Rob Michaels kicked off a good thread, I thought I'd possibly print it out to digest later. {24 pages, Hmmm.}

At Office Depot this morning a fellow told me they'd been out of color cartridges for about 3 weeks, due to problems in Indonesia.

Anyone else have further information?

-- flora (***@__._), September 15, 1999

Answers

I'll be checking that out tonight...at Office Depot & Office Max... I sure hope that wasn't true.

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), September 15, 1999.

I bought a cartridge refill kit (for color and black cartridges) from a T.V. shopping channel.It includes the inks,syringe with needle and cartridge flush.The box says 1 to 6 refills,much cheeper then buying a new cartridge each time you run out of ink.

After running out of the black ink I went to their web site to buy only the black ink(since I already have the rest of the kit) ,but their prices of course had gone up.I then went to our newspaper office and they gave me the name and phone number of their supplier.They ordered me a pint of black ink for $40.00 (could of got a quart for $60.00) and another black cartridge.From what I was told,you can refill it alot but eventually will need a new one.

Another of things you may want to get extra is paper for your printer.

-- maggie (aaa@aaa.com), September 15, 1999.

maggie,

I've stored one of those kits for a last resort solution for a while. Are the scare stories I've heard of voided warranties & damaged machines overblown?

-- flora (***@__._), September 15, 1999.

Hi!, flora....I just called the local Office Depot...the lady who took my call said they had plenty in stock at $26.88..this for the HP DeskJet series 600 printer. I just bought an HP two-pack black cartridge at Sam's Club for $49.88, and Sam's had plenty of both black and color in stock. Ole Gillette had it right, practically give away the razor handles, sell the blades. I've spent more in ink costs in the two years I've owned the printer than it cost to begin with. (And I am =not= including the cost of paper.) :) Do I want to go back to my 24 pin dot-matrix? No way!..but I would like to see ink cartriges come down in price just a little. Sorry, flora, I didn't intend to go off on a tangent about ink prices, my 'hot button' just gets pushed when I have to pay as much for an ink cartridge as I have for a 32 meg 'stick' of 10ns SDRAM. Hey, it's only money, right? ---ttyl---

HOT BUTTON (OFF)

Ray in OKC, OK on 09/15/1999

-- ray (raymondo@prodigy.net), September 15, 1999.

Flora,

I haven't heard of anything negative about the refill ink kits.When I spoke to the supplier,She has used ink to refill her cartridges for some time.She didn't seem concerned.I haven't had any problems with doing it either.

-- maggie (aa@aaa.com), September 15, 1999.

I resurrected an Epson LX 800 dot matrix printer that I bought in the mid 1980's. For routine text hard copies it can't be beaten. Each ribbon lets me print almost 1000 pages, and the replacements cost about six dollars.

The ink is waterproof.

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 15, 1999.

Depends on what you are doing. I am doing photo reproductions. No increase in price for those things as of yesterday.

Best wishes,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 15, 1999.

WHOA THERE! I have gone through the ultimately fruitless method of trying to refill the ink cartridges using bulk ink in bottles with syringes, etc. , and I hate to say it, but if you have my model printer EPSON SC600, you just threw away a lot of money for nothing! The reason is that each cartridge is PRESSURIZED, so when you puncture it and fill it with the syringe, it's TOAST. I could NOT get my printer to print anything after, regardless of cleaning/purging. I ended up throwing out the kit, at a loss of about $50. But there is good news! There is a web-site, with e-mail address cytoink@cytoink.com that sells replacement cartridges FOR EVERY MAJOR PRINTER NAME, color and b&w. They are in vancouver, canada, so I'm not sure if they ship to the USA. their web page is http://www.cytoink.com the b&w carts are about 1/4 of store price(by the way, I'm using one now with NO PROBLEM.) The color is about 1/3 retail price. Check them out!

-- profit_of_doom (doom@helltopay.com), September 15, 1999.

Profit of doom,

I have a Lexmark color jetprinter 1020.I had to make a hole on top of cartridge,then fill and covered opening afterwards.I had no problems with it,sorry you did.Thanks for thee info on where to get more cartridges at a savings.

-- maggie (aaa@aaa.com), September 15, 1999.

If you have the soft of machine where the ink and print head are a combined sealed unit, there's not much risk of trying a compatible or a refill. Short of someone selling something that's never been tested at all, the worst you can expect is inferior output that can be fixed by throwing away the "compatible" and installing a new "real" one. If your quality requirement is not high, you'll probably be happy.

Same for laser printers if the toner and charge transfer roller are a single unit.

If you have one of the advanced machines where the ink is separate from the print head, or a laser printer where the toner is separate from a longer-life charge transfer unit, then don't even THINK about using non-approved ink or toner. (It may indeed wreck the unit ... and once you've fed it dodgy ink or toner, how do you get it OUT again ?!)

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), September 16, 1999.