We have received so many questions over the last eight months, that I thought it would be good to share them with you.
Canon Printers consistently win top awards in their field. Canon produces great paper, great printers and excellent cameras. But when it comes to being 'Green' with planet earth, Canon does not make that very easy for anyone.
When you purchase a Canon printer, or multifunction machine, you pay a price that is sometimes downright unbelievable. Canon is known to add a printer to camera package, for as little as $10! They offer excellent printers for the amazing sum of $40 and up. And if you are a savvy shopper, you may find incredible deals on New Egg, Tiger Direct, J&R, Buy.com or even TechforLess.
What most people do not realize when they purchase a printer is how much they will pay for consumables.
In the case of cli-8, and pgi-5 Canon ink cartridges, you can expect to pay between $15 and $18 a cartridge, or if you go to Costco, you may get a four cartridge multi-pack for $55.
So how many color photographs or pages, will you get for all that money ($55 + $18 = $73).
Based on the standard of 5% color coverage, you will get as many as 280 pages. Please remember that 5% color coverage is certainly not an 8.5 x 11 full color photograph - you will get a whole let less of these. But for average documents, with a little color here and there, 280 pages is spot on, and you may even extend that number to over 300.
Well at this point, you need to ask yourself how much do you print?
If you print a couple of photographs every two or three months, and just run a few letters, you probably will only need to replace your cartridges once or twice a year - so your costs overall are not that high.
If you have children, and, or a home business, you may be replacing cartridges once every month, and that can be very expensive.
So what can you do?
Let's look at 9 options:
1) Refill your oem Canon cartridges, and over-ride your ink control warnings.
PROS: super savings on ink.
CONS: messy, annoying over-riding the ink warnings every time you print, invalidates your printer warranty, and if you have a fax - forget it, it will not work.
2) Replace your oem Canon cartridges with compatible ink cartridges.
PROS: much cheaper ($3 a cart versus $15 - 17)
CONS: you have to peel off the chip from your old canon cartridge, and glue it onto the compatible cartridge, and again you have to over-ride the ink warnings every time you print, which invalidates your printer warranty, and if you have a fax - forget it, it will not work.
3) Buy Compatible Ink Cartridges with chips.
PROS: Cheaper than Oem ($5 - $8 each versus $15 - $17 each), Ink Control works, Warranty is undisturbed.
CONS: Be careful if you purchase remanufactured cartridges - some do not meet the standard and may leak. Make sure you know the quality of the ink before you buy, because some inks have not been filtered properly, have excessive alcohol levels, do not have uv components, and thus may fade faster, or clog printer heads.
4) Use a Continuous Ink System (CIS) system.
PROS: never worry about ink control again, never run out of ink again, you can see the ink levels, bulk ink is very cheap compared to cartridges. this is a green choice.
CONS: Be careful choosing your system, there are no inspection standards developed yet for these. Some will be outstanding, but the horror stories if you get a poorly built system may not only ruin your printer, but they may ruin your furniture and carpet. So do your homework before you buy one of these.
5) Reset & Refill
PROS: Resetters are now available that will reset the chips on your Canon Cartridge so it will be recognized by your printer, and will continue to read ink levels. RKS Technik engineered the first stand alone resetter in 2005, and is currently into their fourth version as of this writing. All the cli-8/pgi-5 resetters are either old RKS versions (like those sold by Sudhaus) or are copies of the RKS. I will write another whole article about that later.
CONS: refilling is still a messy job. The worst part of course is plugging up the hole after you refill the cart.
Still to come:
6) Reset with Chip Extenders, and compatible cartridges
7) Reset with chips on Permanent Refillable Cartridges
8) Auto Reset Chips, with Ink Control, Chip Extenders, and Compatible cartridges
9) Auto Reset Chips, and Permanent Refillable Cartridges
