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Rick Potter
11-01-2010, 11:16 AM
My wife works at a church pre school, and takes a lot of pictures of the kids. She prints them out for display, and to give to the parents, with a Hewlett Packard Photo Smart. This is the one that cost's about $175. The ink cartridges are about $25-30 each, and she has to change it every hundred photos or so.

Has anyone used one of those ink refilling stores? Results? It would save the school some money. There is a store that recently opened near her work, but we have not tried it because of bad results with a home refilling kit.

Thanks,

Rick Potter

Joe Pelonio
11-01-2010, 12:18 PM
I tried it, not worth the trouble, I got all kinds of error messages. I think HP has spent a lot of time and money to make people use their cartridges. For non-photo simple printing I bought a $49 Canon that uses $7 cartridges. Next time you buy a printer I suggest noting the best ones for print quality, then compare cartridge prices as the next consideration. It's pretty ridiculous to pay 1/4 the price of a printer for an ink cartridge.

Matt Meiser
11-01-2010, 12:22 PM
That's why we bought a Kodak for our new printer. Ink is significantly cheaper. Quality seems excellent to me.

Or, compare cost wise to sending them to something like Snapfish, Walgreens, etc.

Gene Howe
11-01-2010, 1:31 PM
I've heard that Yemen has some great prices on ink cartridges.:eek:
Seriously, Matt has a great idea.

Roger Newby
11-01-2010, 6:56 PM
+1 on the Kodak. We changed about a years ago because of the price of ink.
Had an HP that cost 60 bucks to refill when the cartridges needed replaced. :eek: The Kodak runs less than 1/2 that and we are happy with print results.

Dave Lehnert
11-01-2010, 7:46 PM
I looked at a Kodak but did not seem to get very good reviews.

If times allows it is way cheaper to take them to the store and print out.

Tim Morton
11-01-2010, 8:12 PM
The one advantage that HP has, is that the print head is in the cartridge...so each time you change the cartridge its like having a new printer.

Jim Tobias
11-01-2010, 8:22 PM
Rick,
I ordered from these folks: Prices below and have been using them about a month with no problems.
Jim

https://www.4inkjets.com


Items Ordered Qty Price
REMANC6656 Reman HP 56 Black Ink cartridge 1 $12.99
REMANC6657 Reman HP 57 Tri Color Ink cartridge 1 $19.99
REMANC6658 Reman HP 58 Photo Ink cartridge 1 $18.99

Rick Potter
11-02-2010, 2:08 AM
Thanks guys,

I will check into the other brands next time.

Jim, I tried them, but they don't have a our model number listed. Thanks.

Rick Potter

Rick Davidson
11-02-2010, 2:22 AM
We had a HP photosmart and a Sony dye impression photo printer. Both cost way to much for refills. We now just e-mail all our pics to Walgreens and go pick them up an hr later. Way cheaper and I feel like good quality. Also might be worth checking into, you could talk to the store manager and see if the school could get a discount.

Curt Harms
11-02-2010, 9:17 AM
Ebay item # 380130846735. I'm using these in an HP photosmart 7460 and so far so good. The only problem I had was I didn't replace them all at the same time and got a cartridge error. When i replaced them all and reset, it works as advertised. There are designed-to-be-refilled cartridges for other makes & models as well.

Bryan Morgan
11-02-2010, 6:45 PM
Printer manufacturers don't care about selling you a printer, they make money off the ink. I believe its about $4000 a gallon these days.

You might look into getting a printer that is capable of accepting a bulk ink system (the printers don't have to be the big expensive models, they make bulk ink kits for many small printers). At home I have a little $50 6 color Canon that is capable of using a bulk ink system. Basically, instead of using tiny little ink cartridges you use tubes that go to bottles. Its not as messy or intimidating as it sounds. We use giant versions of these at work all the time (60" - 100" wide massive ink jets).

The thing is, with these third party inks, they may not be formulated to work correctly with the print heads. If your printer has replaceable heads, you may find yourself replacing those more often. If you can't replace the heads, you may wind up replacing the whole printer. Some hp models have the heads right on the ink cartridge so its fairly convenient. All printers today have more "nozzles" than the resolution of the printer. These are "extra" to make up for any clogged or broken "nozzles". There are a finite amount of nozzles, of course.

With our big machines, we tried using third party inks (this stuff is all very expensive) and the quality was not as good and heads and head cleaner systems would wear out too fast.

Also, depending on the model, hp "expires" ink cartridges. The ones we have in our big machines actually have a chip that keeps the manufacture date. Some just use drop counters. When the time runs out, the printer stops, even if its still half full. You can get programmers or wipers to reset this chip.

Pat Germain
11-02-2010, 6:54 PM
I am of the opinion that all inkjet cartridges are a scam. As suggested, if you want to print photos, take the files to Target, Walgreens, Costco, etc. The print quality is far superior to an inkjet printer at a tiny fraction of the cost.

What really frosts my jammies is even if I don't use those inkjet cartridges they dry out and stop working. Grrrrr...

My advice is to buy a B&W laser printer for the home and use retail stores for color printing.

Bryan Morgan
11-03-2010, 12:50 AM
I am of the opinion that all inkjet cartridges are a scam. As suggested, if you want to print photos, take the files to Target, Walgreens, Costco, etc. The print quality is far superior to an inkjet printer at a tiny fraction of the cost.

What really frosts my jammies is even if I don't use those inkjet cartridges they dry out and stop working. Grrrrr...

My advice is to buy a B&W laser printer for the home and use retail stores for color printing.

Thats a good point too. Also, ink jet ink does not last too long unless properly laminated with special laminate. We use "UV" stable pigment inks and not only do they not look as nice dye based inks, they don't last too long in the sunlight. The dye based inks fade pretty quick. There is "archival" ink but it also fades. They all fade over time. If you can get your digital prints on actual photo paper (they expose the paper with digitally controlled RGB lasers and then process it normally) you will be better off. We had a small machine by Fujitsu that did this. Now we have a big Cymbolic Sciences machine to do this (you think ink is expensive, try replacing a blue laser at $15,000 ! :) )

Chris Kennedy
11-03-2010, 1:07 PM
The one advantage that HP has, is that the print head is in the cartridge...so each time you change the cartridge its like having a new printer.

This is why I went with HP eventually. I didn't print very often at home, and after having two print heads clogged up with dried ink, it made sense to go with the HP.

On the other hand, if you use your printer on a regular basis, you could go with a less expensive option.

Cheers,

Chris

Stephen Tashiro
11-03-2010, 1:11 PM
The one advantage that HP has, is that the print head is in the cartridge...so each time you change the cartridge its like having a new printer.

That is true of many HP printers, but not all of them. For example, my OfficeJet 7000 doesn't have the print head built into the cartridges.

Bryan Morgan
11-03-2010, 4:01 PM
That is true of many HP printers, but not all of them. For example, my OfficeJet 7000 doesn't have the print head built into the cartridges.

Canons have the print heads as a separate replaceable units. The small Epsons I've seen have the print heads permanently attached to the carriage and are not user replaceable.

Jerome Hanby
11-03-2010, 4:58 PM
I've had pretty good luck having them refilled at Walgreens. They "test" the cartridge before refilling it. They've rejected several of mine, but the ones they filled have worked...

Rick Potter
11-04-2010, 2:41 AM
I don't know the number, but the photo printer she has at work is a HP, about the size of a toaster. It only prints photos.

I also know that the two or three year old one takes a different cartridge than the identical appearing new one. I guess that's progress.

Rick Potter

Myk Rian
11-04-2010, 8:17 AM
I gave up on inkjet printers and bought a laser.

Nancy Laird
11-04-2010, 8:52 AM
I had to buy a new printer recently, and I was able to compare Kodak and HP side-by-side in the store, on the same photo. The HP was head and shoulders above the Kodak in quality. Yes, the cartridges cost more, but the quality difference was worth it to me.

I've also gone the Walgreens-refill route, and I've been disappointed. Every time you get a cartridge refilled, the quality of the printing goes down, and the quantity of printed items goes down as well. Walgreens just can't fill the cartridges as full as they are when new, and they also leak and get ink all over the place. Don't do it!!

Matt Meiser
11-04-2010, 8:56 AM
That sounds like the little photo printer we had. We replaced that and an older all-in-one with a Kodak. For B&W, laser is definitely the way to go. I payed $50 for the laser I've got in my shop--a little Brother one. My work printer is a Brother all-in-one with a feeder on the scanner and duplex printing capable. I really like it.

Curt Harms
11-04-2010, 12:33 PM
That is true of many HP printers, but not all of them. For example, my OfficeJet 7000 doesn't have the print head built into the cartridges.

Right. The PhotoSmart 7400 series doesn't use printheads-in-the-cartridge either. Perhaps the 6 colors makes integral printheads impractical. I suspect that only the printers that use 2 cartridges have built-in nozzles. One thing with color inkjets--print something that uses all the colors at least once every couple weeks. Otherwise it's plugged nozzle time.

Bryan Morgan
11-04-2010, 3:47 PM
I gave up on inkjet printers and bought a laser.

There are some nice relatively inexpensive lasers that print decent photos even without a RIP in front of them. The color toner is a bit more expensive but then they also last longer than inkjet. Cost per copy is significantly less with laser once you get past the initial purchase expense. I still think Walgreens or whoever printing out actual photos is the way to go for low volume. Better quality, better longevity, arguably less expensive over time.

Johnny Kleso
11-06-2010, 2:54 AM
I refill my own... Not sure if you can do yours but check www.inksupply.com (http://www.inksupply.com)
Use gloves and bleach to remove any ink you get on your hands..

Bob Rufener
11-06-2010, 1:30 PM
I used to print my own pics but found it wasn't very cost effective and it took a lot of time to print. I started sending pics to Walgreens (and there are others out there that are just as good) and it cost less than $.20 per pic. We just picked up over 120 pictures from a recent trip and it cost $.10 per pic. I can't print for that price. It may be something to consider even though it isn't always convenient. Pics are done in a few hours too.

Johnny Kleso
11-07-2010, 1:09 AM
If you buy OEM ink the cost is something like $5,000 a gal. I read someplace..

Bulk ink and refilling is the way to go if you want to print larger format pics IMHO