How about a bottle of 1985 Don Perignon? Too plebeian? How about some 2003 HP InkJet. Ah, that’s high living.
Ink for home printers is now seven times more expensive than vintage champagne. Ink in a typical replacement cartridge costs about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre.
As the BoingBoing article that links to this notes, replaceable material costs keep rising, even while the hi-tech items they support keep falling in price. Inkjet printers are available for $30 — the replacement cartridges can easily cost you that much. Heck, the $200 Samsung laser printer I picked up last year just needed a $70 toner cartridge …
And, not coincidentally, consumable manufacturers are making their items even less generic, usually with embedded computer chips that ostensibly let the printer better detect low ink conditions and report back to the PC — but which, in reality, mean that the consumable manufacturers can use the DMCA to legally block anyone trying to produce generic, lower-cost versions of the cartridges.
Rrg.
It seems this is all the more reason to keep those old printers running, at least you can usually find a generic that’s much cheaper. In addition to this many printers are setting a time limit on the ink, not just a quantity. The theory is after so many months the ink goes “bad” and is not as high a quality so it will not print, even though there is ink.
I imagine this is something that will shake itself out over time, but it’s immensely irksome in the interim.
I used to be able to refill my ink cartridges quite cheaply. HP has redesigned them so that’s no longer possible.