Paul's Comments

Don't ever buy an Epson printer. I did, and I regret it. Severely.

I had a nice Brother laser printer, which developed a "spotting" problem where a large grey circle would get printed down the page. This means the drum has gone bad, which is probably reasonable as I've had the printer for maybe 4 years and have printed undoubtedly thousands of pages over the years.

Well, right now I didn't have the money to buy another laser printer (a new laser costs around $149 or so; a new drum costs about $150; you do the math). So I bought an inkjet printer so I could also get spot color.

I first got ripped off because I paid full price for an Epson Workforce 30 color printer at around $69. I could have bought some other printer for less if I had looked around a bit more. Then I got ripped off again when I discovered that the (regular capacity #69) cartridges are $18 for black and $14 for each of the other colors (cyan, magenta and yellow.) The larger capacity Epson #68 cartridges, which supposedly hold twice as much ink, are just a little below twice as expensive. That the standard capacity cartridges for Canon (#6, I think) in black run about $8 and are about the same capacity in terms of pages is something I should have remembered.

But I've found out two things. Because people print in black so much, the Epson holds two black cartridges in addition to the color ones. Only one problem: they might as well be one cartridge, because the Epson, in effect, slaves them together, meaning you can't run with just one black cartridge, you have to have both have ink to use it. When I ran out of black ink, I tried buying one cartridge to get by for the time being. The printer software knows exactly how much ink you have in any cartridge so it knows which one has how much. But it won't allow you to print in black unless both cartridges have ink. So I got ripped off a third time and had to go buy a second black cartridge.

The Epson also uses a "chipped" cartridge, so it knows how much ink is in the cartridge, even if you remove it and put it back, the cartridge itself has a memory, which means you can't refill it unless you can alter the chip. Meaning I've gotten ripped off a fourth time as you can't use a refill kit to reduce cost. That's a new one. Also, the printer I'm using is fairly new, which means there's no aftermarket cartridges, I can't buy a less expensive alternative brand, I have to buy Epson's own cartridges.

But the final straw that has broken the camel's back is the fifth rip off, the insistence by the printer driver software that the document I want to print - which is all black and has no color - cannot be printed unless I replace the cyan cartridge. Notwithstanding that I will not be using cyan on this document, if any cartridge is empty, the printer will not be allowed to print.

This sort of greedy arrogance means that, as soon as I can, I will be replacing this Epson printer with something less demanding in terms of ink. Oh, it does nice printouts - but any inkjet printer is probably similar - but this is unconsionable. As I've only used the printer for a month I'll donate it to some worthy organization, a school or public library, but I'll switch to one that's going to cost less.

Or I'll get a laser printer - and I will check how much resupplies are going to cost - and I'll use it for black and save the Epson for spot color, which normally is not very often.

I should have checked, but when my laser printer went bad I needed something fast. As I'm disabled going into a store and taking one home really isn't much of an option, so I had to use the Internet and mail order. And the Iron Triangle got me. What's the Iron Triangle? "Fast, easy or cheap. Pick any two." I chose fast and easy, so of course, it wasn't cheap.

Next time I'll do a little research, and go with something easy and cheap; print speed is not that critical, but cost of supplies is. It's not just how much it costs to buy it, but how much the "total cost of ownership" is over the time you have it.

Epson is not the most expensive in terms of ink; that honor goes to Lexmark. Their black cartridges are around $24 but you could refill them. But it looks like Epson is going to win second place as second most expensive printer to use. With what they charge for ink their printers should be a lot cheaper.