Most computer users know firsthand that the cost of printer ink is painfully high. New cartridges regularly cost a significant fraction of the cost of the printer itself. What most people don’t know, however, is exactly why the cost of this necessity is so high — what exactly makes printer ink so expensive? Is it held to exceptional quality standards, or is it expensive to produce?

The reality is that quality standards and production costs are certainly a part of the cost. However, the biggest factor playing a role in the high cost of printer ink involves the containers that hold and dispense ink to printers. These containers, or cartridges, are usually made of plastic and other substances that aren’t exactly environmentally friendly. And, they may not cost much to make. The reason that these low-cost cartridges inflate the price lays in the carefully guarded patents that printer companies hold for each new container design. This prevents competition. If you want to buy printer ink, you’ll have to buy it from the printer manufacturer and from another company offering it to you cheaper. Otherwise, you won’t get a product that’s guaranteed to work with your printer. This forms a sort of monopoly, and printer companies can charge almost anything that they want. Most consumers evaluate new printers by the cost of the actual printer, not the ink for the printer, so a common strategy for manufacturers is to offer new printers at a loss and then make up the money by charging a lot for the printer ink cartridges.

The strategy isn’t unique to printer manufacturers. It’s an old idea that they’ve made quite profitable. The high cost is understandably quite annoying to many consumers, and some printer manufacturers have even been accused of holding monopolies on printer ink. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that companies will charge less for printer ink cartridges at any time in the near future.

If you’re interested in buying printer ink for less, you might choose to comparison shop online. Comparison shopping can lead to great deals, and sometimes surprising discounted rates. Printer ink refill kits can also be purchased and used at a fraction of the cost of a brand new cartridge. Generic cartridges are available for some older printers, and are less expensive than their big-name counterparts. Before doing this, make sure to read your printer’s warranty information. Often times, using generic or refilled ink cartridges may void your warranty. You can also cut down on your ink usage by using the print preview button on your computer and condensing printable text where possible.

While ink prices may be high, with a bit of common sense, you can keep the costs very manageable.

Have you ever wondered what printer ink is the best to buy for your important documents and photos? If you’ve ever contemplated this sort of question, you will find this article a helpful tool in guiding your printer ink buying decision –– and making your memorable photographs and important documents last for years to come.

There are two types of bases that are found in the printer inks you can buy at the store or on the Internet: dye-based inks and pigments. Each type reacts differently according to its chemical properties, and the paper you use, along with its porosity, water and contact with sunlight. Here are the differences.

Fading effects –– Dye-based inks fade more quickly than pigments because the molecules in dye ink are more open and spread out. This makes them more sensitive to chemicals and the effects of sunlight, which can cause fading. Dye-based inks dissolve quickly in water, so when water touches the paper, the dye dissolves and the ink spreads across the paper. On the other hand, the molecules contained in pigment inks are hidden and more difficult to penetrate. They will take longer to dissolve because they settle on the tiny fibers in the paper, and adhere to the fibers while the ink dries. They are more water-resistant than dye-base inks. This makes prints last longer because they are more resilient to the effects of sunlight-reactions and chemicals. According to www.kodak.com, “[pigment inks] can last more than 100 years on some paper types under ideal display conditions.”

Drying time and quality –– Dye inks dry quickly, but the quality is compromised. Dye ink will make a more durable photo, however it will take more time to print, and it could take up to a week to dry. On the other hand, pigmented inks can be printed on any kind of paper without compromising quality — and they dry fast. According to Kodak.com, “Each of the color cartridges contains five inks that can be used for documents and photos. And the exceptionally small size of the pigments accounts for a color gamut that far exceeds dye-base inks, so the colors . . . are much richer and brighter. [Plus] pigmented inks can be used with any kind of paper.” Since the quality is better with pigmented inks, they are more expensive. But spending a few more dollars can preserve the longevity of your prints.

The answer to the question of which ink to buy depends on the value of what you’re printing. If the documents you print will later be discarded, you can save some money with dye-based printer ink, but if you’re looking for something to last for generations, you may opt for pigment ink.

It seems that everyone is looking to become more “green.” One way to do so is by altering the way we use everyday items in our household. One of these items is our printer. Are there inks that are environmentally friendly? Can we help the environment by reusing ink cartridges? These valid questions put us on the path to being earth friendly.

Traditional printer ink is of some environmental concern because it is petroleum based and emits polluting emissions. Low quality printer ink tends to have a strong odor, which is an indication that it is toxic. Some professional printers use eco-friendly, vegetable oil-based printer ink. This printer ink claims to contain a low level of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. With VOCs of less than 2 percent, they produce lower emissions, making them better for the environment and less toxic to consumers. Unfortunately, vegetable oil-based inks are not yet available for ink cartridges used in the home. Soy ink is anther environmentally friendly option produced from soybeans. The soy-based printer ink is less toxic and produces brighter colors. Soy printer ink is also better for the environment because it extends the life of printers and makes recycling printed paper easier. Unfortunately, the soy ink takes longer to dry, due to its lack of VOCs and requires specialized equipment to aid in the drying process. Neither the ink, nor the specialized drying equipment, is available for most home printers.

Though it seems impossible right now to change the ink we use, people can rethink the way they dispose of their ink cartridges in an effort to become green. Ink cartridges can be recycled to reduce waste. There are numerous ways to do this. Some manufacturers will pay you to send back your ink cartridges using a mailer system. Other chain stores will also accept your used cartridges. The cartridges you recycle are then refilled and can be bought by other consumers, minimizing the amount of cartridges that go into the landfills. This is good, considering some of the toxic chemicals that go into the manufacturing of ink cartridges.

Or, instead of giving up your cartridge, you can opt to refill it. One way to do this is to purchase a refill kit online. These come with detailed, rather easy instructions you can use to repeatedly fill your ink cartridges yourself. If this idea doesn’t appeal to you, some chain stores allow you to drop your cartridges for them to refill for you. The refilled printer cartridges can then be picked up when it is convenient.

There are little things, all around us, that we can do to help the environment. Adjusting how we see printer maintenance is just one.

Cheap printer ink cartridges can save you a lot of money, but they’re sometimes more apt to sudden breakage and spills. This can be a big issue if you’ve got nice carpeting or are using an expensive printer. When you spill ink from the cartridges of your printer, or when the cartridges leak or burst, it’s important to act fast. You need to minimize the possible damage to your printer components and anything around the printer.

If the ink cartridge bursts in the printer, the first thing you’ll want to do is remove everything on and around the printer, leaving the cartridges in their place for the moment. You want to avoid moving the printer ink at first, as you’ll just end up spreading the toner around and making it more difficult to deal with. If there’s an active leak in the cartridge, put a piece of printer paper or a paper towel below it. It’s important to immediately deal with any ink that has spilled outside of the printer.

The best idea to clean up this spill is to use a hand vacuum or an attachment on your floor vacuum to deal with the printer ink. This will pick up the big blots of ink without spreading them. For surfaces like wood, you can then use a paper towel followed by a second paper towel dampened with water or rubbing alcohol, if possible. If the printer ink is on a carpet, you’re in some trouble, so act fast. First dab the ink with a paper towel, then spray it with WD-40. This prevents the ink from setting in. Afterwards, use towels drenched in very hot water to treat the stain as quickly as possible. The WD-40 trick works especially well on cheap printer ink. The hotter the water is, the better.

After this is complete, move back to the printer itself. With a paper towel in hand, carefully lift the printer ink cartridge out of the device. Make sure there’s something to catch ink from every side, especially if you don’t know where the leak is located. Clean the print heads, and use rubbing alcohol to clean any printer ink off of the tray and other components of the printer. Don’t forget to clean in the area where the printer ink cartridge hooks into the printer; otherwise, you might end up with a printer that only prints smudged or blurred pages. When you’re finished, print a few pages on Draft to make sure that your printer still operates correctly.

If you’ve acted quickly and you didn’t do anything to spread the printer ink, you’ll be able to handle the mess without any permanent stains or printer damage.

If you’ve got a computer printer, you’ve probably wondered at some point what elements are in the printer ink cartridges that make them cost so much, and why they’re so different from model to model. You may have heard from a friend or read in your printer’s manual that third party or generic inks won’t work with your printer. Is there really a different type of printer ink for every computer printer developed, or are different printer inks fairly interchangeable?

The same companies that make home printers make printer ink cartridges, and they actually do differ from model to model. The ink inside each cartridge can be extremely different in constitution, even within the same manufacturer’s product line. That’s not to say that there’s a specific advantage to each ink. It just means that they tend to be different — printer companies don’t want competitors mimicking their design, and they certainly want to make it difficult for ink cartridges to be refilled. When people refill the cartridges themselves, it cuts into their profits handily. The different inks used in separate printer models are often closely guarded secrets.

Not only do different printers use different ink, they tend to use very different printer ink cartridges. Printer companies often copyright the individual designs of each printer cartridge that they create, which gives them a sort of monopoly —they’re the only ones who can make the cartridges, so they can charge whatever they’d like. Because of this, many printer manufacturers sell their printers for a very low profit or at a loss, then make up for it by selling the cartridges for those same printers at extremely high profit margins. This is distressing to many consumers, since it makes it harder to find cheap ink. In addition, it can make it a hassle to get new cartridges if a person doesn’t live very close to an electronics supply store.

If you want to find cheap ink, your best bet is to look into ink refilling kits. Unfortunately, your printer’s manufacturer decides the terms of your warranty, so using one of these kits will void your warranty if the printer ink should happen to burst and damage your printer. However, when done correctly it’s a very safe and very simple process, and it saves big on money for you. It’s also more environmentally friendly than buying new printer ink cartridges. If you’re apprehensive about printer ink refill kits, do a search in your area to find a local company that can refill your cartridges for you, or find a mail-in company that you can use.

Being knowledgeable about what kind of ink and cartridges your printer uses could ultimately save you money in the end.

With recent advances in printing technology, flawless color printing is no longer confined to high tech laboratories. With a good laser or inkjet printer, you can great prints even at home. In addition, the best part is that the printers that can produce such superb print are not extremely expensive.

However, within a few days, you realize that these prints are not as cheap as they seem to be. This realization sinks when you have to buy the cartridges for your printer. You do not want to have your cartridge refilled by local suppliers because you are afraid that your sophisticated device will be spoiled if the best ink is not used. You also realize that the prints in draft mode do not look quite good. Therefore, you cannot really cut down on ink usage.

If this sounds familiar, you think along the lines of thousands of other people who are in the same predicament. After purchasing expensive printers, they find out that they will have to spend much more on ink. This keeps some consumers from buying the device that they need.

However, it is actually not so difficult to manufacture printing ink. With adequate research, it is possible to make ink that will not damage laser or inkjet printers. Smaller manufacturers who concentrate solely on research and production of ink manage to keep the prices of ink surprisingly low. If you find such a supplier and get your cartridges from it, you will save a lot.

While there are some dependable manufacturers of ink, many dupes try to take advantage of people who wish to use generic products. Since no brand image is built through expensive advertising campaigns, unscrupulous dealers take advantage of the anonymity and sell sub-standard supplies in the market. These products harm printers and spread fear amongst common people.

To save yourself from sub-standard products, you must identify the reputable manufacturers who back their products with adequate customer services. Since it is not possible for consumers to try out many dealers before settling for one, some websites are reviewing the products and services of these companies. The deals and bargains are also listed on these sites. Therefore, you can go through the options and choose the right company and deal according to your printing needs.

With generic color printer ink, you will get great print quality and save money at the same time!

Compatibility between an ink cartridge and a printer is a love story as old as Romeo and Juliet — the cost is often high and there are requirements one must follow. Like the Montagues and the Capulets, HP and Epson have very distinct and patented ways for ensuring their printers use the compatible ink cartridge. For instance, there is no such thing as “universal ink.” This is because it is not the ink that makes the printer work, it is the cartridge. Some printer inks will not perform well if used in the wrong printer and can do damage. Because there are two main types of cartridges, you must ensure you are purchasing the correct one or you risk damage to your printer.

The two main types of printer cartridges are sponge-filled cartridges and vacuum retained cartridges. The sponge-filled cartridge is the most common type, used especially by inkjet printer cartridges. Hewlett-Packard mainly develops vacuum printer ink cartridges for their printers. The vacuum printer ink cartridges are Original Equipment Manufacturer, or OEM. OEM cartridges are cartridges that are branded and made by a specific printer manufacturer specifically for their printers. Manufacturers are able to sell their printers cheap because the consumer is required to purchase rather expensive OEM ink cartridge replacements. This is where the manufacturer makes the most profit. To offset the high costs of ink, many manufacturers offer lower cost printers and postage free returns for ink cartridge recycling.

Additionally, printer manufacturers like Epson change the way their printers access the chip on the cartridge. Due to this, a newer cartridge won’t work on an older Epson printer. Even within the same printer model, one cartridge may work with a compatible and another may not. Many times it’s possible to swap out sets of cartridges from various manufacturers in a printer, but you are unable to combine parts of each set for use at the same time. This is due to the patented “chip” or printer head used by the manufacturer.

Finally, there is a huge technological market for printers and ink cartridges. According to CSMonitor.com, Hewlett-Packard spends $1 billion a year on printing and ink research. This is a figure that generic vendors can’t compete with. This heavy investment is why ink costs thousands of dollars per gallon and why the company thinks consumers will stick to high-quality brands.

The ink cartridge is outfitted with a printer head that is read by the printer’s sensors.

If the head is correctly coded, the cartridge is accepted. If not, the printer will not work and damage could be done to it. Like Romeo and Juliet, the printer needs the compatible ink cartridge to work — without the correct one, it dies.

When financial times get tough, many people often choose to save money by refilling their printer ink cartridges instead of buying a new printer cartridge. There are many kits that can be bought to refill a cartridge at home. Although there are many benefits of refilling the ink cartridge, it can also cause quite a mess. Is refilling an ink cartridge really worth the fuss? If you use special tips to avoid making the mess, than the answer is yes.

Pros of Refilling
If you go through multiple printer ink cartridges a year, it can be easy for you to save money by refilling an empty ink cartridge yourself. By doing this, you will no longer have to pay for the whole ink cartridge, saving you, on average, 70 percent of what you would have paid to do so. Not only will this save you money, but refilling the ink cartridge is great for the environment as well. Printer cartridges are made up of materials that don’t decay, so they sit in landfills taking up space. It’s just another reason to feel good about doing it yourself.

Cons of Refilling
Although there are many benefits to refilling printer ink, there are also some downsides to doing it yourself. It is very common to make a mess when you first begin refilling a printer cartridge. The spilled ink can stain tables, clothing and skin. Luckily, there are many tips you can use to avoid and clean up the mess.

Avoiding the Mess
One reason people are often discouraged from refilling ink cartridges is because you can easily make a huge mess. However, there are many tips that can be used to make the process easy and almost fool-proof, minimizing the mess. It is important to remember practice makes perfect. — the more times you refill the ink, the more practice you will receive. This means the mess will decrease with each refill to the point where you will eventually make no mess at all. To avoid any spilled ink from staining the surface you are working on, place newspaper or cardboard over the surface. This way, if ink is spilled the newspaper or cardboard can simply be thrown away. It is also common for you to get ink on your hands the first few times you refill the printer ink. You can wear gloves to avoid this. If you happen to get ink on your skin, you can use a mild solution of bleach and water to remove the ink from your skin.

In the grand scheme of things, it seems worth a little mess and hassle to save a decent chunk of money by refilling the ink cartridge for your printer on your own.

Printers are machines that take information from a computer screen and put it onto a piece of paper. This can be text, say from a typed document, or graphics, like images from a digital camera. Originally, this was all that could be printed, but now, anything seen on a computer screen can be printed, allowing users to make newspapers, wedding invitations or even mixed-media paintings. Of course, like a pen needs ink to write, a printer needs something to put on the paper, and in the printer’s case it’s either printer ink or toner.

Toner is a black powder that bonds to paper when heated, so pages printed from these printers come out warm. Photocopy machines commonly use this process as well. You may have noticed warm photocopies in the past. Printers that use toner are called laser printers. Here, a laser draws an image onto a printing drum. This drum attracts toner from a cartridge and rolls the toner onto a piece of paper. These printers tend to be more expensive than printers that use ink, however, the cost per page printed is significantly less in this method. This is the advantage of using toner. When these printers run out of toner, the cartridge is replaced with a new one, and the old cartridge is sent in for recycling. Refilling a toner cartridge is generally not done. In the past, toner was refilled by pouring the powder directly into the machine, but it was very mess and most printers use cartridges now. Due to their cost-effectiveness, laser printers using toner are generally used in businesses that create a large number of documents.

Printers that use ink are called ink-jet printers. Here, an ink cartridge moves from side to side and shoots out ink onto the paper. These write text or draw a picture line by line. Usually, these printers have one ink cartridge for black ink, and another for magenta, yellow and cyan (or blue) ink, allowing full color printing. When the cartridges run out of ink, they need to be replaced or refilled with printer ink. However, some manufacturers do not recommend refilling used cartridges. Ink-jet printers are generally good for home use, excelling in printing out digital pictures. Though ink-jet printers are very inexpensive, the cost of printer ink can add up quickly if high volume printing is required.

To summarize, there are two types of printers – ink-jet printers that use ink cartridges, and laser printers, which use toner cartridges. Knowing which type of printer you have will tell you what you need to purchase. Or, just write down the make and model of your printer, bring it to an office supply store, and they will bring you what you need.

Just as turning off the lights in your home helps save electricity, finding effective ways to recycle can help save the environment and your pocketbook. Ink cartridges are no exception to this rule. Recycled ink cartridges are very easy to refill, and you can usually  save on average 33% (but as much as 70%) from the retail value, but how do ink cartridges affect the environment? What can I do as an individual to help?

Discount remanufactured ink cartridges are an incredible way to both help the environment and save money. Large amounts of pollution are created each year due to the millions of pounds of ink cartridges that are just thrown away. Recycling ink cartridges allows the materials that were used in the manufacture of the ink cartridge to be used again and again, which will save oil used to create the plastic casing. Plus, the fact that these are remanufactured and recycled, you save money as opposed to paying for an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

Empty printer ink cartridges are made of non-biodegradable plastics and metals. These substances, if put in a landfill, will take over 450 years to break down! In addition, the chemicals used make up printer ink as well as the chemicals that make these inks resistant to fading, are also quite detrimental to the environment. Capable of seeping into the soil and finding their way into the ground water, these chemicals can eventually get mixed into other bodies of water.

Remanufactured laser toner cartridges also save energy. OEM ink cartridges take 3.5 quarts of oil each to manufacture. With one billion ink cartridges being thrown away each year, the result is 875 million gallons of crude oil disappearing straight into the landfill! If we learn to recycle our ink cartridges as well as other plastic products, our dependence on foreign oil could be cut drastically.

Being conscientious with the printer ink cartridges that you use is a great environmentally responsible, as well as financially responsible, choice. Recycle empty cartridges and buy remanufactured ink as much as possible, Mother Earth, and your checkbook, will thank you.

Are you ready to make the switch to remanufactured ink cartridges? Printerink.com has already done your homework for you. Printerink.com has information on the top six online ink cartridge companies right at your fingertips and can provide you will all of the necessary information and reviews to make your remanufactured ink cartridge purchase as quick and easy as possible.