How much for 70 sheets of A4 colour copying at Staples?

Cartridges with 4ml of ink cost 50p to make but sold at £3,000 per litre :shock:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...icks-mean-constantly-buy-refills.html[/QUOTE]

Ink cartridges are a well-known rip off, but what can we do?

My old Epson printer, which still works well, doesn't have a chip reader, but when it needs replacing I'm sure I'll find that I'm being controlled by a cartridge chip reader. One option is to buy recycled cartridges or to fill your own old ones, but I understand that quality suffers.

What we really need is a manufacturer who is not greedy and is willing to compete, but I'll believe that when I see it.

I think that when we need to replace our printer I'll go for a laser printer. Toner is expensive, but lasts a lot longer.
 
I think a lot of places charge high for color because they assume (rightly or wrongly) that color is likely to mean high coverage. Start printing large photos or brocures with colored backgrounds and the number of sheets per cartridge will go way down.

Still over a pound a sheet is a rip-off. If you want reasonablly priced high quality printing/copying and are prepared to travel into manchester then I highly reccomend muprint.
 
Ink cartridges are a well-known rip off, but what can we do?
Get yourself a CISS

Here is but an example of what is available: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...=epson ciss system&sprefix=epson+ciss,aps,215

Chip readers are easily got around by the systems, and so is the inbuilt Epson 'redundancy software' :wink:

Quality is almost identical - it's mostly the paper that counts!

A single 11ml cartridge at £8 (or £2 for a 'compatible) or 500ml of ink for approx £5 is a no brainer!

At last count my R285 has printed over 160,000 pages (lots of leaflet printing) and still going strong, so dread to think how many thousands I would have spent!
 
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£88 for 70 sheets? To coin a phrase, "Bloody Hell!"

If inkjet printing would have been good enough, I would have bought a HP Deskjet 3055A (about £49) and half a ream of 100g paper (£5) Even if new cartridges were required, these can be bought for under £25 the pair.

That's an outlay of £54 plus maybe a further £25. Total £79. And you still have the printer and 150+ sheets of good quality paper!

The cheapest lasers start at around £120 but even with the supplied cartridges should do around 500 pages! Trouble is the toners are £35+ each, but will do 1000+ pages!
 
The cheapest lasers start at around £120 but even with the supplied cartridges should do around 500 pages! Trouble is the toners are £35+ each, but will do 1000+ pages!

I'm assuming you're talking colour, here, because mono lasers have gone for as little as £50 new. Currently around the £80 point for a wireless one.
 
If you get stuck again then try printroom-online.co.uk I have used them for a few years and they are great. I order around 50 - 100 pages at a time and they are 13p for 100gsm in colour or 19p on 160gsm. If you ask they also do 120gsm which is what I get.

Delivery is cheap and he posts them out immediately so I often get them the next day. Payment is on delivery rather than upfront which is strange.

Ps I have nothing to do with the above company, just know good service is hard to come by so happy to sing praises of a good company when I find one. I find staples extortionate, needed some laminated pages binding together and it cost a fortune.
 
Just a little off the general point of the topic but, having previously looked at the CISS mentioned by ellal, and seeing how it is installed on youtube, it just doesn't fill me with confidence on its longevity. The cabling/tubing for the ink always looks like it's going to come loose at some point, get jammed, and cause a hell of a mess.

Does anyone else here, besides ellal, have the system and would recommend it?
 
The company I work for bought the CISS system for several Epson and HP printers. It worked for a short time (about 2-3 months IIRC) but then failed with inks not flowing correctly and heads blocking etc. I would not recommend it, especially where the printer is the only one available. (Initially we cleaned out the CISS units, but they have now met the Skip)
 
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