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The high cost of inkjet printer ink

Feb 17, 2008 Pet Peeves

This evening I did a little math and discovered that I pay approximately $108 for every ounce of colored ink that I use in my HP Deskjet 3910 printer. No, that’s not a typo, that precious ink really does cost a whopping $108 per ounce! You don’t believe me? Well, here’s the proof:
 
The 3910 uses the HP 22 colored ink cartridge which costs approximately $18 per unit. Each unit contains .17 ounces (that’s 17/100 of one ounce). Divide .17 into 1 and you discover that it takes just about 6 cartridges to hold one ounce of ink. Now, multiply $18 by 6 cartridges and you’ll see that the total amount I pay for a single ounce of colored ink is indeed $108!
 
Of course the other printer manufacturers are just as bad, and some are worse – I just happen to use the HP 3910 so I used it as an example. To add insult to injury, it’s often impossible to completely use up all of the ink that comes in a cartridge. Many inkjet cartridges these days have a little sensor in them that tells the printer that the cartridge is out of ink. The problem is, it often isn’t empty at all, even though the sensor says it is.
 
How do I know? Because I can shake some of my “empty” cartridges and feel and hear the residual ink sloshing around inside. Does the printer care? Of course not. If the sensor says the cartridge is empty, it’s empty – Period, end of story. Never mind all that ink sloshing around inside. I can almost hear my printer talking to me right now: “Just throw it out and buy a new cartridge if you ever want to print again, you cheapskate!”
 
Granted, there probably isn’t very much ink left when the sensor tells the printer that you need to spend another $18, but at $108 an ounce I should be able to use every single drop of that .17 ounces of ink.
 
I can remember a time when the cheapest inkjet printers you could buy cost around $300, but nowadays you can pick one up that is a heap better than those dinosaurs were for a measly 25 bucks at Wal-Mart. You see, a few years back the printer manufacturers realized that electronic items were constantly getting better and cheaper at the same time, a fact that would eventually make it pretty difficult for them to make any real money by selling the printers themselves.

The solution they came up with for this dilemma was both brilliant and devious: practically give the printers away and then sell the proprietary ink cartridges to match them for outrageous prices! And it has worked wonders for their collective bottom line.
 
So the next time you head over to your local computer supply store to pick up a new inkjet printer cartridge, bear in mind that you too are most likely spending $100+ for every ounce of ink that runs through your printer. Doesn’t it give you a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that you’re helping the printer manufacturers resolve such a sticky problem with their business model?