07-04-2013, 08:19 PM
I don't know about what Col has bought, but the genuine ink tanks for my old Canon are transparent.
They have a chip, but that seems to work well. When the printer reports them as empty, they genuinely are.
I buy mine in batches when they are on special offer (they often are - typically with a pack of nice photo paper thrown in). For a while I kept a spreadsheet of costs from different sources, but don't bother any more. What is interesting though, is that the ink price hasn't really changed since 1996/7 when I first bought the printer. So in real terms, the ink has got cheaper. Unlike petrol
At the end of the day, printing is expensive. It doesn't really matter what the pricing structure is; if you want to print at home, you pay. For a while we took memory sticks to the local Jessops, but although they were a little cheaper, the print quality was not as good. Fine for snaps taken with a compact, but that's as far as it went. For a really good photo, I'm quite happy to print it myself, even if it costs a bit more. We make our choices...
You can reduce ink costs by printing in draft mode. With my old Canon, it's staggeringly quick as well. The quality amazed me - it was much, much better than my previous Epson was. For general text-based stuff, draft is absolutely fine. The old Epson could produce good prints, but at about 1 page per minute, and only on special paper. In "normal" mode using normal copier paper, the Epson wasn't much better than a dot-matrix!
They have a chip, but that seems to work well. When the printer reports them as empty, they genuinely are.
I buy mine in batches when they are on special offer (they often are - typically with a pack of nice photo paper thrown in). For a while I kept a spreadsheet of costs from different sources, but don't bother any more. What is interesting though, is that the ink price hasn't really changed since 1996/7 when I first bought the printer. So in real terms, the ink has got cheaper. Unlike petrol
At the end of the day, printing is expensive. It doesn't really matter what the pricing structure is; if you want to print at home, you pay. For a while we took memory sticks to the local Jessops, but although they were a little cheaper, the print quality was not as good. Fine for snaps taken with a compact, but that's as far as it went. For a really good photo, I'm quite happy to print it myself, even if it costs a bit more. We make our choices...
You can reduce ink costs by printing in draft mode. With my old Canon, it's staggeringly quick as well. The quality amazed me - it was much, much better than my previous Epson was. For general text-based stuff, draft is absolutely fine. The old Epson could produce good prints, but at about 1 page per minute, and only on special paper. In "normal" mode using normal copier paper, the Epson wasn't much better than a dot-matrix!
