I’ll trade you my HP Ink for your first born
It’s a deal! Thanks to Paul Kedrosky, I found this graph of the relative cost of HP ink vs. human blood, vodka, crude oil and others from Gizmodo:
The other day we made a costly mistake by buying a photo ink cartridge instead of a blank ink cartridge for our HP deskjet printer. It took a few days to realize why the black ink was not as black as it should have been. Once we discovered the mistake, Mike and I attempted to estimate how much we have spent on ink since we bought the printer. We didn’t get too far, but by the looks of this graph, we have been paying way too much!
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9:44 pm
It would cost over $250,000 dollars to fill up a full size vehicle gas tank with printer ink from printer cartridges.
10:50 am
[...] Well, those guys over at HP have it nailed. They really should be *paying* customers to take their printers. Note that on this chart, the actual price of the black ink is quoted out next to the price of blood, vodka and crude oil. Guess which comes up tops? « Digital Branding Tips | [...]
11:02 am
No question that the ink cartridge business is a cash cow for HP, but fair is fair: there is a significant amount of technology that goes into the ink formulations which needs to be recognized and accounted for.
HP has filed more than 4,000 patents on its ink formulations and cartridge design and maintains a group of ten scientists engaged in competitive-ink testing, alongside a very active team of lawyers who litigate against suspected violators. For example, the process by which colors are prevented from bleeding together in printouts is protected by two patents. (Lawton, Christopher, “H-P Chemists Hunt Violators of Ink Patents,” the Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2006, pg B1). I doubt the formulation of vodka, Red Bull and bottled water are similarly as complex (~:
11:16 am
Jerry, you are on the HP payroll aren’t you?
I agree that there is a lot of effort and technology behind the HP ink, but those prices are borderline criminal. At the very least they could warn consumers of what they are getting into when they buy an HP printer. I feel bad for the people that invest in a printer only to realize they can’t afford to use it.
1:56 pm
One tip for business owners is to invest in a laser printer if they mainly print in black and white. Toner for laser printers saves you money in the long run.
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/testdrive/article.php/3521141
11:16 pm
The prices if quality ink is insane that I once bought a new printer because it cost the same to replace the ink!
It all depends on your needs really, if you don’t require quality prints, then its cool to go with the no-name inks.
4:37 pm
Very true on that last comment…it is unbelieveable how much ink costs. About the no-names though, some of them give out pretty darn good quality. My office’s got a Phaser 8500/8550, and we always get the sticks it requires from suppliesguys.com. They are generic, but I mean, you might be able to tell a slight difference on photos, but for most of your color stuff you won’t notice a difference.