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What's your experience with 3rd party color inkjet ink replacement?

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cranioscopical:
One of my printers is a Canon all-in-one and I really like it.
I stuck to Canon ink for a few years and then decided to try cheap stuff.
Everything went well and I congratulated myself for being astute… until cheap-ink change #4 clogged the print head.

I can't buy this model now and, like almost everything else on the market today, the newer model has an increased shoddyness factor.

That experience will probably persuade me to stick with brand-name ink in future.

It's possible to take the view that printers are themselves so cheap that it's more economical to run with off-brand ink and dump any printer that's harmed by it. The trouble is, it really goes against the grain for me to see another lump of nasty hardware going into landfill. I just can't bring myself to do it.

JavaJones:
It's interesting to me actually that people take the view that with printers so cheap, the ink should also be cheap. We all know the ink price subsidizes the printer cost. With actual hardware cost coming ever downward, are we not supremely lucky to have home printers that for $80 or less can print photos of a quality unheard of 10 years ago at 10 times the price? My perspective tends to be, with the printers as cheap as they are, the ink just balances it out over time. I don't *like* it, but I understand and ultimately don't begrudge it too much. Crappy drivers, ink drying out, and clogged print heads bother me more. Which is why HP is out in my book (bad drivers), and I'm still a bit wary of Epson (old clogged head problem).

All that being said I'm not a person who does a ton of printing. I print the occasional paper document in black and white and seldom color, and then the occasional photo print. So I don't use a ton of ink.

- Oshyan

MilesAhead:
It's interesting to me actually that people take the view that with printers so cheap, the ink should also be cheap.
--- End quote ---

Nope, we're just hip to the Gillette Razor Trick(tm).  Put everything in the blades and snap them into a plastic handle instead of that metal chunk of machinery they used to sell.  Anyone too young to remember search Blue Blades and the razor they were used in.

Speaking of which, I remember when Schick came out with a double bladed bonded blade to compete with Gillette, that had a white plastic insert between the blades.  I could make one of those blades last about 2 months(and I don't mean by not shaving or using an electric razor.)  Every 5 shaves or so, push the plastic tab and all the stubble is forced out.  The thing is practically new. As long as you shook it dry to reduce corrosion it would last so long you forget when you put it in the razor.

Later they changed it so after 2 or 3 pushes on the plastic insert, it deformed to make you throw the blade away.

I bet there are people on the Riviera with cases of those blades in storeage.

JavaJones:
Oh believe me I know about the "Gillette Model" and how it has changed things. I'm not a fan. But I suspect razor (hardware) prices have not changed so dramatically as printer (hardware) prices have, and it's also somewhat different because in the case of the razor, really all you have is a handle; it's not only useless without the razor (as is a printer without ink), it's not even an expensive or particularly complex thing. Printers are not like that, they *are* complex, potentially expensive, etc. The fact that we have technology as complex and powerful as in modern printers at such cheap prices is a nice enough thing to me that I can look past the ink prices generally speaking. But again I'm not a heavy printer.

- Oshyan

mouser:
I can appreciate the fact that the printer is cheap because they are making a profit on ink -- if i had a good option to buy a printer that wasn't part of this twisted system.  I know I'm once again drawing connections to larger trends, and I wonder if it's always been this way or if we are just living in an age where the costs of things are getting more and indirect and convoluted, and what the repercussions of that are.

Everything on the internet is free, and yet somehow people are making massive money on it by getting paid not from their direct consumers.  Printers are dirt cheap because they can make a profit by doing all these convoluted things to keep you from buying 3rd party ink for it.  My gut feeling is that this kind of convolution is not healthy -- that it distorts the way we view and interact with the stuff we consume, and poisons the well for companies that do not want to do business this way.  It makes it very hard for consumers to truly compare prices and know what they are getting.

A similar thing happens with banks and credit cards -- we no longer expect to pay for services -- we expect them to be free but for the banks to make massive profits by tricking us with fees we know we have to try to make sure we don't fall into, or charging extra for "services" (like accepting an electronic payment instead of a mailed in check) which actually save them money.

You could argue that whether you pay for the printer or the ink it's all the same -- maybe you're right, i don't know.  But my gut tells me that there is a real "cost" to living in an age where so much effort is being put into disguising the real costs of the things we consume.  And a penalty we are going to pay for accepting it as just the way things are done.

Interesting article related to this:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/05/old-hidden-fees-meet-new-hidden-fees

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