Tired of Paying Too Much for Ink?
On the first season of the Celebrity Apprentice one of the tasks was to launch a marketing campaign for Kodak’s new inkjet printer line. If you watched that episode, you probably remember KISS bassist Gene Simmons insisting that the slogan he came up with was brilliant.
His slogan for the record was “It’s a Kodak World … Welcome”. Needless to say, Gene’s team lost and “The Donald” promptly fired him.
What the slogan missed out on entirely was the biggest benefit Kodak was promoting with their new printer – it saves money on ink.
And isn’t that what most everyone wants? Especially us writers who are more comfortable editing from the printed page than a computer screen?
Well ever since then, every time I buy an ink cartridge for my HP inkjet printer, I silently scold myself for doling out more for ink than I could be.
For my HP printer, a black cartridge costs about $25.00. A color cartridge costs $54.00. If you buy the combo pack, you can get a black and color cartridge for about $67.00. (I live in Canada, so all prices are in Canadian dollars.)
So after forking out another $67 bucks, I'd finally had enough.
I made up my mind that I was going to look into whether or not I could really save money by switching over to a Kodak printer.
First of all I read the reviews for Kodak printers on amazon.com. They were less-than-stellar to say the least. People had trouble setting them up, they found the instructions confusing, some said they weren’t saving any money; their printer made a lot of noise and so on.
I almost gave up right there.
Then I read a blog post where the writer put Kodak’s claims to the test. He found, by printing out the exact same pages on both the Kodak and a test printer, he saved about 50% on his ink costs.
Encouraging.
A few days later, I went into the only place that seems to sell Kodak printers in town (the local Wal-Mart) and asked a few questions about the only model of Kodak printer they had in stock – the EasyShare 5100.
The sales guy seemed to know less about the printer than I did. But he did know the price. It was $69. About the price of what I paid for my last two cartridges. Plus my replacement cartridges were $10 for black and $15 for color.
So I decided to give it a go.
For the money, it’s a pretty darn, good printer. Sure it’s a little noisy (it actually shakes the stand back and forth while it prints – a similar motion to a washer when it has too many clothes in it), but the quality is great and I’m paying a lot less for ink. So I regulated my HP to the role of back-up printer (a role it’s slipped into quite nicely).
I’m not saying you should buy a Kodak printer. But if you do a lot of printing and you’re tired of paying through the nose for ink, you might want to look into it.
Printing Tip: If you’re printing out copy that you’re going to edit, you can save even more ink if you tell your printer to print in “draft” quality, versus “regular” (no matter what inkjet printer you’re using).
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I have a Kodak printer. And I love it. For the money it does a good job with photos and the color is great. You can get more pages out of a cartridge of black ink than I did any of my other printers I've owned, HP, Lexmark, Cannon. And it is very nice to go to the store and pay 10 bucks for a black cartridge. And feel like I am actually getting my money's worth. Look seriously at the Kodak printer if you are looking for a new one. You will be happy with it.
James W – April 21, 2009 at 11:14 am