Almost everyone needs a printer, but watch out. Many printer manufacturers seduce you with low prices on their inkjet models only to gouge you on replacement ink cartridges. The cost of two or three ink cartridges can be as much as the original price of the printer itself, and inkjet printers tend to suck up ink rapidly.
A program dubbed Ink Saver (www.inksaver.com), shown in Figure 21-2, claims to reduce the amount of ink your printer uses without any noticeable difference in print quality. Ink Saver is compatible with most Epson, Canon, and Hewlett-Packard printers, but you can download a trial version to see if it works with your particular inkjet printer.
No matter how much ink a program like Ink Saver can help you conserve, you'll eventually need to buy replacement inkjet cartridges. Instead of getting them from the printer manufacturer, buy refill kits or alternate inkjet cartridges from Amazon Imaging (www.amazonimaging.com) or RhinoTek (www.buyrhinotek.com). To find more online retailers that sell replacement inkjet, visit Buy Ink Cartridges.com (www.buyinkcartridges.com). These third-party inkjet companies sell refill kits and replacement cartridges for most printers at up to half of what the original manufacturers would charge for the exact same thing.
If you're shopping for an inkjet printer, compare the prices of replacement cartridges first. The printer that looks so appealing today might wind up costing you several hundred dollars in the future for replacement inkjet cartridges alone. Look for the cheapest cartridges and then find the printers that work with them.
To foil the companies that offer cheap replacement cartridges, printer manufacturers have come up with several tactics to force consumers to buy inkjet cartridges only from them. Hewlett-Packard puts computer chips in inkjet cartridges to prevent them from being refilled. The moment a cartridge runs out of ink, the chip prevents it from ever being used again, no matter how much you refill it with replacement ink, although you can buy new chips from SmartChipSolutions (www.smartchipsolutions.com) to trick your printer into accepting a third-party replacement ink cartridge. However, Lexmark and Hewlett-Packard have also even patented the print heads on certain inkjet cartridges, thereby preventing anyone from making a compatible replacement cartridge. If you can't find a replacement inkjet cartridge for your printer from a third party, now you know why.
If you have a laser printer, don't throw away your old toner cartridges. Check your local Yellow Pages under computer supplies and look for stores (or contact Amazon Imaging) that refill or sell used cartridges for your particular model.