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Boycott printing: Inkjet printers have a dirty little secret
Who knew what was going on inside inkjet printers? Yikes. A lot of that ink, which costs three times more per milliliter than a $350 bottle of the finest Cristal champagne, is seeping into a gummy well of useless black slime. What a waste.
Our solution? Stop printing altogether. Send documents digitally, and show people pics on our iPhones instead of prints stashed in our wallets. At home, it’s digital picture frames all the way with no color printing. Hey, we’re recession-proof!
Via Metacafe
By TheAdlerian at 12:13 AM ON 04/19/08
I read ages ago the idea that in the future they will have few if any record of us. The threat back then was shifting storage media and devices to play them.
It seems to be coming true, thanks for the horrible suggestion.
By F at 3:03 PM ON 04/19/08
Actually, the bad suggestion is the one for digital picture frames. They seem to be the latest craze, but they are a complete waste of money and resources.
By CJW at 8:26 PM ON 04/19/08
This is old news, but I think it's an important topic to keep fresh in the mind of the consumer. All of the printer companies are scrambling to try and get people to keep printing stuff, especially photos, and there's something to be said for this. Tangible photos are a safer bet for posterity than any digital format, IMO.
All my printers are HP, and range from a teensy Photosmart 335 4x6 printer up to a 42" Designjet 500. Interestingly, the ink cartridge for the 335 is a tricolor $25 #95 with a whopping 7ml ink capacity. Compare that to the $15 69cl (690ml) #10 Black cartridge that the Designjet uses (similar price and quantity on the C,M,Y cartridges). That's right, two orders of magnitude more ink for 40% the price. I don't think it's the ink that costs money, I think it's the cartridge and printheads.
Having a guaranteed consumable market is a sure fire way to keep income flowing, it's never going to be something that consumers are going to be happy about. The Photosmart is a consumer grade printer with a low price ($60-ish), whereas the Designjet is a high level printer with a higher price tag ($4,000 when it was new, $2,000 these days).
The new, and amazing, HP Z6100 seems to have merged the worst of both worlds by making a very high priced printer that uses 8 pricey inks. The prints look great, of course, but that's kinda what you'd expect from a $8,000+ printer that uses $2000 worth of consumables. That's right, each cartridge runs about $250 and has 775ml of ink in it.
Cristal just winds up turning into piss in a few hours anyway, don't feel too bad about throwing money away on ink ;)
By 9sholmes at 3:32 PM ON 11/10/08
It would have been better if this article sold us readers on a device that could be use with printers that would help reduce ink cost.
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9sholmes:
It would have been better if this article sold us readers on a device that could be use with printers that would he...More »