Printer Ink for my Canon MX850
Dec/093
Canon Pixma MX850
Let’s go there and talk printer ink.
I bought a new multi-function device a few months ago – a Canon MX850 printer/scanner/fax WITH double-sided printing. At $300 it wasn’t a cheapie, but I work from home, so I wanted a pretty good one. It has 5 different ink cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and a bigger black for black-only printing). The benefit of this over single-cartridge systems is that when your yellow runs out (but you still have cyan & magenta & black) you can just buy more yellow and you don’t need to toss the others.
Anyway, I ran out of yellow a while ago, and since then I haven’t been able to print. The printer tells me that I need more yellow before I can print EVEN IF I only want to print in black! WTF? Yes, Canon built its printer to extract maximum dollars from your pocket. “Your device shall always have ink in all cartridges” is their mantra. It doesn’t matter if you only ever print black & white, you always need the colour cartridges to be full (are they tiny so that they run out faster?
BETTER YET, I needed to scan something the other day, to send to a friend. The printer told me “Sorry, you can’t scan until you buy a new yellow ink cartridge. It’s empty.” — HOLD ON a second here. Scanning is the process of putting something INTO the device, not getting something out. It doesn’t require ANY ink, let alone yellow. As I said, their mantra is “Your device shall always have ink in all cartridges”.
Ok, fine. I’ll buy your damned ransom-ink. So, I march down to the local BESTbuy to get some. I figure I’ll buy 2 sets of cartridges so I won’t run out again at an inopportune moment. How much for 2 of each cartridge (2 cyan, 2 magenta, 2 yellow, 2 small black, 2 large black) ? Guess! Go ahead and guess!
I bet you didn’t guess $241.96 !
What the FUCK!
I went home empty handed, and hopped on eBay, hoping I’d find a more reasonable deal. Boy, did I ever.
The seller TouchDream2009 happily sent me all 10 ink cartridges, from Hong Kong, with new chips that will always report my ink as not-empty, for $9.99 plus $20 shipping and handling. Yep, $29.99 total, delivered to my door.
That’s fully EIGHT times cheaper than BESTbuy, who has just lost my printer-related business forever. It REALLY pays to shop around.
The printer market is ripe for disruption. Someone needs to develop OPEN printers and OPEN ink, whose manufacture is full of competition based on quality, not arbitrary rules enforced by software & hardware. I would gladly pay $500 for a printer if it took ink refills that only cost $30, versus the competition’s $50 printer that requires $300 of ink per year.
In a world where printers are cheap, and ink is expensive, there’s a fortune to be made by a company that sells expensive printers and cheap ink.
Update: I received my ink from TouchDream2009, and it works perfectly!
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6:19 pm on December 18th, 2009
HP inks are worse, they have a time chip that will not let you print after some time (1 year think), even if you haven’t printed a single page
8:34 am on December 19th, 2009
i have had hp’s for awhile, and i can over ride the no ink issue , it always prints even when i have no ink, i just get a blurry image. i just closed that icon when it came up, so perhaps it depends on the model. i bout my 6300 for about 79 bucks, and the cartridges cost 29, but last for ages. you are right though for the most part it is a try it and get screwed from what i hear form others.
11:07 am on December 20th, 2009
Been refilling own cartridges for years.Use very good quality ink for refill.Some of my carts have been refilled I guess at least 15 times.Never a time out issue.I have special rubber cartridge cradles I keep spare carts in to stop drying out,never do.Use an HP all in one and always tell software its a new cartridge when I reload.Never had ink fading issues.Use for photos a dedicated 6 x 4 HP photoprinter via Mac or direct from Camera with best photo quality cartridges which I keep clingfilmed between use . I service my printers at least twice a year.
Guess Im lucky but I totally agree with your comments its all a huge rip off and u have to use the power of the net to save money.