Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Case Study: How To Get Better Technology

By Carl Cooner


Ink cartridges are the replaceable parts of an ink jet printing system that contain the ink that the print-head uses to print on the paper. The ink in a cartridge is contained in one or more ink reservoirs that are partitioned off inside the ink cartridge.

Most of today's ink jet printers are thermal ink jet printers which means there is a heating element inside each of the ink reservoirs with a tiny metal plate called a resistor. The resistor receives a signal from the printer and the heating element heats up, vaporizing the ink, forcing a tiny droplet of out through the nozzle and onto the paper.

It's common knowledge that ink cartridges are usually expensive. It often happens that replacing your ink cartridges costs more than buying a brand new printer. It is a common marketing strategy among printer manufacturers to sell printers below cost only to recover the lost profit later from the sale of printer ink over the life of the printer.

As manufacturers make most of their profit from the sale of ink, manufacturers have taken many measures against competing ink cartridges which include compatible and after-market refillable options as possible alternatives to manufactured cartridges. Manufacturers often add electronic contacts and computer chips to their cartridges that allow the ink cartridge to communicate information to the printer and to your computer. Often, this kind of technology can be used to limit what kind of cartridges you can use in your printer, not allowing you to use anything other than the manufactured ink cartridges. Some manufacturers have even made it so your printer will not function if your ink cartridge is low or has been refilled.

Despite the measures taken against them, third party and off brand alternatives will still thrive as long as printer cartridges remain expensive. There are a number of third party alternatives the consumer can explore including recycled or re-manufactured cartridges, compatible cartridges, ink sold in bulk and cartridge refill kits. Often, though, these options are messy and difficult as can be the case with refilling your own cartridges or they can have high failures rates as can be the case with re-manufactured and compatible cartridges. On page problems, such as colors bleeding together and streaking have also been reported with refilled and re-manufactured cartridges. Refillable compatible cartridges, though, are often manufactured to be refilled and are therefore more reliable and easier to refill than the original manufactured ink cartridges.

This is the dilemma - is it worth trying to save money on ink cartridges? In the end, no one can say either way what will work best for you; that's a decision you have to make.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment