Most "home" printers these days are incredibly inexpensive to purchase initially, but most of them can get VERY expensive to feed.
One of my printers, for example, cost me $49 new when bought with a 'puter.
The first set of replacement color and black cartridges cost about $65.
Don't just look at first cost, but also pay a LOT of attention to the cost of cartridges and any special papers required. I can make commercial quality 8x10 color prints for about $.41 each. Some printers cost closer to $2-3 each ... (Paper recommendation:
Office Depot Premium Photo Paper for quality color prints,
Presentation Paper for brochures, etcetera - will do good color photo's both sides.)
I'd also like to mention that the provider of ink cartridges I mentioned earlier has most of their cartridges manufactured fresh, not refilled or refurbished. The only time they refurbish / refill is when the printer manufacturer has specificly tied up either the patents or copyrights so that there will be no competition for their overpriced cartridges.
So far, with 5 different Seiko-Epson cartridge series (10 different cartridges), I have not had any problems with the cartridges or ink, nor have any of them been anything other than freshly manufactured.
Much of my printing in the past has been extreme short lead time commercial jobs for clients, and there have been no problems with quality or color balance.
(I suspect this sort of quality is why they have gone from a mom-and-pop-in-the-garage operation in '98 to what is currently the largest internet provider of ink cartridges.)
As to most "refills" and "refill kits" available, I'm dubious of their quality and reliability. Since the survival of my business was at least in part based on print quality and repeatability, there is no way I would have trusted it to low quality supplies.
There is a big difference between 'refilled used cartridges' and 'newly manufactured cartridges.' Just because the cartridges are not manufactured by the printer manufacturer does NOT make them of less quality. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Again, though, everyone has their own opinion(s), and this is just mine. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
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