So there I am taking some calls and about to print out a document in my color printer. Which rarely happens, my main printer a Brothers HL-1400 laser printer has been nothing less than a true work horse for the past 6 years. I digress though... After successfully printing out my first color page my printer stops flashing amber light and the display says out if ink on 3 cartridges. This point itself is not new since I've been procrastinating putting in my new cartridges for the past 4 months and it's been saying it's out for probably a year already. Really the only annoying part of printing is that I have to press "ok" every few pages. As though the amber blinking light, the 2 warning boxes on my screen and the ever constant "low ink" on my printer display has escaped me.
I've always known that ink cartridges are notorious for lying to you when it’s out of ink, thus the reason I have delayed in replacing my ink tanks. So I finally decided to get my spare ink cartridges out and pop out the other ones. Now at this point my printing still looks fine for at least what I’m doing. I took out my first tank, "Y" and grated on the ink tank there's nothing left but on the other side where the sponge is its still holding almost half the ink. I could of easily gone months more before replacing but once you take out a tank they have circuits that if you put them back in could "damage" my printer. I replaced all of them, which when my wife bought it cost around $70 for 4 tanks.
I have always knew that inkjets are rips but it to last a year with out any noticeable degradation of my picture I figured it surely must of been time to replace the cartridges! Nope.. I bet I could have gone a lot longer with out it. Which lead me to investigate how much a rip these inkjets are?
It’s amazing what you can find on the internet and astounding it can be... There are estimations of the price per gallon of ink from the major manufacturers to be as high as $8,000 per gallon!!! Which make a 25.8 BILLION dollar industry and that’s in the US alone. Amazingly HP eats up 40% of that which ends up being 30% of their annual revenue. It’s no wonder that they practically give their inkjet printers but make true killings on their ink revenue sales.
As though they don’t have the noose around our neck it gets worse. Some manufacturers are putting "use by" or "expiration date" with circuitry that will not allow using them once they expire. Other printers will tell you that you’re out of ink while you still have 25% of your ink tank available.
While Cryptography Research Inc is working a microchip that would install on the printers so they would only recognize "authorized" (*cough* expensive) ink cartridges only. Thus limiting you from actually buying 3rd party cartridges. Thus imposing an ominous monopoly in the already inflated market.
While we complaining about the price of gas and food, these printer manufactures Lexmark, HP, Kodak, Brother and Canon are giving it to us in the butt with their outrageous ink prices, their DRM like cartridges while all we do is bend over and take it.
Now excuse me now..... I need to finish replacing my last ink cartridge.
