Mountain View Computer Users Group

Last month I wrote on the subject of buying generic cartridges for your inkjet printer. I warned you that the article was based on my own limited experience with Epson printers.

Shortly after I wrote that article, I found that PC World Magazine had conducted an extensive and systematic study of this topic, which was printed in the September 2003 issue. I have summarized some of their findings below, but if you are really interested, you should read the whole article, available at PCWorld.Com.

PC World used three popular printers for its study: Canon's S900, Epson's C82, and Hewlett-Packard's Deskjet 3820. They used generic inks from different sellers and compared the results with those attained with the inks from the printer manufacturers.

They found, as I had, that you can save a considerable amount of money buying the generic inks. But they also discovered that particularly the black ink cartridges for the Epson printer tended to clog the nozzle rather quickly. As I said last month, I have been using Ink4Art cartridges on two of my Epson printers for over two years and haven't had much trouble, as long as I use the inks frequently.

The third-party inks printed on plain paper just about as well as the vendor's cartridges, but some were not as good at printing on special long-lasting photo papers. This raises a question I had not discussed, the longevity of the inks.

Epson produces inks for some of their printers that are supposed to last nearly a century. They do this, PCWorld says, by coloring their inks with pigments, rather than with less-durable organic dyes. The generic ink vendors don't do this, so that photos printed with their cartridges don't last long.

An authority on photo longevity says his tests show that the best of the generic inks will hold up for no more than five years, some only a year or so. But you should be warned that Canon and Hewlett-Packard also use organic dyes, so that won't hold up as well as the special Epson inks.

PC World concluded that "finding a reasonably priced substitute for brand-name ink can be a risky business. If top quality and print longevity aren't of paramount importance, you can save money using no-name inks-but you may have to spend a lot of time cleaning clogged print heads. Still, some users may find the savings justify the hassles."

An ideal solution for a combination of everyday black and white printing and some color-print production would be to have not one, but two printers. For the vast majority of your printing needs, an inexpensive laser printer does a good job for a very reasonable expense. In addition to that, you could also have a Epson color inkjet printer using their high quality ink.

A recent catalog indicates that a Brother HL-5040 Monochrome Laser Printer costs $250. A replacement toner cartridge that should give you about 3300 impressions costs $48.75.

An Epson that uses DuraBrite ink, the Stylus Color C82, costs $79.95 after a $20 rebate, but costs only $20 when you buy an Apple computer and use two rebates. The problem is that the same catalog lists the cost of Epson cartridges for the C82 as $31.99 for black ink and $32.99 for a multipack of three color cartridges.

Frankly, I'm going to stick with my current Epson printers and the cheap generic ink. If I want photos printed that will last for decades, I guess I'll just have to rely on good old Kodak.

- 30 -