While I don't pretend to be thrilled with the relatively high price of ink cartridges, "gundark's" posting that he or she will switch to HP printers is kind of ironic since it was HP that established this business model of gundark complains. The essence of it is that we pay as we go (oh, the Republicans have got to love that approach). Long ago HP executives bragged at how much incredible profit they were making on the toner they sold for laser printers. With consumers incredibly short-sighted when buying a printer, the manufacturers are fighting tooth and nail to sell them at the lowest possible price and make their profits on the consumables. Few consumers consider the total cost of ownership. So, for example, when we were looking for a color laser printer a year ago, there was the HP model for $999 and the Ricoh Aficio CL4000DN for $300 more. But if you check the cost of their toners, you discover that the first time you buy a set of 4 toners, the total cost of ownership is lower for the Ricoh since their toner is so much less expensive than HP's.

Consumers should do the same with inkjet printers, which are much more expensive to operate than laser printers. What gundark may not realize is that the ink and cartridge combination that Epson uses on so many of its printers actually are more expensive to manufacture than HP's because Epson is often using pigment-based inks rather than the less expensive dye-based inks so many other manufacturers use. The pigment-based inks produce images that last a lot longer than those produced with dye-based inks. Plus the pigment-based inks that many Epson printers use coupled with the print heads in the cartridges pretty much eliminate the practicality of refilling ink cartridges. That alone can account the for difference in price for new ink cartridges (plus the usual markup to account for corporate greed).

For all those concerned about problems such as these, I would HIGHLY recommend switching to a Canon printer. I'm not sure why, but for some reason Canon has gotten shoved in the back corner, having little to no retail exposure at many electronics stores, as compared to Epson and HP. I have had HP and Epson inkjet printers in the past, and I've hated all of them. They were problematic and used lots of expensive ink, and unfortunately, my experience with generic ink cartridges didn't go so well. I've also worked on Epson and HP machines for many other people, and most of them fought with me to some degree.

Canon printers have repeatedly come out with high ratings in PC World reviews, and quite often (if memory serves) have the lowest TCO in regards to consumables, namely ink cartridges. Keep in mind that you will pay more for a good model of Canon printer than you would for an Epson or HP, but you will most likely make up for that with your savings in ink cartidge replacements, and you will have excellent quality printouts as well. My parents and sister both had a Canon S520 until just a little while ago, when the print heads finally went bad, but they got about 3 years of good, reliable, problem-free use out of them. Now they've upgraded to the Pixma iP4200 model, and I myself have the older Pixma iP3000 model, and they work just awesome.

The cartridges for my iP3000 are about $10 each for the 3 color tanks and $11-12 for the black tank, maybe a tad more depending on where you buy them (I go for Walmart). They are well-designed, extremely easy to install on your computer, and simply deliver great quality print jobs for a reasonable price. Granted, Canon is also somewhat stingy about refill cartridges, but the name-brand ones are cheap enough that I wouldn't even bother trying to save a buck or two, especially if there's a chance of getting poor-quality ink.

One time I printed out some 4x6 photos from my digital camera on this printer, and then printed the same photos on a Kodak kiosk machine in Walmart. I had to look REALLY hard to find any discernable different in quality, and the average person looking at the two wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Oh, and did I mention my camera is a Canon Powershot? Again, exceptional quality, reliability, and easy of use. Buy a Canon camera and a Canon printer, and I guarantee you that it will be a most pleasant experience.

ivorycruncher is quite right - Cannon inkjets are excellent inkjet printers. The bizarre thing is that Cannon owns the patent for printing directly on CDs and DVDs and, most frustratingly, sold the North American rights to Epson. I think, however, that all the printer manufacturers, including Cannon, are following the pay as you go model of underpricing the printers and making their primary profit from overpriced ink. The cost of using inkjets is enormous. Unless you really need an inkjet (and the only real reasons to use them instead of a color laser is to print directly on CDs/DVDs or to print high quality photos) why not go with a low-cost color laser? I've seen them as low as $200 (5 pages per minute color, not much different than an inkjet). The cost per page is a lot less than with inkjet printing. Worth considering.....

I understand dlauber's comments on the costs associated with Epson's inks. Before purchasing the printer, I knew that the Epson carts were very expensive. However, I also saw that I could get third-party inks much cheaper, and I expected to be able to do this for the life of the printer (about five years). Thinking I could get a printer pretty cheap and get ink pretty cheap, I purchased the printer.
Hausmouse is quite right about the quality of the Epson inks in conjunction with the Epson printer. I had an older Epson photo printer that I used to print photos before every drug store in the country was printing digital photos. The genuine inks produced beautiful pictures, while generic ones made muddy photos. However, these days, it is much cheaper to take a CF card to the local store and have prints made there.
My current Epson printer was purchased for disc printing only. I don't need super-high quality printing for discs, so generic ink carts worked just fine for me.
When not producing discs, I use a B/W laser printer for 99.9% of my printing. I don't need color that often, and you can't beat the cost/page of a good old laser.
I never knew Canon owned the patent for disc printing. Why don't they put out a printer that uses this technology????
BTW, gundark is a HE. :wink:

Actually, Canon did release a CD-R printer a while back. We have one at work that gets used constantly. I believe they also made CD-R printing add-on attachments for other specific models of inkjet printers. Why they didn't become widespread, I'm not sure, but I think they were geared more towards small businesses than they were consumers.

Canon has actually done several innovative things with inkjet printer technology. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they were the first to separate the three ink colors into separate tanks. I know they also had a special accessory for at least one printer model (maybe more), which was a scanning device that sat where the ink cartridge is supposed to sit. The idea was that it would "scan" a document that it feeds through the printer and create an image file on your computer from it. Such a device went the way of the 2.88MB floppy drive (yes, they really did exist, but only in IBM-brand PCs afaik), and now 3-in-1 printer/scanner/copier machines rule the market.

I should also point out that in a review PC world did a couple years ago on product and customer service quality, Canon received the #1 slot for both printers and digital cameras. I'm not sure about now, but at the time they had a single call center in the USA (not India), so customer service came from people that spoke clear English and were well trained on the products they were supporting. Canon also did most or all of its own R&D, instead of outsourcing a bunch of stuff, which leads to quality control issues. Because of these things, Canon has consistently turned out wonderful, high-quality products. I will be hard pressed to look any further than Canon for my next printer or camera, and I recommend them to anybody who asks.

And in case any of you are wondering, I am in no way affiliated with Canon. I just know exceptional products when I see them.

Got this news just in time!

There are now two printer manufacturers to avoid: Lexmark, with their ink cartridge anti-refill microchips, and now "Greedmaster" Epson with their army of lawyers!

Thanks PCWorld for the "headsup." Thanks to you my money will be better spent elsewhere!

Tomak

My Epsom Stylus Color 440 is on its last legs and I am thinking of getting a replacement printer. I guess I will think twice about getting an Epsom. If copies of Epsom cartridges are able to be made at such a fraction of the original price, then I think it is time the monopolies commission was called in to encourage fair trade.
Here in the UK, I can buy compatible inks for 2.49 colour and 1.99 black compared with Epsom inks at 15.99 colour and 13.99 black. These prices are GB pounds and its a lot of difference. Companies like Epsom need to look after their customer base and give value for money.