Printers and cartridges, part 2

[gurthaew]

Back on February 13th. I did an analysis of how much it was costing me to print from a Lexmark inkjet printer. Back then, I bought a 4XLA cartidge from Lexmark directly at a cost of £23.42.
The "A" means that it is refillable, and, as we have a Cartridge World shop close to PC World it is possible to use PCW as a convenient car park and visit CW. On June 3rd., the black ink low warnings started coming after printing 112 pages. I managed a further 18 pages before it started trying to use the colour cartridge saying there was virtually no black ink left. So, a total of 130 pages at a total cost of £23.42, or a cost per page of 18.01 pence.

Today, I needed to be on the Botley Road so I visited Cartridge World. The chap behind the counter said that it would cost £12 to refill, that I may get only one or two more refills before the cartridge was shot and that the cartridge was nowhere near empty. He suggested that next time I go through the printer menus, disable the "print from the colour cartridge" option and use the black until it stops printing. He reckoned that I should be getting 200+ sheets out of that size cartridge. Even getting 200 sheets would bring the cost per page down to 11.71p, a not inconsiderable saving.

So, I have made a note to try to squeeze every last drop out of this cartridge to see how much the cost comes down to.

alitalf , you may want to point hibernia at this post as I know she was interested in printing costs.

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Lasers are (if you believe the numbers) something like a half of that per page - even colour. I got one a few years ago; they're even cheaper now (and network-attached ones are handy).

[gurthaew.livejournal.com]

Hi there. I had bought the inkjet because it was (a) cheap and (b) could scan/copy/fax/be wireless. I _hadn't_ priced up the cost of ink at the time. In general, I keep printing to a minimum so the cost of the occasional cartridge isn't a worry.

Ever since I became TS treasurer, I've had to do a load more printing so I've been keeping tabs on the cost. I'm going to be really interested in how many copies I get from this cartridge, especially if I can get all the ink out.