*NEWS*INKJET INK COST $13,000 A GALLON

[Anonymous]

Imagine… Paying Less For Printer Ink
July 
2007 Gasoline is expensive but it’s nothing compared to the cost of
printer ink. If you do the math, you’ll discover that the liquid ink
inside those cartridges you buy for your ink jet printer can cost more
than $13,000 a gallon.
That’s
not a typo. A Hewlett Packard 22 Tricolor Ink Cartridge holds only 5
milliliter of ink – one 757th of a gallon. Multiply that $17.99 price
tag by 757 and you’re paying $13,619.91 a gallon for ink.That
particular cartridge, according to HP, yields 140 color graphic pages
at a cost of nearly 13 cents a page, which actually isn’t that bad by
printer industry standards. Some cartridges from HP and other companies
cost less per page and some more, but the cartridge you get to buy and
the cost per page depends on what printer you own.For years, printer
manufacturers have been offering low cost printers only to make it up
on ink but that’s starting to change now that consumers are becoming a
bit savvier about how much printers actually cost to use. Finally, the
industry is starting to listen.

Kodak has recently introduced a
line of multi-function printers that they claim “save up to 50% on
everything you print compared to similar consumer ink jet printers.”
For example, a black ink cartridge for its new 5000 series of
multi-function printers costs $9.99 and, according to Kodak, yields 490
pages at a cost of just over 2 cents a page.Kodak says that its $14.95
color cartridges will print 145 high quality 4 by 6 photos which comes
to about 10 cents per photo plus the cost of paper. Kodak also has a
pretty good deal on paper – starting at $9.49 for 100 sheets (9.5 cents
a page) for its least expensive 4 by 6 glossy paper.So, when you add
the cost of ink and paper, it costs about 20 cents to print a 4 by 6
photo, which is generally less than or comparable to what you’d pay at
major chain drugstores and other retailers with photo printing
kiosks.Just like miles per gallon figures for cars, estimates of ink
cartridge yields are also approximate and subject to all sorts of
variables including the density of your documents and photos, the type
of paper you use and the quality settings for your printer.

For
example, with almost any printer, you can save ink by using the “draft”
or “fast/economical” setting in your printer driver dialog box. That’s
a good idea if you’re just printing documents for yourself. For text
documents draft mode is usually quite readable.Kodak’s new line of
“all-in-one” printers start with the $149 EasyShare 5100 that prints,
copies and scans. Next comes the $199.99 5300 that offers the same
features, including a 3-inch color display and the capacity to print
directly from memory cards.The machine Kodak loaned me to test is the
$299.99 model 5500, which also handles faxes and comes with a 35 page
automatic document feeder. Each printer prints black text at up to 32
pages a minute and 4 by 6 color photos in about 30 seconds. As with ink
use, speeds can vary depending on conditions and settings.Kodak isn’t
the only printer company with economical ink. I recently tested one of
Hewlett Packard’s Officejet Pro 7000 line of multi-function devices,
which start at $299.99 and yield 2,350 black pages on one $35 ink
cartridge.That’s about 1.5 cents a page which is actually cheaper than
most laser printers. These HP printers are incredibly good for both
black and color business documents. They can print glossy photos, but
this line of printers aren’t optimized for this purpose and don’t have
a special tray for 4 by 6 photo paper.As you’d expect from Kodak, which
is trying to survive the transition from film to digital, the printers
do a great job with photos. I was very impressed with the quality of
the 4 by 6 prints I made and the black text documents were comparable
to other high-end ink jets I’ve tested.

I was also impressed
with the device’s ease of use and the user interface on Kodak’s
drivers. For example, the printers have a 100 sheet main paper tray for
8 ½ by 11 or legal sized paper plus a special for 4 by 6 photo stock.
To print a photo, you put the paper in the tray and push it in. That’s
pretty typical but unlike other photo printers I’ve used, the process
worked every time and I never had a paper jam when printing photos.The
other thing I liked is the user interface on the printer driver
software. When you select printer “properties” as you’re about to
print, your options are presented to you in large easy to understand
graphics and text, making it quick and easy to select draft, normal or
high quality mode or to take advantage of other features like automatic
two sided printing (on the high-end model) or switching between
portrait and landscape mode. Of course all printers have these options
but Kodak makes them easy to findThe scanner functions pretty much like
all scanners with one extra feature – the ability to put a bunch of
photos on the tray at once and have the software automatically create
separate files for each photo.Thanks to printers like the ones I tested
from Kodak and Hewlett Packard, it’s possible to use an ink jet printer
for about the same cost per black page as a laser printer and still
have the advantage of being able to print in color.

[Author]

July 31, 2007 at 1:15 PM