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.