HP wins a printer ink patent case

Interesting story Augie and one I had not see until you posted it, so good thread, purely a few random thoughts on this as my brain is not in gear again.

But from what I remember from Kodak days is the inks are the main seller for profit and companies that produce printers will generally slice the margins on the printer and sell them at a loss or close too, in the hope that the ink sales will make up the difference, especially when you can by a HP Deskjet 100 for £19 the inks to power it are standard cheapest 301 BLK is £12 and tri-colour is £15 a £2 difference (all original components for a rough guide, could find printer and inks cheaper and even original supplied ones from the likes of Costco, PCWorld, Amazon etc)

You'd want a printer to last a few years at best and depending on your printing usage, is it not worth it at those costs to buy a new printer each year or on the 2nd time of needing new inks as its near a dammit cheaper to do so? especially if you can find a printer like the above in a sale and buy a few of them, major downside is what you do with the old printer, give it away, sell it on a 3rd party auction site to fill up the worlds landfill.

Ok variables come into play as what quality you need of output, to is it an AIO type device and can you be bothered to buy a new printer when you inks run out, but as printer ink is per volume very expensive compared to other liquids. If ink costs where cheaper then folk would not try and source 3rd party inks from these other none OEM suppliers, this could set a dangerous president in other 3rd party suppliers of cheaper clone consumables for hardware falling foul of the same law, the music industry shot themselves in the foot by excessive over pricing and look where we are with all of that at this present moment.

We as consumers can vote with our pockets.

 

Yeah I hear your pain and annoyance Augie on this sector of the market in PC hardware. I have a HP AIO and it works well, I tend to buy inks rarely as I don't print a lot these days unless in work, which led me onto the thought of going with a Laser as the cartridge in my HP Laser in work lasts for ages. If it wasn't for needing a scanner and the AIO printer fits all scenarios over a Printer and separate scanner (don't have the desk space for both), I'd go laser.

 

Me too Augie, it was just a thought and I'm not going to go laser at home, cannot justify the cost per usage and its easier to buy a new printer if the old one is starting to bail out, as many good deals around.

I did buy some HP inks a while back for this printer in bulk as Costco had some good deals, so those will likely last me this year.