WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE TO BUY PRINTER CARTRIDGES?

SEPTEMBER 02, 2002 | ME

[RIGHT IN SEATTLE]

I'm sick and tired of buying cartridges for a HP printer that almost exceed the cost of the printer!

[BansheeBill]

Search ebay. Before you bid check the sellers feedback and email them to ask if they are genuine factory cartridges and ask what the expiration date on the box is. I have bought cartridges for about 1/5th of the COSTO price from ebay sellers who bought cases of cartridges at the bancruptcy auctions of some of the high tech "dot.bomb" companies, and then put the individual ones on auction. By the way, when you email the sellers, give your adress and ask for the total shipping charge so you don't get "surprised" by a high "handling" fee.

[kstewskis]

refill 'em. But aim carefully or you'll have a huge mess on your hands ;)

[July 4th]

I've dealt with a LOT of HP laser printers and jet printers and they are overpriced and overrated for what you get.

I'll have to completely disagree with that. HP lasers are consistently some of the best in the business. My own personal experience with HPs has been with 4 different Laserjets, one of which is 13 years old, 300 dpi, and has over 160,000 printed pages to its credit. It still runs like a champ, just like the two year old Laserjet I use for more precise printing.

They are at the top of the price range for lasers, but you get what you pay for.

[Texas Mom]

SAMS.. No place can beat their prices. If you don't have a SAMS. Try Wal Mart.

[PoisedWoman]

Thanks a bunch for link to carrot ink place.....have you tried them? Have you had cartridges remanufactured? When I get rolling on a book, I may print out 500-800 pages in a day or two, could surely use deep discounts.

[Wright is right!]

One of the biggest scams the printer manufacturers perpetrate is making their printers consume color ink even if the printer is in black-and-white mode. During the work week, I print nothing BUT B&W, yet the ink level in the color cartridge goes down along with the black ink cart. This despite every single setting in software being in B&W mode. (this is the third Epson printer I've had, and they all exhibit this behavior) The printer is simply making black ink by mixing already-black ink with equal parts of ink from all the wells in the color cartridge. This guarantees that you will continue to waste money on color ink, even though you may be printing only B&W documents.

Michael

[Home By Dark]

=>They are at the top of the price range for lasers, but you get what you pay for.

HP won't even talk to you if you have a set up problem without a credit card number. This is not good service.

[UB355]

I bought a refill kit at filljet.com

[Peter Libra]

This may seem elementary but I bought a kit. It advised to wash hands right away if stained. No way, soap or cold/hot water removed it- spouse told me, use household bleach. It worked fine. Jury is still out though on the kit- $48 Canadian as against $99 for the pair- colour and black. Another tip- if one injects and one is a little butter fingered (I am), do not load with 7cc of liquid. Try only a minimal amount- say 3cc first. Good luck. Oh, seems to be working ok, but still have my druthers.

[Calvin Locke]

One caveat. I have a Lexmark inkjet, among others. The jets do wear out and leak all over the place.

I don't have very good things to say about lifespan of Brother Laser drums (or the USB interface).

[July 4th]

HP won't even talk to you if you have a set up problem without a credit card number. This is not good service.

I'll buy a reliable printer with no service before I'll buy one of questionable quality with great service. By the way, no one should have setup problems with a Laserjet, especially in Windows. It's the printing standard (HP PCL). The drivers are already on your computer or on the CD.

[Peter Libra]

One thing leads to another. I have a Lexmark Z43. I gave the colour cartridge the 7cc- rainbow hands and all. It leaked so badly, I almost went out and paid the $55 Canadian for the replacement. Ok, so I wised up and withdrew about 4 cc and it stopped. I forgot to mention to the respondent that the kit makes a number of refills. Cheers.

[OrangeDaisy]

Use mysimon.com or a similar comparison engine to find the best price including s&h. It will usually show you both the cartridges and the refill kits. Just type in the cartridge number and voilà.

[Calvin Locke]

What!!?? That means I can only reuse about half of the pint-sized jelly jar? (-;

I alway's wondered why the black would take say, 10cc, and the combined capacity of the the 3 color was 15cc.

(Actually, I only wondered about it when I got the refill kit, and when dealing with the cartidges.)

[timestax]

LOL, that's the truth. The only time I tried to refill a cartridge I ended up with black hands for a week.

[Home By Dark]

=>I'll buy a reliable printer with no service before I'll buy one of questionable quality with great service. By the way, no one should have setup problems with a Laserjet, especially in Windows. It's the printing standard (HP PCL). The drivers are already on your computer or on the CD.

1. I had set up issues with an HP scanner someone had bought at work some time back and never used. I got the honors of trying to make the thing function on an older work PC. HP's notions of support are outrageous. I use their scientific instrumentation/software (now called Agilent) and it is solid, but I will never buy another HP printer/scanner/computer

2. Okidata has been selling LED printers for a number of years (at least 10). I have used 4 different models, at home and at work. They all were/are highly reliable, with output matching high-end laser printers. This is not fly-by-night, shoddy equipment. I own no interest in Oki or any related company.

[RIGHT IN SEATTLE]

use rubbing alcohol

[ThePythonicCow]

When I get rolling on a book, I may print out 500-800 pages in a day or two, could surely use deep discounts.

If I had that much to print, and didn't need the color, I'd use a Laser, not an InkJet. I've both, actually ... an HP officejet inkjet, and a Samsung ML-1210 laser.

I enjoy the Samsung more. It's bullet proof, cheaper to operate, and once it's warmed up for the first page, it's faster.

The Officejet d145 has the advantage of color and features: print, scan, fax and copy. Despite continuing to buy HP's for the features, I've had too much trouble with the paper feeds jamming on the cheaper HP's (this officejet is ok there), and spent too much money on ink cartridges.

[ThePythonicCow]

Amazon has the Samsung ML-1210 for $159.99 -- laser for less.

[Clinging Bitterly]

> They are at the top of the price range

I agree that the old HP stuff was pricey but very good.
In 1989, I bought a DeskJet Plus for something like $800.00, but that darned thing still works just like new.
Had a Laserjet IIIp at the office that died just last year.
Got a pair of big Lexmark network lasers two years ago through Dell, and they are very fast, but one of them has had a fair bit of downtime. The toner cartridges for those babies will set you back about $300.00 a pop (but they print something like 50,000 pages of our somewhat sparsely inked invoice forms - we have been told the cheaper refills would not come close to that, and we haven't tried).

Back to the old DeskJet, I got about 400 pages from the original standard size water based HP cartridges (either new or self refilled) that you can no longer buy. The new "high capacity" HP cartridges still give me about 400 pages at 50% higher cost. NCR refills and self refills on those seem to get me about 50 pages before they spontaneously dump their remaining contents all over the inside of my printer.

Dave in Eugene