves following a court case. Unfortunate for the poor sap who's been using those inks for a while and suddenly can't get them anymore.
Canon have started this trend too. Less ink than needed to print 5 photos on a Pixma I bought and the cartridges are more expensive than the F%^king printer
Sounds like Canon has learned from their competition. For some time now they've been trailing HP and, certainly, Epson. Maybe if they start making more money we'll start to seem some progress from Canon printers.
I would rather pay more for the prointer and less for the inks thank you very much
But most people don't see it that way. Look at one of the cheapest ways of printing - a laser printer. Time was that you could buy a £5000 colour laser and the cost-per-print was negligible. But people do not want to spend £100-£200 per toner cartridge because they look at all four toners and say "£400/£800 - that's wayyyy too expensive". They don't notice that the cost-per-page is cheaper.
The same thing applies to inkjet printers. No one looks at, for example, the Epson R1800 and sees economical prints. No, they see "£80 for a set of inks, that's wayyy too expensive" and they go to Canon who have £6 ink cartridges not realising that the Canon ink tanks are tiny and produce more expensive prints.
The current printer model of selling printers cheap, with expensive ink costs, appeals to the majority of the general market that bases their purchase on upfront costs - not on running costs. It's all about perception. The customer has created this market, the manufacturers are just exploiting it.
If you really want to "pay more for the printer and less for the inks", you'd buy something like the Epson 4800 for £2,500 and put 220ml ink tanks in it. Sure the upfront cost will be expensive, but the running costs would be negligible. How many people have bought such a printer for this reason? Not many, I'd warrant, because most want to have their cake and eat it - a cheap printer AND cheap inks. That's not going to happen.
Patrick
30-12-06, 12:50 PM
Have you got any links to information about this? I'm always keen on what manufacturers are trying to sue over. It strikes me that most publicised cases of printer manufacturers suing third-parties have been successful. The most notable one is Epson's smart-valve cartridge technology which some third parties tried to copy and then pass off as their own. Epson won those cases.
Ultimately, the "refilling industry" is unlikely to challenge anyone. Their inks are sold so cheaply that they don't want to squander the profits they make fighting court cases - particularly ones they know they have a good chance of losing. That's why you tend to see certain cartridges disappear from the shelves following a court case. Unfortunate for the poor sap who's been using those inks for a while and suddenly can't get them anymore.
I really do disagree with you on the subject of Canon printers. I ran a Canon 9000 for a number of years and the quality was exceptionally good and it was cheaper to run than any printer I have owned using genuine inks by a long way. The weakness with that printer as with all dye ink printers was fading, but even then is much less of a problem if the prints are displayed under glass or stored in a draft proof place. Incidentally it continues to be used very successfully by a friend that bought it from me.
My current printer an Epson 2400 using genuine cartridges is more expensive to run than the Canon was using its genuine cartridges, about a third more.
That is getting the cartridges for either machine at discounted prices from 7day shop.
The Epson cartridge you refer to for the 4800 is £59 for its 220ml certainly a lot more economic than the small cartridge used by the 2400.
With my CIS system a bottle of ink is £25 and contains 125 ml, equivalent it is claimed by Permajet to 10 cartridges.
It's all very well criticising people for buying cheaper printers, but its not everyone that can afford £2500 for a printer or justify it, however much the running costs drop.
Printers at this level are for the professional or wealthy amateurs.
Some people fall of their chair when I tell them what I paid for my 2400 almost £500, plus the £300 for the CIS.
Patrick
rogleale
30-12-06, 01:53 PM
That is just not true! Try reading a few of the printer tests available from places like Tom's Hardware. Canon provide some of the most generous cartridges around, and their printers provide prints at a lower cost than any other printer.
Roger
My current printer an Epson 2400 using genuine cartridges is more expensive to run than the Canon was using its genuine cartridges, about a third more.
I base my costing on manufacturer's stated page capacity per cartridge. Admittedly I didn't do an exhaustive check, just compared the R1800 (that I owned) to the Canon's BCI-6 inks (which I believe are quite popular in Canon printers). It worked out that the Epson cartridges were 40% more expensive but delivered 60% more capacity, on average.
It's all very well criticising people for buying cheaper printers, but its not everyone that can afford £2500 for a printer or justify it, however much the running costs drop.
I'm not criticising anyone. I was replying to the poster who said "I would rather pay more for the prointer and less for the inks thank you very much". I demonstrated that there is a way to do this, but that most people are NOT prepared to pay more for the printer. Using a general CIS with generic inks is the equivalent of wanting to have your cake and eat it. The user wants to benefit from cheaper printers (made cheap because the manufacturer charges more for ink) but also wants cheap ink. No one wants to buy an expensive printer and use cheaper ink - except for those rare few who can see the bigger picture. Again, I was just replying to what the poster stated, not criticising anyone. Everyone develops their own prefered system of printing with the printer and inks that suits their purposes. No one's trying to convert anyone here.
Some people fall of their chair when I tell them what I paid for my 2400 almost £500, plus the £300 for the CIS.
The bulk feed system for my 1290S with sublimation inks, cost £350. I consider that a good investment given the cost of cartridges. In this case, though, Epson do not provide a competing product.
guymclaren
30-12-06, 02:10 PM
Thats all good and well for you blokes in the first world. When I was there I too could have afforded but with exchange rates and all that I can hardly afford the drum and cartridges for my Canon Lazer printer.
I use inkjet for small stuff, I bought the pixma to print photos, No paper for the lazer printer here beside standard stock. I maintain that charging me for a printer without ink is tantamaount to fraud. I was conned buying a printer that should have given me some work before needing to replace cartridges.
Replacing the cartridges will cost me 30% more than I paid for the printer just for the colour cartridge, You tell me thats not a F$%king scam.
rogleale
30-12-06, 02:14 PM
I agree with Patrick whole heartedly about Canon Printers, though not necessarily the cheapest models. I have used Canon for may years now with consistently good results, and with considerably lower costs than the other makes. I must also make the point that, apart from the pixel peepers amongst us, the majority of people looking at the prints we produce would see no difference in the final results from any of the manufacturers.
As for non-genuine inks, it is necessary to differentiate between 'compatible' cartridges, and bulk ink for refills. I have tried those cartridges supposed to be compatible, sometimes with dreadful results, and would now avoid them like the plague. I now, after trying several different suppliers, refill my Canon cartridges with bulk inks which are as good as the genuine ink for colours, if not for longevity. None of the photos around my house are showing any signs of fading, some after several years, but they are all under glass. The photographs that I really value are kept in albums and are as new.
As a footnote, I recently converted the owner of a commercial printing press to using refill ink in his professional Epsons of various models. I did it by showing him that an Epson cartridge reporting itself empty, and thereby stopping the print process, still contained about 25% of its original labelled capacity. I understand that there is a class action in progress against Epson because of repeated cases of this being reported.
That is just not true! Try reading a few of the printer tests available from places like Tom's Hardware. Canon provide some of the most generous cartridges around, and their printers provide prints at a lower cost than any other printer.
Roger
The figures speak for themselves. I've just checked on the new Canon 9000 A3+ printer - which costs about the same as my R1800, and so must be aimed at the same market. Typical red ink tanks...
Canon CLI-8 Red = £9.29 (Dabs.com)
R1800 Red = £10.55 (Dabs.com)
Canon CLI-8 stated at 200pgs @5% coverage (photo-i.co.uk); Epson R1800 stated at 440pgs @5% (Epson.co.uk).
Printers aimed at the same market with Canon prices 88% of Epson but Canon capacity is only 45% of Epson. You'd need to find the Canon ink cartridges at £4.79 or cheaper to match the Epson cost.
Alchemist
30-12-06, 02:19 PM
Ian,
Yes, there are a few very good inkjet remanufacturering firms. Unforturnately there are also some very poor quality remanufacturing firms out there.
The real issue is, that one can print test the the refilled cartridge in production, but as many as 3% may fail in the customer's printer. The OEM has a failure rate of only 0.5 %. Why the difference? The resistor elements fail by continually being heated and cooled, fatuge, and it is difficult to predict when this will occur on a used cartridge. Also oxidation, of the passive coating on the resistor surface , will cause poorer heat transfer to the ink and possibly less perfect ink droplets will be formed.
But for a 40-75% savings it is worth the risk, if one buys from a high quality reamnufacturer. Many times the remanufactured ink has properties superior to the OEM; pigmented ink (postal waterfast) years before the OEM introduced them. The "aftermarket" pushes the OEMs to develop better and sometimes less expensive products (HP printer costs of some models are far less today than we paid for less featured models in the early 1990s).
I could write specifics on the pros and cons of this for hours, but will terminate here. If there is interest I will post more later.
Alchemist
Thats all good and well for you blokes in the first world. When I was there I too could have afforded but with exchange rates and all that I can hardly afford the drum and cartridges for my Canon Lazer printer.
I use inkjet for small stuff, I bought the pixma to print photos, No paper for the lazer printer here beside standard stock. I maintain that charging me for a printer without ink is tantamaount to fraud. I was conned buying a printer that should have given me some work before needing to replace cartridges.
Replacing the cartridges will cost me 30% more than I paid for the printer just for the colour cartridge, You tell me thats not a F$%king scam.
It's not for me to say what's a scam or not (if I did, I'd be citing examples of us in the UK being charged twice the price of US customers, and three times the price of Japanese customers), but I would be interested to know which printer you bought that didn't come with any inks. Dell has the habit of supplying only "trial cartridges" for some bizarre reason, and the cheap end of colour lasers come with "starter cartridges" to offset the cheap price of the printer, but I don't know of any printer that is supplied without ink at all.
Nevertheless, I was only replying to your statment about being willing to buy an expensive printer if it had cheaper inks. I understand that HP has a range of "business" inkjet printers that are more expensive upfront but dirt cheap to run, too. I wasn't suggesting you go and buy a £2,500 printer - just that compromises in ink prices are made to offset the cheaper cost of the hardware. We make the decision to compromise every time we buy a "cheap" printer. And if we really, truly, want a cheap runner and are prepared to pay in hardware costs, there are options available.
I agree with Patrick whole heartedly about Canon Printers, though not necessarily the cheapest models. I have used Canon for may years now with consistently good results, and with considerably lower costs than the other makes. I must also make the point that, apart from the pixel peepers amongst us, the majority of people looking at the prints we produce would see no difference in the final results from any of the manufacturers.
After having used dye ink printers for years, I chose to upgrade due to the issue of longevity. Epson's gargantuan strides in pigment printers at the time was where to go. Canon has not been able to catch up with Epson until several years later - we're still waiting now. Improvement is necessary if we want better printers. Better printers give us good quality *and* fade resistance - there's no need to compromise. Old printers may give good quality, and that may be enough for many, but many others don't want their treasured photos to fade.
One question, though, - if, as you claim (citing Tom's Hardware), Canon printers are so much cheaper to run than Epson, why do you need to run refills?
As for non-genuine inks, it is necessary to differentiate between 'compatible' cartridges, and bulk ink for refills. I have tried those cartridges supposed to be compatible, sometimes with dreadful results, and would now avoid them like the plague. I now, after trying several different suppliers, refill my Canon cartridges with bulk inks which are as good as the genuine ink for colours, if not for longevity. None of the photos around my house are showing any signs of fading, some after several years, but they are all under glass. The photographs that I really value are kept in albums and are as new.
I'm fully behind the need to differentiate between manufacturers who invest in their product (Lyson, Permajet, etc) and the take-your-money-and-run fly-by-nights.
As a footnote, I recently converted the owner of a commercial printing press to using refill ink in his professional Epsons of various models. I did it by showing him that an Epson cartridge reporting itself empty, and thereby stopping the print process, still contained about 25% of its original labelled capacity. I understand that there is a class action in progress against Epson because of repeated cases of this being reported.
And we know how ridiculous that class action is. :rolleyes: I've posted here about this before, so I won't go over old ground again.
Patrick
30-12-06, 03:30 PM
I base my costing on manufacturer's stated page capacity per cartridge. Admittedly I didn't do an exhaustive check, just compared the R1800 (that I owned) to the Canon's BCI-6 inks (which I believe are quite popular in Canon printers). It worked out that the Epson cartridges were 40% more expensive but delivered 60% more capacity, on average.
I'm not criticising anyone. I was replying to the poster who said "I would rather pay more for the prointer and less for the inks thank you very much". I demonstrated that there is a way to do this, but that most people are NOT prepared to pay more for the printer. Using a general CIS with generic inks is the equivalent of wanting to have your cake and eat it. The user wants to benefit from cheaper printers (made cheap because the manufacturer charges more for ink) but also wants cheap ink. No one wants to buy an expensive printer and use cheaper ink - except for those rare few who can see the bigger picture. Again, I was just replying to what the poster stated, not criticising anyone. Everyone develops their own prefered system of printing with the printer and inks that suits their purposes. No one's trying to convert anyone here.
The bulk feed system for my 1290S with sublimation inks, cost £350. I consider that a good investment given the cost of cartridges. In this case, though, Epson do not provide a competing product.
Setting aside CIS and comparing genuine cartridge for cartridge, the Canon i9000 price per cartridge was £6-7, the Epson 2400 around £9.
The Canon produced slightly more prints per set of cartridges, as a percentage I can’t say, never had the two running side by side. With the Epson I was buying more or less the same number of cartridges for much the same quantity of prints before investing in the CIS. That is after allowing for the two extra black or three if you include the matte black cartridges.
As a foot note the HP 7960 I owned for its high quality B/W capability cost an arm & a leg to run. The cartridges at the very best price I ever found were 7dayshop at around £14 and has high as £25 in the shops, and it didn’t do as many A4’s as the Canon could do A3’s.
I bought the Epson 2400 to replace both these machines; its B/W printing is superb.
The Canon by the way had them all beat on speed, and I believe the new models are even faster.
Patrick
Alchemist
30-12-06, 04:16 PM
Rogleale,
Epson has settled the class action in the US. The settlement is a joke in that Epson inkjet printer purchasers will receive a small amount ( typically less than the cost of one cartridge) of credit to be used at the Epson on line store. Second option is for a portion to be used at the Epson store and a very small amount ( less than a 1/4 of the cost of a cartridge) in cash.
I have been testing Epson and Canon inkjet compatibles, from DCI, Boston, UK, for a client and they look to be the best of the lot, from some 12 worldwide compatible suppliers. Colours are pretty close to the OEM ( profile the inks and get an almost exact printout match) and the preliminary accelerated aging test looks OK. Only after some real correlation to actual daylight tests will the results be final. Results posted by the OEM's should be view as a very rough yardstick of what one will realize.
Alchemist
rogleale
30-12-06, 05:34 PM
Just a few sample figures - cost per page. Not top of the range printers but an indication of what to expect across the range
Cost Per Page
Cost In Text Mode (Dollars & Cents)
Product name Black Text at 5% coverage Color Document at 25% coverage
Canon Pixma MP500 1 cent 7 cents
Dell AIO 944 Photo 5 cents 21 cents
Epson Stylus Photo RX700 3 cents 15 cents
HP Photosmart 3210 1 cent 8 cents
Lexmark P6350 5 cents 14 cents
Cost In Photo Mode (including Good Quality Paper) In $
Product name Photo 10x15 Photo A4
Canon Pixma MP500 0.29 1.18
Dell AIO 944 Photo 0.56 1.71
Epson Stylus Photo RX700 0.45 1.49
HP Photosmart 3210 0.30 1.21
Lexmark P6350 0.39 1.37
Cost Of Ownership In Average Use
Product name Cost over 1 year Cost over 3 years (including purchase price)
Canon Pixma MP500 80 481
Dell AIO 944 Photo 177 682
Epson Stylus Photo RX700 133 748
HP Photosmart 3210 84 552
Lexmark P6350 132 612
Roger
Just a few sample figures - cost per page. Not top of the range printers but an indication of what to expect across the range.
I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove. The fact that the Epson RX700 is shown as having a 6x4 print cost of 45c means nothing when other Epson printers produce a 6x4 for 20c.
How can you say "not top of the range but an indication of what to expect across the range"..? One printer selected from each manufacturer is meaningless. Certainly the running cost of a budget printer cannot be said to be representative of the running costs of that manufacturer's other ranges.
Does the list disprove the fact that the new Canon 9000 is so much more expensive to run than the R1800, despite having cheaper cartridges? I provided current prices on competing products with prices taken from a known source. Your list consists of prices based on an unknown test method performed by an unknown person or persons. Tests can "prove" anything, but facts speak for themselves.
How was the test done? If it was a biased as recent PC Pro testing, then all figures must be taken with a huge pinch of salt anyway.
The question still remains that if Canon printers typically produce pages costing 1c, why do you need to use refills?
Are the printers selected comparable printers? I don't know any of them. Why were multi-function units price-checked instead of real printers?
I really do disagree with you on the subject of Canon printers. I ran a Canon 9000 for a number of years and the quality was exceptionally good and it was cheaper to run than any printer I have owned using genuine inks by a long way. The weakness with that printer as with all dye ink printers was fading, but even then is much less of a problem if the prints are displayed under glass or stored in a draft proof place. Incidentally it continues to be used very successfully by a friend that bought it from me.
My current printer an Epson 2400 using genuine cartridges is more expensive to run than the Canon was using its genuine cartridges, about a third more.
That is getting the cartridges for either machine at discounted prices from 7day shop.
The Epson cartridge you refer to for the 4800 is £59 for its 220ml certainly a lot more economic than the small cartridge used by the 2400.
With my CIS system a bottle of ink is £25 and contains 125 ml, equivalent it is claimed by Permajet to 10 cartridges.
It's all very well criticising people for buying cheaper printers, but its not everyone that can afford £2500 for a printer or justify it, however much the running costs drop.
Printers at this level are for the professional or wealthy amateurs.
Some people fall of their chair when I tell them what I paid for my 2400 almost £500, plus the £300 for the CIS.
Patrick
Hi Patrick - I think I have lost the thread on this; it doesn't seem very clear what you are disagreeing with? I don't think JSR is being critical of CIS. The finger is being pointed at the cheap refill and cartridge cloners.
Ian
Ian,
Yes, there are a few very good inkjet remanufacturering firms. Unforturnately there are also some very poor quality remanufacturing firms out there.
The real issue is, that one can print test the the refilled cartridge in production, but as many as 3% may fail in the customer's printer. The OEM has a failure rate of only 0.5 %. Why the difference? The resistor elements fail by continually being heated and cooled, fatuge, and it is difficult to predict when this will occur on a used cartridge. Also oxidation, of the passive coating on the resistor surface , will cause poorer heat transfer to the ink and possibly less perfect ink droplets will be formed.
But for a 40-75% savings it is worth the risk, if one buys from a high quality reamnufacturer. Many times the remanufactured ink has properties superior to the OEM; pigmented ink (postal waterfast) years before the OEM introduced them. The "aftermarket" pushes the OEMs to develop better and sometimes less expensive products (HP printer costs of some models are far less today than we paid for less featured models in the early 1990s).
I could write specifics on the pros and cons of this for hours, but will terminate here. If there is interest I will post more later.
Alchemist
Respectfully, there is a stack of evidence that randomly sampled 3rd party inks are not colour accurate and fade faster than genuine printer manufacturer inks. If you buy a refilled cartridge with integrated print head you have no idea how many times that cartridge has been refilled or how the previous owner or owners treated that cartridge.
I'd not be making this reply if there was even a modicum of evidence that buying third party ink jet printer cartridges was a risk-free exercise.
The only sensible use of third party inks, as far as I can see, is for printing short life documents where colour accuracy and general print quality is not important. But for photos, it seems like a very false economy to me.
Ian
rogleale
31-12-06, 10:53 AM
Pretty arrogant to ask why I have to use refills if prints are so cheap!!! Eventually all cartridges run empty, and some of us have to spend carefully.
Maybe you are familiarwith the printers tested below.*xmashat01
http://dpnow.com/galleries/data/500/medium/Comparison.jpg
Pretty arrogant to ask why I have to use refills if prints are so cheap!!! Eventually all cartridges run empty, and some of us have to spend carefully.
Maybe you are familiarwith the printers tested below.*xmashat01
Not arrogant at all. I've demonstrated that the generalisation that "Canon is cheaper than Epson" is not true. You drag up results from abitrary tests to demonstrate that, in limited cases, Canon may have a particular printer that runs marginally cheaper than a specific Epson printer. From this you imply "proof" that Canon is always cheaper than everyone else, yet clearly they aren't cheap enough for you to actually use them.
I bought my R1800, and use OEM inks, originally in the misguided belief that Epson were more expensive to run than Canon - but I accepted that extra expense for the longevity, durability, and print-quality of Epson's Ultrachrome inkset. When I later compared Epson and Canon for myself and discovered that Canon are not always cheaper than Epson, I was quite pleased about it. It doesn't matter to me if Epson is more expensive or less expensive than Canon, I shall still use the Ultrachrome inkset because its benefits outweigh the cost-per-print, but regardless of my personal preference the facts speak for themselves.
I don't get what you're trying to say here. I say Canon aren't always cheap and don't use them, you say Canon are cheap but not cheap enough to use. Neither of us use Canon inks. Perhaps it's just me that's getting confused here. Okay, then, you've convinced me - the facts must be wrong and Canon is clearly cheaper than Epson. Let's draw a line under this one now, okay?
*snowman Happy New Year. *snowhat
Patrick
31-12-06, 11:41 AM
Hi Patrick - I think I have lost the thread on this; it doesn't seem very clear what you are disagreeing with? I don't think JSR is being critical of CIS. The finger is being pointed at the cheap refill and cartridge cloners.
Ian
Looks that way Ian, in fact it was a reply to a post I can’t now find, why it didn’t follow properly I don’t know.
One or two other strange things, I have a couple of auto mails acknowledging post reply’s the content of which I am unable to see on the thread.
Patrick
One or two other strange things, I have a couple of auto mails acknowledging post reply’s the content of which I am unable to see on the thread.
Patrick
I noticed that too - although I think it's only happened once with me.
I have tried very hard to keep up with this tread but with so many differing views it's got beyond my old brain. As I see it originally it was OEM against cheap refills. There is a place for both and what makes economic sense to one user my not be the case for another. In my case, and don't get this wrong I'm not pleading poverty, I'm a pensioner and money no longer grows on trees. I paid £18 for my Epson C84 on Ebay. I run it generally on cheap ink from the market stall. Each cartridge cost £2.50. The paper I use is also cheap from Rymans. I'm happy with the results I get and I will fade away long before the prints I produce. So OK those that can afford better equipment and OEM inks Good Luck to them. Please don't knock the refill companies, with out them there would be many like myself unable to participate in this hobby.
Alchemist
31-12-06, 07:07 PM
Ian,
Respectfully, there are some very good remanufacturers. I have conducted testing, in my consulting capasity, for some of the large chain retail stores. We evaluated image quality (both photo and general), printer issues ( starts, non head clogging, leaking, and many others), costs, and storage life. These high quality houses measure printed dot size ( and in no case is it as fine as the OEM due to nozzle wear, resistor damage, and patent required in ink formulations) and use quality inks to approach OEM performance. I have tested OEM cartridges and refilled them with OEM ink and compaired the images to this premium after market ink and they past muster. But I would never say a remanufactured cartridge image quality equals and first time printed OEM. As I stated in a previous post in this discussion there are some very good remanufactured cartridges and a lot of junk. The reliability numbers I quoted were from years of running a plant that made OEM cartridges and after market cartridges. These numbers are based on millions of cartridges and not a casual sampling, as some printed media do ( note large amounts of advertising money).
The compatible cartridge is a different story. We manufactured food grade compatibles inkjet and dye sublimation cartridges in a class 100 clean room clean room approved by the goverent "food and drug administration".
The pigmented inks we formulated ( without violating their patents) matched the Epson inks within 1 delta E on the OEM paper. The accelerated aging ( yardstick test not valid unless verified by long term in parallel ) approached that OEM.
Bottom line is that with a high quality compatible cartridge photo print quality approaches the OEM.
We are unable to do the same with a remaufactured, printhead/ink tank, to approach OEM phot image print quality. But for general use and casual photo shots it gets pretty good.
Regards,
Alchemist