Printing
December 8th, 2009
Wow. Even in Japan, printers are down to about fifty-five bucks. Sachi and I saw several in this price range when we went to pick up more postcards and some printer ink.
And I think that’s the idea: you get lulled into buying the printer for cheap, and then get hit with the real profit-margin sales when you’re forced to buy ink.
Well I’ve been suckered into buying those ink jet printers, twice now, when I go home for a couple of months while I’m studying for the bar, where the replacement ink is only a few dollars cheaper than the machine itself. For the money I spend on replacing the ink I could have bought a very nice laser and left it for my parents to use.
I am a firm believer in the use of laser printers. The first laser I had was a xerox. I bought one toner cartridge every year or year and a half (it said it was good for 3000 pages), it cost $80 but it was cheap. I then switched to an all-in-one brother machine that was really unbelievable (photo copied like an office machine, print, fax, etc…) and the toner cartridge was $23 – but didn’t last nearly as long as the xerox.
For color it’s probably still a toss up. If you have a b&w laser for volume you might be able to make do with an inkjet color for the occasions where you want to print a photo. But laser color machines have been coming down continuously and if I was stably situated I’m sure I’d get one of those.
The next time I buy an ink jet I’m going to go to the ink section first and find the cheapest third-party refills… and then buy the machine that takes those.