It is beyond me why any sane person would purchase a low price Epson printer.  Not because they are no good, they are a really nice product but due to the cost of actually using one.  In other posts I have suggested that using third party cartridges or copies is a good way of reducing the cost, providing you purchase good ones.  Here at Fillink we do sell the good ones and a delivery of new stock arrived today.  The sneaky little electronic chips Epson use to make it difficult to make these products have until now been vanquished by the version 5 circuits on our third party cartridges.  This new delivery however has version 6 chips.  This can only mean that our suppliers have got wind of the fact that, either new Epson printers will not accept version 5 chips or there is an updated driver now available that renders version 5 chips unusable or worse, both.  Beware, do not update the driver for your Epson printer and do not purchase version 5 chipped cartridges for your recently purchased printer.

The most common current Epson cartridges on the market today by far are the to711, to712, to713 and to714, black, yellow, cyan and magenta.

Most of our Epson customers use them.  Cartridges of this type are able to contain a little under 20ml of ink.  A year ago we noticed that they only contained 14ml and recently only 7.4ml in the black and 5.5 in the colour.

This means that Epson has been stealthily increasing the price of these cartridges without you noticing by reducing the amount of ink.  Typically they cost around £12 each.  Compare this to ours containing 19ml at £5 and you can see just how much you are being ripped off.

It has just come to our attention that canon printers that are sold with the 37 black and 38 colour low capacity cartridges should be able to use the 40 black and 41 colour high capacity cartridges. They are the same size but if you remove the lid of the low capacity one you find that half of the internal volume is used up by a huge lid. Many of our customers have returned either the black or colour XL cartridges claiming that they are being rejected by the printer and we have obliged with a refund in all cases.
Today a customer brought her printer to us and we observed that the printer did indeed reject the cartridge but, and here is the shocker, only if you mix the low and hi capacity cartridges. When we replaced both the low capacity cartridges with high capacity ones they worked!

Inkjet printers waste a lot of ink. The following video from youtube illustrates this beautifully. The conclusion is not quite correct however. Some printers waste more than others. We have found that HP and Brother printers are by far the most efficient in their usage of ink, only using a few percent in their maintenence cycles. Epson and Cannon printers can waste up to half of the ink you purchase. There is a way to reset this Epson problem for free with some clever software you can download from this blog.  Click here to read the info.

During a recent visit to a major IT retailer I was amased by the number of people proudly queueing up to purchase a new printer. I found myself thinking, “how can they still not know in 2010 that they are being ripped off.” I felt like standing outside the store with a board pointing to my shop. Had I done this I am sure I would have been moved on because the store manager would know the truth of it. That customers purchase a “so-called” cheap printer only to find out to their cost later that the replacement cartridges are astronomically expensive. I have heard the cost of printer ink compared to that of unicorn blood. I am certain that no argument attempting to justify cartridge prices that these retail outlets care to make, would stand up for 1 second against our Continuink printers and ink. Please check out your options with us before you make an expensive mistake. One free phone call could well save you £100′s. Even if you don’t end up purchasing one of our products we will happily advise you on what’s good and what’s not for free. Call us on 0800 849 6344.

How much does 1ml of ink cost?

The answer is a lot!  However did you know that the cost can vary greatly for the same printer?  In another post I suggested that using the XL type cartridge if you can would save money.  Here is the shocking truth.  HP produce great products and they are the leaders in terms of inkjet market share so why produce 2 different cartridges for the same printer, don’t they make enough money already.  The 350 cartridge costs £14 on their website.  It contains only 4ml of ink so each ml costs you £3.50p !  The 350XL will aslo work in the same printer and it costs £29 for 25ml of ink so each ml costs you £1.16p.  That is quite a difference, £3.50 vs £1.16!  Other manufacturers are also doing this.

I think I know which one I would purchase.

I just had to share this. I must have one!

This post is not just about printers but electrical goods in general. In the UK we should recycle our old TV sets and fridges etc. I thought that all kinds of things had been put in place to achieve this until I saw the following shocking film on TV the other night. Printers must play a part in this so I feel this subject is close enough to us to publish the information. We have even been approached by people asking for old worn out printers. I did not know what they were up to until now. Be prepared to be shocked when you watch the footage below. There is a delay of about 15 seconds that I cant get rid of when you press play. Please be patient.

The old saying “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”, is as true today as it has always been, especially so as far as computers and their use goes. I used to work for a major IT retailer selling computers and a multitude of peripherals. Now I am involved with Continuink and we specialise in inkjet printers but I have noticed the same phenomenon happen frequently with customers of both businesses.

“The printer does not work”, is the complaint and often it is said as if it is our fault, usually the person is then unable to elaborate any further. The problem is almost never an actual fault with the device concerned but a lack of knowledge on the part of the owner.

The best description of this came from my new friend Alistair who has also come across this in his line of work. He told me that a common entry in the database of his technical support department is, “a critical error occurred between the chair and the keyboard”. Their usual response to this is to expand the knowledge of the user with training.

I am aware that at my age of 42 I am probably one of the oldest adults in the UK who had the benefit of learning IT skills while at school. Anyone a bit older may not have had that advantage.

My point here to anyone who feels a bit lost with computers is that you do not need to remain in the dark if you do not wish to. There is a wealth of information in printed form written in common language for non technical people to improve their IT skills. A good example is the “for dummies” range of books. Don’t be put off by the title, they really are good.

There are also a multitude of in-expensive courses on a whole range of IT subjects run at thousands of colleges across the country. I attended one myself to learn the basics of how to use Adobe Photoshop. I enjoyed attending the 3 hours a week and picked up a new skill in a couple of months.

Designing computers really is rocket science but learning how to use them effectively does not need to be. Give it a go, what have you got to lose.

Dell have announced the launch of their range of “Nextlife” inkjet cartridges and have described them as ‘industry changing’ as if they are some innovative product. I have never heard a bigger heap of hyped up balderdash in all my life.

Nextlife are a range of remanufactured cartridges for 70% of HP, Canon, Epson, Lexmark and their own Dell printers. Their marketing material claims that you can save ‘up to’ 20% and print ‘up to’ 20% more when compared to branded cartridges.

Granted the packaging is made from 50% post consumer waste and is 100% recyclable but the ‘up to’ is just legal speak for ‘may not be as much as 20%’.
This approach is more environmentally friendly than purchasing new cartridges every time but…..
why would you use this product instead of the multitude of much cheaper, reliable products that have been available for years?

Get this, Dell printer owners. You purchase your dell printer cartridge, on-line as you can’t get them in the shops, then when it is empty you send it back to Dell. They then refill it and sell it back to you for only ‘up to’ 20% less than the price you have already paid for it. Sounds like money for old rope to me.

I wonder what Lexmark have to say about this bearing in mind that they manufacture Dell inkjet printers and the cartridges !