Shopping For Ink Jet, Laser Printers and Cartridges - What You Need to Know

Ink Jet printers have been around for years. They print good quality color, they are reliable, and every office has one or more churning out copy at any given moment. If everyone is using them, they must be a great value, right? Wrong.

Even though inexpensive ink jets have dominated the workplace (a typical printer costs as little as $70 or less), it is more likely that the manufactures' marketing expertise along with their knowledge of how profitable replacement ink jet cartridges are is what's responsible for placing multitudes of these printers on desks around the world than the initial low cost to purchase an ink jet printer.

Printer manufacturers know how profitable ink jet cartridges sales are and they want you to keep buying new replacement cartridges. A typical set of print head style ink jet cartridges can cost around $55 and deliver about 400 printed pages at 5% page coverage (if you print photos, that page count goes way down). Four hundred pages at $55 is about 14 cents per page. This can get quite costly for an office that has no choice but to print, and print, and print some more. There has to be a way to cut the cost of printing and still maintain quality, right? There is!

Many folks have discovered huge cost savings using the emerging compatible and re-manufactured ink jet industry. Refilled, re-manufactured, and compatible cartridges, while once viewed with a skeptical eye, have now found their way into the mainstream with the quality and savings being enjoyed by private users and businesses alike.

Most standard ink jet cartridges are available in compatible and/or re-manufactured styles and generally cost about half that of their brand new counterparts. While standard brick and mortar retailers offer these cartridges, online retailers with far less overhead can offer even greater savings!

Another great way to drastically cut your printing expense is laser printing. Laser printers have come way down in price in recent years with a typical black and white printer costing around $100 or so. A typical black toner cartridge costs around $70 and produces about 6,000 pages at 5% coverage. That's little more than a penny per page! Color laser printers can cost a bit more, but at such substantial savings and the fact that laser toner cartridges won't clog or dry up like ink jet cartridges do, the switch to laser printing is a real no-brainer.

Toner cartridges for laser printers are available in compatible and re-manufactured versions as well. Typical savings for buying these are between 30 and 50% over buying brand new. There again, with substantially less overhead than typical brick and mortar retailers, online retailers can offer an even greater savings.

If you must continue using ink jet printers, consider the benefit and savings of purchasing compatible and re-manufactured cartridges and if you're ready, consider switching to the huge savings of laser printing!

For more information and helpful tips, visit http://www.recyclemasters.com - Recycle Masters specializes in compatible and re-manufactured ink jet and toner cartridges. They can provide insightful tips on cost per page reduction of your printing needs.



Paul C. Nelson is an IT professional and author of articles regarding information systems and technology.

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