Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Getting the best printer value for your money this year!

There are a lot of deals out there this year. 18 printer deals listed on Black Friday.info alone. One of which is for a free printer with purchase of laptop. Good deal, huh? Not too good to be true, of course, but a good deal none the less. You wouldn’t think that a free printer would be too expensive, would you? Well just ask an owner of a Dell printer. The only place you can buy ink for a Dell printer is directly from Dell. No competition, no shopping around, and no compatibles are available.

I’m sure you have noticed that the price of printers has dropped considerably. At first glance, this would seem to be similar to other electronic products. After all, DVD players were very expensive when they first came out, now they are quite reasonable. When most “gadgets” are on the market long enough, the novelty wears off and the price is lowered. Simple supply and demand takes effect. Unfortunately, the pricing structure of printers is designed differently. The industry plans to make their money not from the printer sale, but from the ink and toner sales. Most manufacturers are counting on the fact that you will buy the name brand ink and toner. As a matter of fact, if you attempt to use a compatible product, or generic brand of ink, your printer may send you an error message that warns you that the ink may not produce the same quality printing as the OEM, or brand name. Some manufacturers have a built in feature that stops your printer from working altogether, if you use a compatible product. You then have to fool your printer into accepting the compatible ink or toner. Most people won’t take the time, even though it could well save them hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the life of the printer. (Depending on how much they print, of course) The manufacturer is counting on that. It is their sole goal to make more money from the unit you purchased or received for FREE!

Another trap is having an inkjet color printer that only requires two cartridges; one black and one tri-color. Although this seems like a good idea, less numbers to remember, less ink to buy, it will cost you money in the long run. If you run out of one of the colors in your tri-color cartridge, you must replace the entire cartridge, wasting the better part of the other two colors.

Everyone looks at the price and features of a printer, almost no one stops to figure out true cost. The largest part of this cost is the ink. The easiest way to figure this is to divide the price of the ink by the yield per cartridge. This will give you the per-page cost for each printer. It is only after you compare printers with this “apples to apples” approach, can you truly discover which printer is a bargain, and which printers only look like one. To compare printing costs just click here: Inkjet Cartridges & Toner Supplies

Lastly, there have been certain changes in the industry that will have a future effect on your printing costs. Probably the most dramatic example of this is the recent lawsuits brought by the Seiko Epson Company. Other manufacturers are watching Epson closely and the eventual outcome of this litigation will very likely affect the prices of ink and toner for all brands in the future. Using patent laws, Epson is blocking the importing of all compatible cartridges.

Epson requested and was granted a general exclusion order from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). This order effectively prevents the importation of Epson compatible products from any source, and it doesn’t matter if the products are in actual violation of the patents or not. Now I’m all in favor of protecting intellectual property, but this certainly sounds like a monopoly. If the major manufacturers put out a new ink cartridge every time they release a new model printer, then protect that cartridge with a patent because they have changed the location of one nozzle, soon the only place to buy ink for your Epson is Epson. Hmmm now where have I heard that before?