How to Save Money on Printer Ink

(CBS)  Hewlett-Packard last week reported a 13 percent decline in its most recent quarter in sales of supplies, mostly printer ink. While I wish HP the best in its economic recovery efforts, I'm hoping it can turn its own ink from red to black without extracting too much green from people who use its printers.

Printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids on the planet. Ink is sold by the milliliter, but if you do the math, you'll find it costs thousands of dollars per gallon. My goal is to use as little of that precious liquid as possible.

One way to save money on ink is to get generic cartridges or have your cartridges refilled. Printer manufactures will tell you that this will yield poor results and might even damage the printer, but a lot of people do it without any ill effects.

Walgreens pharmacy, which refills some but not all cartridges, has a Web page that claims it can safely refill a cartridge four to six times, more in some cases. The site also claims that federal law prohibits manufacturers from voiding warranties because of third-party ink refills.

There are also kits you can buy to inject new ink into old cartridges.

I have to admit that I've never refilled an ink cartridge. I once tried to refill a laser toner cartridge. It was a disaster. I wound up with tiny particles of toner all over my office. I have, however, had toner cartridges professionally refilled and the results were fine.

But even if you prefer buying new cartridges from your printer maker, there are plenty of ways to save money on ink.

First, consider the cost per page when you're buying a new printer. Most printer makers will give you an estimate either of the price per page or the number of prints you'll get from a cartridge or set of cartridges, so you can check the price of cartridges and do your own math. The cost varies greatly - from as little as 2 cents per page to as much as 20 cents. These estimates are usually based on 4 percent to 5 percent coverage of the printable area. But like those EPA gas economy claims, "your mileage may vary."

Beware - cheaper printers are often more costly to operate than more expensive ones. For example, at $39.99, HP's DeskJet D1660 printer seems like a great deal. But the ink cartridge combo pack used on that model costs $31.99 and yields approximately 200 black pages or 165 color pages. That comes to 16 cents a page for black ink and nearly 20 cents for color.

But the extended black cartridge used on HP's $179.99 HP Officejet Pro 8000 Wireless Printer, costs $35.99 and yields 2,220 pages for a cost of under 1.7 cents a page, a 90 percent savings on ink. Color printing on that model is also a lot less expensive than on the cheaper printer.

The more expensive printer is not only faster and more durable, but it's also cheaper in the long run if you do a lot of printing. Plus, you won't need to change cartridges as often and it's better for the environment because it won't use as many cartridges. The Web site Printer.com has a handy interactive tool that estimates the total cost of printer ownership over 5 years.

Another tip: Just as there are ways to drive economically, there are ways to operate your printer to use less ink per page.

The drivers for all ink jet printers give you choices for the speed and quality of your prints. Economy or draft mode uses less ink and usually prints a lot faster. Since a great deal of printing is for internal consumption - proofing documents or sharing them with co-workers or family members - it might make sense to set the default for economy or draft and use "normal" or high-quality mode only when printing glossy photos or documents that need to make a good impression.

One easy way to save ink, paper and time is to only print the section of the document you need. This is especially true with Web pages, which can sometimes take up many pages when printed. When printing in Internet Explorer or Firefox, select the section you want to print and, on the print range section of the print dialogue box, click selection. This works with Microsoft Word and some other programs, too.

Another way to save is to reduce the size of your print job. Microsoft Word, for example, allows you to print up to 16 pages per sheet. Unless you plan to read with a strong magnifying glass, I wouldn't go that far, but two or four pages per sheet might be OK for proofing a document.

And, finally, you can make a big impact by not printing documents unless it's necessary. If your goal is to preserve them, you can store them on disk and back them up on the Internet. One trick is to e-mail them to a Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail account.

[asule5256]

I buy my printer ink and toner from www.swapink.com it's like more than 50% off store prices.

[InkOptimizer]

Lets face, the printers and ink manufactures have zero incentive to make their printers ink efficient. It is left up to us to find ways to reduce the amount of ink we consume.
I recently started using a software, PretonSaver Home, that reduce my ink and toner consumption by up to 50%. And, it still provides excellent print quality.
It is like magic - it uses advanced algorithms to identify and delete ?wasteful? pixels, pixels who are not required for achieving quality printouts.
You can find tone of information and free trial download at Half The Ink website http://www.halftheink.com

[Bojax39]

Thanks for the heads up. That, along with using a more efficient and ink sparing printer and refilled cartridges, sounds like a good plan until the manufacturers wake up and develop something better. :-)

[lacylewis-2009]

I recently had to give up on my 25-year-old workhorse dot-matrix printer, so I went out and bought a new one. I have a good multi-functional color printer for material that needs to look good, but for nearly all uses, the dot-matrix is good enough and runs on practically nothing. The ribbon lasts months and is very cheap to replace. Occasionally I have to print something or make a photocopy on the fancy machine just to keep the ink from drying up; that's how rarely I really need it. For most purposes, look into dot matrix. It's still great.

[tmittelstaed]

Inkjet printers are only used by fools. Today you can get a color laserjet printer for under $500, I've seen them even for $300 and they use individual toner cartridges so if you just print black and white most of the time the color cartridges last a long, long time. And even the worst of these have a cheaper cost-per-page than the inkjets.

I use a HP Laserjet 4+ Postscript printer at home for my black and white printing - the printer has a duplexer on it (a great way to save paper) - and cost me $40 from a used computer dealer. It uses toner cartridges that I can get refilled ones off Ebay for sometimes as little as $15 a cartridge. I've never had a refilled cartridge with a problem, and I have also refilled my own 4+ cartridges - although I only did it a few times to see how difficult it would be. It's not difficult. However, it's no cheaper than just buying the professionally refilled cartridges and to do it right you really need a toner vacuum.

9 times out of 10 the stuff that people print in color can be printed in black and white and nobody cares. About the only thing you can't is pictures and you can get those printed at the local variety store that does film developing for cheaper and better quality than doing them yourself.

If your a home user and you get a good business printer it will last a lifetime, and if you get Postscript on it, with a network print server in it that you can plug ethernet into, it will be compatible with at least the next 2 decades of personal computer. The HP Laserjet IIP is still supported by Windows Vista, and it's a 20-year old printer.

[rwsmith29456]

I have not had good luck at all with refilled cartridges. They messed up the printing so bad the copies and the cartridge had to be thrown away. Maybe things have changed and they've gotten better. I know that with a kid in school we are using a LOT of cartridges. Of course the companies practically give away the printers so you will buy the ink. I have a medium quality printer and the tiny cartridges don't last long.

[fdx22]

I have tried using generic ink cartridges for a HP Deskjet and an EPSON inkjet printer. The ink that comes with generic cartridges do not dry properly and smear resulting in a bad printout. I have also bought a generic toner cartridge for a Samsung laser printer. The toner powder spills out of the cartridge, creating a mess in the laser printer. Verdict: use the original brand ink cartridges and toners. They are for sure reliable. Order them online and look for online coupons for good deals.

[peguesplace]

The cheap printer/expensive cartridge racket is a re-run of early Gillette; giving away razors just to get new customers "hooked" on buying the blades..
Same kind of deal, different century...

[sjc_1]

Or cell phones, we will "sell" you a $200 phone for $50 IF you sign a 2 year contract at $80 per month. You end up paying more than $1000 for that $200 phone, because the equipment and networks generate pure profit for the cell phone carrier companies.