Anyone know where the best place is to get ink cartridges without breaking the bank?!
Epsom cartridges in the shops are around £30 (!!), but there are some "compatible" cartridges on the internet for just £6... no idea if they are any good though.
Can anyone recommend anywhere?
Fankoo!
I've had a lot of sobering thoughts in my time.... It was them that started me drinking.
i have a HP printer, i've had a look about for cheaper alternatives. PC world do their own brand cartridges, as does WHSmith, cant remember how much cheaper they are, but the cheapest i've found is the computing services dpt in my uni. VAT free and a student discount on toptho you'd prolly have to be a student to pull that one off, so u're best bet is prolly WHSmiths or PCworld.
Viking have offers on cartridges quite often, but once you add on the postage it doesnt make it worth your while!
righty printer carts... unfortunately, the £6 ones although nice and cheap, are just that - it tends to be a false economy in the end - they last less and produce poorer quality prints 9 times out of ten. PLus they can be funny when it comes to faults and things, because they have electronics in them - the epson ones have ink level sensors and things and the likes of HP carts have all the cartridges brains in them - and sometimes they can screw the printer up a bit. At least if you do spend a bit more on genuine stuff, you have a bit of comeback if the printer breaks - any service centre will ask you first thing "has it got genuine ink in it?" and if it hasn't, the first thing they will do is eliminate the dodgy budget cartridges.
I don't have a printer myself... sick of the sight of the blummin things tbh...
Originally Posted by The Quentos
you have a PM
my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net
My printer hasn't had ink for months - I'm debating replacing it (Stylus color 400) or getting more ink.
I find the cheap-skate way is just to empty the ink from papermate pens into the ink tanks - just get the right colours. If you want a vibrant effect, use the inks from highlighter pens.
(Yes, that was a joke.)
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okay well mister comedian u can pay for the replacement of my printer then.....
"The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being." Karl Marx
Gee, you didn't HAVE to take my "tip."okay well mister comedian u can pay for the replacement of my printer then.....
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yo..hope ..really hope...that Revol was kidding...
Im sure he was...cos Kez made me laugh
if you want cheap ink its simple, just chat up the stationary officer at work (preferably female but hey cheap ink is cheap ink)......i think i;ve said too much
Mate... it's bin fodder.. apart from being a 400, and therefore quite age-ed as inkjets go, the fact that it's an EVIL epson, and it hasn't had ink for months precludes it ever working again. Epsons have this nasty habit of just clogging up - bit like blood clotting. If you don't use them regularly ie at least 10 pages a day they will die very quickly as the ink hardens inside the capilliaries in the print head - which costs about £60 last time I checked, and takes about an hour to fit - very very fiddly, you get covered with ink and the blummin things DO NOT like being taken apart. At all. Yours will have another problem tho - all the bits where the ink goes through will be dry, and have a layer of old dry ink on them, and you'll either use a whole set of ink cartridges cleaning the bugger, or it won't recognise that there's ink in there at all. It's dead Jim....
www.systeminsight.co.uk
printer ink is designed to chemically bond with paper on contact, via messy ionisation & ph imbalances. all very complex stuff. the result is that printer ink costs more than dom perrignon.
of all the manufacturers NOT to use compatibles with, Epson are at the top of the list. compatible inks tend to be a lot more suceptible to drying on contact with air, clogging up the printer mechanism (which is not replaceable on epsons). hp compatibles are a much better bet (as every cart has a fresh nozzle system, if it gets blocked a new cart won't be), and canons to a lesser extent (the heads can be replaced as a separate unit). that said canon carts are £6 for the official ones, so...
You can replace the head on epsons... but not if you want to retain your sanity.... or the contents of your wallet...
blankdiscshop.co.uk
- for all you needs, CD-R/RWs Paper, INK, CD case/storage etc etc
VERY GOOD SHOP!!! - and fast delivery
oh - and the "overprint" CDs are great!!! - brand name CDs for pennys!!
..or most of the contents of the printer.. when you open it as half of it seems to be sprung loaded to fling as many of the small, but vital parts all over the room..
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(='.'=)
(")_(")
I used to work at Jessops, and our own brand Epson cartridges worked fine 99% of the time, we rarely had complaints about them, and when we did it was never certain that the cartridge was at fault. TBH, with the price of the printers as low as it is, I'd be inclined to use the cheap cartridges from somewhere like www.7dayshop.com; after 5-10 cartridges (depending on what model printer you have) you'll have saved enough money to buy a new printer anyway if it goes wrong; we had customers that put dozens of our cartridges through their printers with no problems.
I was under the impression that off brand replacements for HP (and Lexmark) printers are actually remanufactured, using an empty original cart. The print heads are in the cartridge, and I can't believe that it's at all easy to reverse engineer the HP design and then start manufacturing it at a cheaper price. That's why used cartridges actually have some value and are collected by charities etc.
I fear you are right about the Epson heads though Tumble. I picked up a Stylus Photo 790 at a bargain price a year or so ago, but I ended up not really using it, and I really don't fancy trying to get it going again. Not such a bargain after all.....
Rich :¬)
Last edited by Rave; 17-02-2004 at 01:58 AM. Reason: broken linky
yep taking epsons apart aint fun, you know your buggered when you see something fly past you and vanish forever
while they can be a bugger to get going again i dont think ive been defeated by an epson so far infact just got a 480 going although it is a bitch trying to refill the carts for it but i aint buying new ones for it as its only for my brother
on topic these seem ok for inks used them a few times without problem http://www.inkcycle.co.uk/
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