HP Ink Costs More Than Human Blood

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HP ink costs more than human blood? Jeez, no wonder why that HP Photosmart printer / scanner / copier was only $29.99 on Black Friday, ink refills cost two times more than the printer.

As this graph shows, printer ink is rather expensive, and costs more than things like human blood or a barrel of crude oil.
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Laser FTW. I picked up a couple of Brother 2140's as gifts for people when they were $50 at BestBuy. The HP #45 ink mentioned in the article is $61 shipped from NewEgg for 2 cartridges (rated 1600 pages) while the TN360 cartridge for Brother laser is $47 shipped for 1 cartridge @ 2600 pages. The bigger laser printers are an even better value. Add to that the 20+ pages/minute printing speed no matter how much the coverage is, and not worrying about the print heads drying up and it's a pretty damn good deal.
 
but for photo printing, its better to use inkjet printers than cheap color lasers... i would rather pay 300 dollars for a nice inkjet printer but only pay 5 dollars for a cartridge.. they are totally ripping us off.. why do you think HP changes models all the time, makes getting fake cartridges alot harder
 
mjz_5 said:
but for photo printing, its better to use inkjet printers than cheap color lasers... i would rather pay 300 dollars for a nice inkjet printer but only pay 5 dollars for a cartridge.. they are totally ripping us off.. why do you think HP changes models all the time, makes getting fake cartridges alot harder
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Or have them printed at [insert retail photo printing service here]...

...unless you're printing pr0n :eek:

:D
 
This is why I invested im a CIS (Continuous Ink System) for my printer.
Easy to refill which is like 2x a year and I do heavy duty printing, I pay less than $30 for 600ml of ink (6 colors x 100ml) which is approx 36-40 cartridges worth of ink. I save myself well over $1000 a year in ink.
 
wow... that really is a damning statement!

i too refuse to pay those kind of prices, so i hoard all the canon IP3000, IP4000, and IP5000 printers i can... the only thing that will make me depart with these chipless printers are the lack of replacement printheads (which seems to be coming sooner then later)
 
Pyromaneyakk said:
Laser FTW. I picked up a couple of Brother 2140's as gifts for people when they were $50 at BestBuy. The HP #45 ink mentioned in the article is $61 shipped from NewEgg for 2 cartridges (rated 1600 pages) while the TN360 cartridge for Brother laser is $47 shipped for 1 cartridge @ 2600 pages. The bigger laser printers are an even better value. Add to that the 20+ pages/minute printing speed no matter how much the coverage is, and not worrying about the print heads drying up and it's a pretty damn good deal.
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Exactly. No more ink printers here. Laser all the way. And I can leave my printer off for months at a time and know it will work again the first time I turn it back on, no more drying ink or clogged jets. And if I wanted to print photos, I'd rather get it done properly at a photo joint like Pyromaneyakk said.

But I have a problem with the article, who buys hp to begin with?
 
MV75 said:
Exactly. No more ink printers here. Laser all the way. And I can leave my printer off for months at a time and know it will work again the first time I turn it back on, no more drying ink or clogged jets. And if I wanted to print photos, I'd rather get it done properly at a photo joint like Pyromaneyakk said.

But I have a problem with the article, who buys hp to begin with?
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im still in love with my inkjet because it can print on dvd's. its better then litescribe, and a lot of times people cant even tell they are burned discs. i would go laser too, because you cant archive inket photos (without expensiver ink) but cd labeling is really slick....
 
As much as I agree inkjet printing is expensive, as a person who works retail and sells printers. I rarely get serious complaints (instead of a passive comment) that my old printer is so expensive on ink. While 2 years ago I used to get RANTS.

Well I still get RANTS about dell printers, especially when I tell them that we don't sell there overpriced ink. Half the people coming in for dell ink, give up and buy a new printer from me.
 
That's another point on why I don't really like cheap printers / expensive ink.

People will just buy another printer and toss the old one. Heck I know I used to. It's not like we have enough discarded electronics as it is. These printer companies have a lot to answer for for their wasteful ways of "encouraging" waste.

Now I don't know about other countries, but we don't really have computer recycling. It all goes to landfill. The only thing we really have is a few scarce "recycle your mobile phones" bins around the place. And energy saver globes. No recycling for those here either, despite the push for them to be mandatory and to phase out incandescent globes. They expect us to just store them in the shed.
 
MV75 said:
That's another point on why I don't really like cheap printers / expensive ink.

People will just buy another printer and toss the old one. Heck I know I used to. It's not like we have enough discarded electronics as it is. These printer companies have a lot to answer for for their wasteful ways of "encouraging" waste.

Now I don't know about other countries, but we don't really have computer recycling. It all goes to landfill. The only thing we really have is a few scarce "recycle your mobile phones" bins around the place. And energy saver globes. No recycling for those here either, despite the push for them to be mandatory and to phase out incandescent globes. They expect us to just store them in the shed.
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We have enough landfill space to last into the foreseeable future. Also, in many cases, recycling is more expensive than not.

Landfills are not always evil and recycling is not always good.
 
Just get recycled inkjets from like 123inkjets.com or something. With Fatwallet and stuff, the price ends up not being too bad. Unless you do heavy duty printing. Then a laser printer is good.
 
wolfen22 said:
We have enough landfill space to last into the foreseeable future. Also, in many cases, recycling is more expensive than not.

Landfills are not always evil and recycling is not always good.
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You seem to be confusing good and evil with profitability.
 
wolfen22 said:
We have enough landfill space to last into the foreseeable future. Also, in many cases, recycling is more expensive than not.

Landfills are not always evil and recycling is not always good.
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Enough landfill to last until the foreseeable future? What does that even mean? City waste gets redirected all the time but we have plenty of space for perfectly serviceable (and heavy metal-laced) electronics, apparently.

A quick Google search disputes your premise, but recycling is the third 'R' anyway. There are at least two other alternatives before we should be dumping.
 
srangara said:
Enough landfill to last until the foreseeable future? What does that even mean? City waste gets redirected all the time but we have plenty of space for perfectly serviceable (and heavy metal-laced) electronics, apparently.

A quick Google search disputes your premise, but recycling is the third 'R' anyway. There are at least two other alternatives before we should be dumping.
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It's not going to hurt anything. Landfills are made to be safe. They don't just take things and shove it in a hole. There's even landfills that have been turned into parks.

Anyway, some things are good to recycle, some aren't worth the extra time and money. Watch the Penn & Teller episode on recycling, it'll blow your mind.
 
this isnt a new thing, printer companies have been ripping us off for ink for years now. personally i find epson the worst but thats probably because i have a 6 ink photo printer...

my solution is refillable cartridges and refill with bulk ink - ink that i find better than what comes in the cartridges. unfortunately epson had a big fit over it and got these particular cartridges outlawed for copy/patent infringement...even though they are a completely different design than what you buy from epson and aftermarket cartridges still exist. guess my next printer is a cannon :p
 
HP Ink Costs More Than Human Blood
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Yes but it's worth it's weight in GOLD when you have to print up your resume' the night before
a job interview!
 
wow, makes me glad I got my kodak easyshare printer. Printer may of cost $100 but $10 for blacks and $15 for colour make it a much better deal after 1-2 refills, not to mention kodak has some very awsome customer service.
 
I get mine filled at Walgreen's for $10 a pop. My last couple batches lasted a lot longer than the new ones.
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I recently bought an All in One Printer, copier, scanner for just $40 and it came w/ both Black and color ink. The printer costs less than buying just the ink.

I don't know how many times I have tossed out a perfectly good printer when I ran out of ink and just bought a new printer. Its actually a shame when you can do things like these as its not good for the environment but when money is short something has to give.
 
It's funny, I've tried most brands (Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark, Kodak).

With the exception of Lexmark, HP has never failed me yet. The ink in the Canon dried up so fast that I couldn't print and the Epson literally broke down.

I bought a Kodak ESP 7 last Holiday season and it did not turn out what our family had hoped. The "high-quality affordable pigmented inks" got used up in the course of a few days. The signal got lost a few times, had to reset it.

Then I went back to the store and got a wireless HP Photosmart which is still working today. Like the thread title, it uses ink like oil. Plus it does this retarded ink cycle every time it prints something. So there goes like 1/8 of my ink right there!



If Ink begins rise exponentially, I'm literally using blood as ink. ;)
 
I'm not sure whether it's fair to single out HP though. Aren't all ink cartridges ridiculously expensive?

That's precisely why I buy ink refill kits. They're cheaper than any retail or recycled cartridges. A recycled HP 92 costs about $10, but for that same price I can refill it 15-20 times. I suppose the price could be even cheaper if I simply bought bottles of black ink instead of a kit. I've seen 1 liter of black ink go for only $35. That's 200 refills for the HP 92.
 
SolidBladez said:
With the exception of Lexmark, HP has never failed me yet. The ink in the Canon dried up so fast that I couldn't print and the Epson literally broke down.

[...]

If Ink begins rise exponentially, I'm literally using blood as ink. ;)
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Don't HP ink carts have the print head on the cart, rather than as part of the printer? (ie, every time you buy a new ink cart, you get a brand new print head) I could have sworn I heard that, and it'd explain why these things are so friggin expensive.

Also, blood changes color when exposed to oxygen, I think you'll have a hard time calibrating that...
 
Quote of the day from thisistobehelpful:

"no one's found an animal that poops out ink cartridges and set up an inkpoop farm or something yet."

lol
 
silentbrain said:
Don't HP ink carts have the print head on the cart, rather than as part of the printer? (ie, every time you buy a new ink cart, you get a brand new print head) I could have sworn I heard that, and it'd explain why these things are so friggin expensive.

Also, blood changes color when exposed to oxygen, I think you'll have a hard time calibrating that...
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That could be it.


As for the blood comment, I'll just tell my professor that was I all "had" (looking very pale faced). :D
 
I used to buy a new printer - on sale - typically <20$ on sale...

And throw it out when it needs new ink. :)

But now I just re-fill my printer cartridges with an insulin syringe from a big well of the stuff.
 
If you use your own blood, then it simply comes at the cost of a bit of extra water and some iron supplements :)
 
wolfen22 said:
It's not going to hurt anything. Landfills are made to be safe. They don't just take things and shove it in a hole. There's even landfills that have been turned into parks.

Anyway, some things are good to recycle, some aren't worth the extra time and money. Watch the Penn & Teller episode on recycling, it'll blow your mind.
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Repeat after me: Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle. These are listed in order of decreasing importance. Recycling is a failure to do the first three. Dumping a printer to get a new one (encouraged by the stupidly high ink : printer cost ratio) is a failure of all four.

Forget paper and plastic. You seem to be under the misapprehension that our dumped electronics (with their mercury, arsenic, cadmium, ...) end up in *our* dumps. Want to know why our landfills can be turned into parks? Because of places like this.

The Penn & Teller "Bullshit" episode would have gone an entirely different way if they had followed their tangent that aluminum recycling is profitable and researched cell phone and PC reclamation. (They didn't even touch on composting, although that's not relevant here.)

This pdf, for example, gives a pretty good overview of the electronics lifecycle. Skip to page 6, where the most interesting facts for this discussion start:
One metric ton (t) of electronic scrap from personal computers (PC’s) contains more gold than that recovered from 17 t of gold ore. In 1998, the amount of gold recovered from electronic scrap in the United States was equivalent to that recovered from more than 2 million metric tons (Mt) of gold ore and waste.
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1 gallon = 3785.4118 ml., so at 70 cents per ml, the new HP ink that advertising champions as being more affordable costs $2650 per gallon. That's actually quite an improvement - it used to be $8000 per gallon.

But I don't get where the price for human blood comes from. Who buys that?
 
Sabrewulf165 said:
This is why....





I simply don't print things. Or use somebody else's shit if I need to.
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+1 to that!

While I do have a printer at home we maybe print once every two months if that. Photos we just take to SAMS club because with ink costs you can’t beat the price. I am one of the few who would rather read from a screen then a dead tree.
 
evilsofa said:
1 gallon = 3785.4118 ml., so at 70 cents per ml, the new HP ink that advertising champions as being more affordable costs $2650 per gallon. That's actually quite an improvement - it used to be $8000 per gallon.

But I don't get where the price for human blood comes from. Who buys that?
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I expect a lot of the article's information comes from sites like cockeyed.com where a pint of blood has an estimated $200 processing fee.
 
i have had a HP photosmart 7150 for like 4 years, uses less ink then i thinks(tells me i am out of ink after a few prints....) but cost of the cart. is about 28 to 30$$ and they usualy last a month after the out of ink printing in reserve warning happens. comes down to do you want to print at home or not??
 
No surprise just the other day I went to Microcenter to buy ink for my printer that is 8 years old. the only ink cartridges I could find were 3rd Party & cost $50...I know my printer is "old" but it works just fine and was one of the best at the time of it's release. I ended up buying a new one for $35...
 
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