Please note: In these days of litigation taking the place of true justice, where many politicians are in the pockets of big corporations, it is necessary that those wishing to read the monograph must understand that they must not, nor will ever hold the author responsible for any damage or injury. I put my knowledge on the web to help make a better world, not so that some damn fool can sue me.
Because of parasitic lawyers, you must not read nor act upon this information. As lawyers get richer the rest of society gets poorer. Always use your vote to keep lawyers well away from politics. Have a nicer day :)
Version 1f. July 2008.

(I apologise for any repetition in this page, as it is constantly updated and subsequently needs a complete re-write and paring which I hope to do soon.)

This is just one of many pages on my website, wherein you can design, build, experiment and always keep costs low. From printers to trikes, boats, yachts, computers, alternative energy, steam engines and home repair, the website has much to offer, so please visit the front page too, at www.btinternet.com/~jhpart/index.

Whether for just one A4 photo a week to many full photos every day, the perfect printer would be free, or cost little to buy, be able to print photo quality using cheap inks for mere pennies and run reliably for five years.

The technology exists, but of course is not conducive to manufacturers making a profit.
Nevertheless the reader can get fairly close to all three parameters with a little cunning and careful hunting shopping.
From 1987 until 2007, I had many perfect printers, mostly Cannons which were bomb proof and cost pennies to run, but they eventually died through hard work. The modern canons are not perfect.
In 2008, my nearest to the ideal is a HP printer, not perfect, but very close.
We can all get close to our perfect printer, as described below.

The perfect printer is not the most expensive to buy, often quite the opposite.
Genuine Ink cartridges are expensive.
Aftermarket or 'pattern' or reconditioned ink cartridges are less expensive.
Refilling your own is by far the cheapest, but can be a tad messy.

Refilling your own is also convenient, especially if you run out of replacement cartridges and the shops are shut.
As most people print at home, then both costs and convenience is often the bottom line.

As print ink cartridges are expensive, it is often cost effective to dump a working printer, simply because other types of ink cartridges are far cheaper to run in the long term.

If you can't afford to bang out fifty A4 photo prints for mere pennies, then you should seriously think about your printer again.

The technology for both is similar and often identical.
The only difference may be the 'bells and whistles'.
An expensive printer may have the same ink technology as the budget version, and print just as well !

The only differences may be in the size and some finer aspects of print quality.
Since 2006, most modern printers now do very good photo quality, then the differences between cheap and expensive is getting harder to differentiate as nozzle technology gets incredibly fine, such that all manufacturers have reached close to perfection that is capable with inks.

In many ways, the cheaper printer is the better one, as it is usually smaller, easier to use, cheaper to run and far easier to replace.

Your choices range from buying a cheap budget model for most uses, then fill it until it eventually stops working.
Or buy an expensive model if you want high quality photo printing and prepared to pay through the nose for many years of careful use.
Unfortunately, next years printers will be cheap and probably as good as today's top photo printer.

The only real trick of interest to most people, is running costs.

In 2006-8 I now use a budget HP (bread bin) printer using the 21 and 22 carts. Under 20 pounds for a new HP 'breadbin' printer.
This and similar machines are fine little tools which print surprisingly well for minimal cost. Once the inks start to run out, they are easy to refill and I buy my bottles of ink at the pound shop.

I can refill a three colour HP22 cartridge about three times for three pounds and a black cartridge twice for one pound. I have refilled them many times and they show no wear or tear. But when they eventually fail, as they occasionally do, I will buy new cartridges for under a tenner apiece - OR -
As is often the case, a new budget printer can cost about the same cost as the new cartridges - about 20 to 25 pounds, so if such a deal exists, I simply buy a new, almost identical printer.
Eventually the 21 and 22 carts will probably become unavailable in about six to ten years, but until then, I will continue this path, as I did in 1982 with the old Canon BJC240 and a free BJC 2100 in 1991 which I enjoyed with almost free printing then with a free Epson printer in a similar manner until 2004. The HP breadbin printer is the latest in a line of low cost, excellent quality, cheap to run printers.
When it's inevitably time to change, probably about five to ten years, I'll discard this fine printer due to mechanical wear and tear or the 'death timer'. (See later). The printer cost about 20 quid, and I'll probably refill each cartridge five to twenty times. By then it has done its job and cost me another ten quid in ink. Thirty quid for a printer and about five years of printing.
The bottles of 'after market' ink will cost about ten pounds about three pounds for three bottles of black, and two magenta , two blue and three yellow. - Mere pennies.

Yes you can get ten years of low cost, happy printing if you are careful.
It is a great shame that most people do not get this budget longevity, as most people don't have a clue, simply because they are customers who are indoctrinated into a world where disposal is the only solution.
Many people spend sixty quid for one set of genuine ink cartridges.

The real solution is to start using a little common sense. (Yes, it still does exist.)

Yes, Britain is a country of two extremes under Blair, (who spent 400 pounds on socks in one day - That's OUR taxes !). The poor and rich may have financial differences, but we can only eat a certain sensible amount of food, sit in one seat in car, and only print out so many family pics and letters and the occasional invitation cards and such like.
So despite being poor, there is no reason why people cannot have excellent printing at low or almost zero costs, without wasting taxes like a politician.

In Britain, we're taxed to death. We should all spend little or preferably nothing: I always refill my cartridges.

(If you can't afford to bang out fifty A4 photo prints for mere pennies, then you should seriously think about your printer again.)

This web page is written between the age of expensive printers and the age of disposable printers, and back again to expensive printers. Therefore I approach printers as if they were valuable, whereas today, they are increasingly disposable.
So if you prefer to give any printer a chance of making the most of its time before recycling, then read on.
To glean the most of such excellent engineering, read some of the following as you may deem appropriate, rather than purchasing another adequate printer.

Quick advice.
As a designer, artist and engineer I have used all types of printers, from discarded inkjets to massive Drawing office A0 lasers.
Whether employed or unemployed, I retain the same approach: Choose the print quality and the most affordable printing costs first, - then see what printer fits the bill.

If you want cost effective HIGH quality photo printing, then look at Epsons but always check that 'third party' ink cartridges are affordable first, as they usually cost about a third of the genuine items. After using four sets of these, you have often saved the cost of a new printer.

In plain English, buy the ink, not the printer.

One of my 'discarded' Epson 830 colour uses ink cartridges which cost 7 pounds each on the high street, but can cost 175 pence each with a little looking. - Check those costs ! For a printer costing (the previous owner) 60 quid, these carts will pay for a new printer, in just (7 -1.75) x 2 = 10.50 quid, so using cheap ink cartridges just 6 times will save the cost of the printer.

If you want cheap printing and don't mind a little hassle, then look for printers which are easy to refill.

If you are not good with your hands, so dislike the thought of refilling, then always check you can buy cheap replacement ink cartridges and that often means Epsons or Brother.

Refilling applies to nearly all makes and models, with or without integral print heads, (although Epson's will need to have the cartridge chip override codes. See later).
Because of chipped cartridges, it is best to stick with a cheap Lexmark or HP, plus an ink refill kit. My wonderful older canon BJ200 work horse was regularly refilled for seven years and never complained. A pair of BJ200 ink cartridges cost 175 pence apiece or 5 quid genuine. But I always refilled with cheap ink and must have used a few pints! through the original cartridges before the circuit board died. You work out the savings.

A few words on 'photo quality' printing.

As to what the punter calls 'photo printing' depends upon the standards needed.
For many people, this means reasonable printing which does not show any imperfections with casual looking.
For others, photo printing means accurate colour reproduction with fine detail carefully scrutinised for imperfections.
Remember that unless your computer and screen have been carefully matched to a colour accuracy suitable for photo quality, then any adjustments you make such as lightening a dark picture to bring out the hidden detail, or darkening an over exposed picture, then printing will always be less than perfect. It is always worth setting up your camera, computer, screen and printer such that what you take at the scene of the photo, is what you get on the paper. So always check a few prints and if needed, adjust any problems such as monitor gamma or overall colour balance before making many prints. See printing techniques, later.
TIP: Set up your computer to neutral colours, then adjust the screen to match reality. Use a digital camera to take a photo out of the window on a bright day and on a dark day, then use these to 'calibrate' your system to get very close to reality.

Tip: It is common to get very dark shadows, which the human eye naturally adjust for, but cameras cannot. So if you have Paint shop Pro 6 or later or similar, then do not use the brightness and contrast to adjust dark or light pictures. Instead, use the histogram to adjust the overall light levels, as this will allow just the dark or light areas to be adjusted, with minimal damage to the other parts of the photo.

For most people, especially if there was shake or slight misfocusing when the photo was taken, or the room too dark, or the flash not powerful enough, then standard photo printing as found with even the cheapest modern printers is perfectly good enough.
If looking for the absolute best, then buy a high cost printer, but otherwise, simply get a modern printer for 95 percent of photos and if needing the very best, - take your camera or memory card to a high street printers for those very special prints and perhaps also for bulk prints of your holiday snaps.

Today, it's the ink that's expensive. The printers are often sold at just above manufacturing cost. So if you get the ink costs right, they can often offset the cost of a new printer.

Now that my second hand old Canon BJC200 has finally died, I bought a brand new Canon 4200: It was complete crap.
My latest printer is a HP.

Bottom Line - May 2008: The most cost effective printer at present for daily use and reasonable photo printing on standard paper, then I recommend the HP 3940 'bread bin' using the 21 and 22 cartridges. These are budget printers and easy to fill. There are no real problems other than the excessive software which can be overcome - see later.
If you can't find a 3940 or similar, then HP use the same internals for a similar family of printers. The bottom of the (21/22 cartridge) range often uses the same print engine as the top of the (21/22 cartridge) range.
So don't buy the printer, choose the cartridges and smile.
More on choosing and getting the most from cartridges later.

In the world of computing, ignorance can get very expensive, so this webpage describes how to save money before buying a printer- how to choose and then buy a new printer - also how to look after older printers.
Then keep your printer working when it is normally discarded.
Then get the best from it.

Choosing a printer means more choices than you can shake a stick at.
Printers are changing week by week, so the choice is difficult.

There are dot matrix printers, which are essentially dead.
The biggest laser printer I serviced could handle paper 1.5 metres wide, as I was a draughtsman at the time.
Laser printers are usually for offices.

Warning : Some colour printers now have a hidden USA Government programme which prints almost invisible coded yellow dots, so they can tell from which individual printer the printing comes from.
We ARE ALL under unknown surveillance by government. More info from www.eff.org/privacy/printers.
Be warned: Despite so called freedoms, individual freedom is being lost: Big Brother government spying IS here, there and everywhere, and getting worse.
Write to your MP or congressman today and tell him or her to keep their dirty noses out.

The humble inkjets (and bubble jets) of today, squirt incredibly small amounts of ink from a line of fine nozzles, with ink droplets in the 'pico litres' range. This is phenomenally fine engineering, yet takes an extraordinary hammering on a daily basis, in almost every environment yet with very little hassle.
Ink jets are everywhere, not just on paper, but printing the date codes on cartons, bottles, even eggs.
To do this, the printer has a structure, usually to take a sheet of A4 paper and feed it under the moving inkjet head. Inside, to keep things under control are two main motors, one to move the paper forwards in steps, and one to move the print head back and forth across the page. the position of the ink head is sensed by various electronics, so the ink droplet is sprayed in exactly the right place relative to the 'map' of the page held in the printers memory, as sent by the computer or camera.
The inkjet literally sprays the paper with ink in the right places, using three colours plus black. The effect is that printing and pictures are created. If you look at a partially finished page, then it will display that each of the colours is being sprayed to build up the wide selection of tones and brightnesses.
Most printers will recognise when a page is simply black on white text, and only use the black cartridge. (If you find the printer using to much colour, then check its not printing in a dark shade of very dark off grey, made up from various colour inks.)
The ink is usually held in a foam filled plastic tank above the print head nozzles and this is swept left and right as the paper is fed underneath, to bring the wonderful world of text and colour to illuminate our minds and homes.

The ink nozzles are integral with the ink tank, common to HP and Lexmark, or
The ink nozzles are part of the printer and use separate tank tanks, common to Epson and Canon.

Until early 2006, all inkjets were well behaved and placed most of the ink onto the paper. -
Many people believed this was the intended purpose of buying such a device.

Since early 2006, the latest designs use incredibly fine nozzles for photo quality and fast drying inks for speed of printing. Yes, you have guessed, this advance in technology is a Faustian pact - what it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. The latest printers, especially those with permanently fitted print heads, such as Epson and Canon, have taken to using half (yes, HALF) of your expensive ink to keep the nozzles clean and working. I am quite sure that this will be solved with time, but at present, you may consider yourself as throwing away money when buying certain printers.
If you think you would prefer to buy a printer with print heads in the cartridges, which do not waste so much ink, such as Lexmark and HP, then you guessed it, these also work out as expensive.

Welcome to the modern world.
Printer manufacturers want your money, not your love.
Like genetic engineering or ID cards, technology is never your friend, just another tool of someone else to wield over you for their convenience or power or cash.

Because of the 'advances' in technology, any sensible running costs will depend upon how you avoid the demands of the printer manufacturers.
If you are dextrous and not afraid of a little inky finger mess, then nearly ALL printers can be refilled using the popular ink refill kits.
(Certain nastier printers cannot be refilled and need the genuine cartridges, but these are mainly by the large computer names, and are modified and rebadged standard models, often part of package deals. Indeed, some are actually identical to other budget models, but modified so they can only use exorbitantly expensive ink cartridges. Just say no. See later.)

The popular refill kits are not rocket science.
Ink has been with us for thousands of years, since early Chinese times, when paper and ink made a superb combination.
The refill kits contain bottles of black, yellow, cyan and magenta ink and a syringe. You simply inject ink into the cartridges to fill them. If the (Epson) ink cartridges contain a 'chip' then you must also buy a chip re-setter, or download an override programme available free from the internet. (see later).

If you do not want any mess, or are not very good with your hands, then ALWAYS check the cost of replacement inks first. This invariably means looking for replacement ink cartridges without the print head, (Epson and some Canon printers) as these aftermarket or reconditioned ink cartridges can be as cheap as a couple of quid, rather than the 25 quid of ink cartridges with integral print heads. Search out the after market ink replacement costs, then narrow down your choice of printers to fit them.

A little Background.

Printer manufacturers and profit margins.
Many years ago, printers were terribly overpriced. The law has eventually outlawed fixed pricing, especially in 'treasure island' Britain, where the price of printers was artificially high, but this has now dropped to almost global levels of profits.
Because the profits are now much lower, the manufacturers want to get fat somehow.
With some cheap printers, this is done by selling overpriced ink cartridges. Due to the laws of supply and demand, the third party manufacturers appear, to sell much cheaper versions. One manufacturer is now throwing their fat lawyers at low cost third party ink manufacturers to make sure they can fleece the customer fully.

At present, (march 2007) I'm not quite sure what has happened, but the word from the trade is that third party ink manufacturers are again supplying but perhaps have done a deal with the manufacturers to lease their patents or such like or perhaps the fat lawyers did not do their homework. So watch the prices of 'after market' replacement inks, to see if they remain sensibly affordable. Otherwise buy a printer you can refill at home.

Many people use printers to do lots of printing, be it in busy offices, or printing your own books or fliers for local shops or whatever. This would normally use lasers in large scale use, but for home and small office use, the overall running costs of inkjets are much lower. The initial costs of lasers is steep and laser photo quality is not yet as good as a top class inkjet.
Whether you are printing for fun, or printing for profit, the costs can be exorbitant, unless you understand the nature of the game of inkjet refills. To keep your running costs low, read on.

The worst problem with printers, and this is common to all printers, is that the manufacturers are no longer making massive profits from them.
This is particularly so for inkjets for ordinary domestic use.
This causes many problems for both manufacturers and for owners.

It is not that we want something for nothing, for that way, we all loose and technology grinds to a halt.
We simply prefer to own sensible printers with sensible running costs.

Printer manufacturers and technology.
If you were a printer manufacturer you may well have a design and development team creating the latest print heads, often to overcome shortcomings in the previous generation of designs and also to keep up or surpass the competition. The developments would hopefully lead to the next generation of print technology which would then lead into the production runs. The new technology would be put into the market place in a single introductory test machine, to check the market place shows up no problems in public use. Then the technology would be fully 'rolled out' in many forms, from the basic to the most expensive machines. They may all use exactly the same technology, although the budget printers may use the print heads with poor quality runs, while the top of the range using the best print heads. (In the canon pixma, the print head has seven nozzle sets, but may only use five - two blacks and three colours, so some production redundancy for budget use may allow partially failed runs to be used, while the best print head chip runs would be put into the top of the range models using seven inks.)
Eventually, after a year or so, the technology would settle down and all printers, from budget to top of the range would use identical technology and all print to identical standards. Then the next step in technology would roll out, as the older production runs are gradually run down. It is not unknown for some microchip manufacturers to have excellent production runs, that they have to 'downgrade' much of their technology to fill the budget end of the market place. This is why many CPU's can be oveclocked and why many budget printers print so beautifully.
As can be seen, most technology is giving the customer high quality, be it in the budget or the most expensive machines. By buying a printer or other technology after a year from 'roll out', then even the budget machine will be to the highest standard. So never buy an expensive machine, simply choose wisely.

Which printer to choose.

In recent times Cannon and Epson went with the print head built into the printer, while HP and Lexmark went with print heads in the cartridge.
Both types can print equally good quality.

The ink cartridges with integral print heads are far more expensive to make and cost the punter about 15 to 25 pounds each time they are replaced, but the advantage is that if the print head fails, you don't have to scrap the printer or call out a service engineer. They also waste less ink.
These are best for occasional use.

The designs with separate ink cartridges are cheaper to run for most people, and if considered a disposable printer when the print head fails, then this is a possible route to long term economical printing.
These are best for daily or regular use.

Unfortunately for printer manufacturers who sell ink cartridges without print heads, anyone can buy printer ink and refill their cartridges with a home refill kit. Almost any back yard plastics press can mould an ink cartridge without a print head, insert some foam and fill it with ink, then sell it by the tens of thousands for mere pennies. Therefore Epson and Canon started loosing money in the area where the real profits were concentrated - ink sales. Epson started adding electronic counter chips so they would not be so easy to copy, but these too soon appeared at budget prices. Canon relied on a solid customer base, affordable inks and superb build quality.
Either way, they lost money.

Because most of the profits are in replacement inks, the profit margins of all types of genuine ink cartridges will remain high.
Despite the tears of the printer manufacturers' accountants caused by DIY refilling, those reading this webpage will still want to print for a decent, low cost. We all know that ink costs mere pennies to fill a cartridge, and so this is where we all look, especially in this age of the digital camera, where we all expect to enjoy a lot more printing at high photo qualities. (Whatever happened to the 1960's, 1970's, 1980's dream of a 'paperless office'?)

In many ways, domestic printers are now considered as general purpose machines which can print out all the holiday photos, homework and letters to granny.
Unfortunately, the modern demand for high photo quality has placed demands upon printer technology. The superb photos obtained in the high street photo machines use dye sublimation or other exotic means to print high quality.
Although domestic printers can almost match these professional printers, the modern domestic print heads need to be very fine. These modern fine print heads can clog easily, so must be cleaned often to prevent damage.

If the print head is in the cartridge, then when the prints start getting streaky, the manufacturer expects you to replace the cartridge with its integral print head. This is not much of a problem and easily solved by replacing the cartridge or removing and cleaning it yourself.

Where the print head is fixed in the printer, then you cannot clean it easily and need a service engineer to sort out. Therefore the manufacturer ensures it must NOT be allowed to fail for many years. This is now a very great problem with super fine nozzles.
With modern designs, up to half your ink is now wasted keeping these fixed print heads from failing. Yes, half the ink of a modern printer may not reach the page - expensive indeed. In this respect, Epson and Canon have a bit of a problem, and it is the customer who picks up the costs of paying through the nose for their expensive ink running costs.

Perhaps a few years ago, it could be morally wrong to buy cheap ink replacement cartridges, especially if they were infringing Canon and Epson patents or copyrights, but today, with the modern printers being so wasteful of ink, then no one can afford to be too friendly with any manufacturers genuine ink replacement costs. You may wish to consider yourself as saving the planet in your own little way. (Never be like rich lawyers and 'our' politicians who waste our taxes with such profligate ignorance.)

It is therefore important to carefully choose your printer for
the way it is used and how you intend to replace the inks.

The official way to replace inks is to buy the genuine replacements. Only lawyers and politicians can afford this financial extravagance at our expense. This is very expensive for everyone else, for we have to live in the real world of high taxes.

So, whether you like it or not, the final choice comes down to whether you want to:

Option A. Buy a printer for regular use which wastes lots of ink on a fixed head printer which has cheaper cartridges, or can be refilled easily. This fixed print head failure (Epson) means replacing the printer, or with Canon, buy a new print head.
or:
Option B. Buy a printer with print heads built into the more expensive cartridges. This can be reasonably affordable for occasional use, especially if using recycled ink cartridges, or refilling them yourself. If the print head fails, replacement will cost almost as much as a new budget printer.
or;
Option C. There is no longer an option C. - The sensible, robust, reliable and frugal printers from a few years ago are no longer available.

For most domestic purchasers, the answer may seem a problem, especially if you buy your ink cartridges.

But the answer is simple: It all works out about the same if you are prepared to refill them yourself and treat all printers as disposable -

Option 1. Buy a good quality budget printer and use cheap cartridges until it dies, then buy a new printer.

Option 2. Buy, any printer which can be refilled at home, until it dies, then buy or find another printer.

Who really cares if a printer fails after three years ? They are cheap to buy nowadays and allows the latest printer technology to be updated at home for the cost of a replacement print head or costly ink refills.
Do you really think manufacturers are interested in recycling or are they after your money ? You decide.

My personal preference is to refill at home, as I can get ink very cheap and I print photos by the score. I have refilled my various printers for over twenty years, since the very first inkjets appeared.

The 'buy, refill then dispose' philosophy is good for most high street people who don't want to spend too much money. But if you are reading this, then you are probably wanting to get the most from your printer, and that means running on next to no costs, or to pump pout massive amounts of printing for mere pennies. This needs a workhorse of a printer.

This web page is for those who do not want to waste money like most high street customers, but for those who wish to keep their printer for many years.
I like to print lots of stuff, so expect my printer to be VERY cheap to run.
As you read through, you may wish to glean some of what many people have discovered over the years, and hopefully save yourself ridiculous amounts of money and stay clear of official inks which are extremely expensive for those who do not understand the 'printer ink game'.

You may find a dumped printer, perhaps a minor problem which you can fix (see later) to give you almost free printing - until the next high quality printer turns up for free.
I have been given five printers in the last two months. Two are superb after a couple of hours work.
My best ever printer Canon S200 was thrown away from a shop, and has given impeccable printing since I gave it one good cleaning and reset the ink tank counter. The latest is a Canon S400 for free, and am also very happy with it.

Yes, many people can print for free and that includes the initial cost of the printer.

Scavenging for gold. Unfortunately, sensible printers are now unavailable unless second hand. So look around at car boot sales for the best value printing ever. It is easy to get the printer diver software off the internet. Finding a free printer is not something most people think they can go into a shop and get. - In charity shop, or even computer shops, there may be an old printer being dumped for free. They may even be marked 'to a good home', or cost a couple of quid in a charity shop. One of my best ever printers was dumped by a retail store and the security guard asked me how many did I want. I should have taken a half dozen, but the one I did take was excellent and lasted six years. I have even walked back streets scavenging before the dustbin men and found a couple of excellent printers. I only keep one printer and one spare, but merely repair (or find out why they cannot be repaired), then pass them on to friends.
So keep your eyes and ears open, and make opportunities arise for you, by being in the right place at the right time. Having a good spare printer in the kids room or in the loft is worth while, especially if poor or far from any computer shop.
Even buying a good budget printer need not cost much if you scan the 'special offers'.

The ink replacements cartridge scam.

You can buy a printer for 25 pounds, but the replacement ink cartridges are 35 pounds. - But be warned, the print cartridges with the new printer may only be partly full as a 'test cartridge'. - So don't go getting any ideas about buying a new printer every time, printer manufacturers are not that daft.
If you do buy such a printer and there is nothing wrong with this, but only if you can refill these 'test' cartridges yourself. - They are usually standard items that are just half full. So fill them soon.
But hey ! at that price, buy it anyway and refill. If it doesn't refill easily, you've had a cheap printer for a few weeks.
(Many cheap lasers also have standard toner cartridges which can print 25,000 pages, but come with a cartridges which can only print 1,000 pages. Exchange units are very cost effective, so buy (or recycle) some toner and use plastic gloves. A friend recently bought a top of the range commercial Xerox colour laser printer for under 11 pounds on Ebay, and this included 300 pounds worth of replacement colour toner cartridges. It prints very nice indeed, and even folds and staples the sheets, although it does weighs a quarter of a ton ! )

I recently bought a Canon Pixma ip 4200 and regretted it as the inks in the massive transparent ink tanks disappeared alarmingly. I truly thought I had leaking cartridges !
The print head is 'cleaned' far too often and I think the 'ip' stands for 'ink pisser'. So never buy a modern Canon pixma printer.
Admittedly, the development of ultra fine nozzles half the thickness of a human hair, and fast drying inks will naturally lead to the heads clogging more, needing more cleaning. Nevertheless this waste of half the ink is a sheer disgrace. I consider it a rip-off and no longer use my brand new pixma 'ink wasting device'.
I'll probably do an autopsy. (I'm guessing it has a big ink felt reservoir or a shorter time to the death counter.) Its internal 'nappies'(diapers) will surely be a big mess. With the latest technology, some printers are very fast with excellent results, nevertheless printer designers must develop a far more affordable means to keep the nozzles clean.
I have shelved the pixma and await a reply from Canon, but I have been told they are one of the most ignorant corporations. They have not replied to three contacts by me in three months. They may be the best engineers, but appalling management.
'i pee' on cannon.

So as you read through this web page, check the relevant aspects of your printer. -
If you have an old printer but want a fancy new one, ALWAYS keep the old one as it may be far nicer than you imagined after the new one threatens to eat you out of house and home.
If like me, you may soon be looking for one of the few modern printers without these scams. - It mostly comes down to inspecting the ink cartridge racks for the true running costs.

A closer look at the cartridges.

Skip this section of you don't intend to refill.

Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are the primary ink colours used in printers.
Some have six, adding light magenta and light cyan for skin and sky tones.
Some printers use up to ten, yes ten different ink cartridges and the cost for a genuine replacement set can be as high as sixty pounds. This of course is ridiculous unless you are rich and or stupid or working for a government quango with your fingers in our taxes.

Four colours are quite acceptable.
Four separate cartridges or dual cartridges, one with black and one with three colours, is perfectly good.

The Lexmark ONE cartridge is a three colour ink cartridge, which uses all three colours to make a fairly acceptable black. It is a simple concept, but costly to run unless refilled at home.

A sensible cost of a cartridge refill set for a four colour printer should be about three to four pounds. Only the contents of the other exotic print tanks such as specialist exotic blacks will still need to be genuinely bought at present.

Some printers use two blacks.
The two blacks are dye or pigment black ink. Pigment is for long lasting documents, where text may be needed for over a hundred years. Some manufacturers such as HP guarantee their photo inks from fade for up to 100 years, if kept properly.
The Canon ip4200 uses two backs, one of each type, presumably for documents, but in reality, unless you place your documents in direct sunlight, then they are most unlikely to fade.
Only for legal purposes are documents stored for centuries on paper, parchment or vellum, such as Magna Carta, - the one where our basic freedoms are enshrined against nasty government. (Although truly evil lawyers such as Tony Blair wants imprisonment without trial.)

For most people, documents and photos will remain stored on CD's and these can be copied to very high quality CDs for long term storage.

There are many types of inks, but four is about right for most people for most of the time.

But how much ink do you want to buy?
To confuse the situation more, -
Ink cartridges come in all sizes. For example, the 'HP 28' colour has 8cc of ink and costs about 14 pounds, whereas the 'HP344' colour has 14cc of ink for about 19 pounds. Now ask yourself whether the later model has to use more ink to clean its nozzles or is one of the larger capacity cartridges, whereupon the whole malarkey gets very muddy indeed.

To make matters more interesting, the HP C18230 is a truly massive tank, as used high end home and office printers. My HP backup Deskjet 815 certainly is a robust workhorse, and one day I will find just how much ink these cartridges can take. I would guess about 50cc in the black cartridge, and about 3x30cc in the three colour sections of the colour cartridge. This type of capacity is for a workhorse for constant daily usage.

The same capacity malarkey applies to all other printer manufacturers. I recently saw some Lexmark cartridges (17 and 27), marked 'moderate capacity'. I simply don't know if this means they are filled most of the way, or if there are similar cartridges with lesser contents or if it's just a marketing scam. - I'd simply refill until it died, and worry not one jot.

When my HP23 colour cartridge ran dry on yellow, I opened it up and was surprised to see the internal foam was NOT soaked in ink. There were large areas where the foam was unstained, showing the supplied ink was not enough to fill the cart. I must point out that these were the carts supplied with the new printer and may have been 'test carts', nevertheless, they have now been refilled eight times. I filled the little cartridges about three quarters with cheap inks and taped the cap back in place. They took about six hours for the ink to settle, I then cleaned the nozzles using the computer programme supplied by HP and continued printing quite happily.

So the ink cartridges are horses for courses: Small, comparatively expensive cartridges for occasional home use and massive super tankers for daily office use. But beware - if you buy the massive super tankers and only us it one a month, then it will probably dry or fail after a few months, whereas with a cheaper home printer with a cartridge a third of the cost, you can at least have a spare or get another from the shops. Likewise, if using a printer all the time, then a small cartridge will soon become very expensive unless you have a passion for filling them, and no one really likes inky fingers.
So be sensible, the clich‚ - 'horses for courses' applies to printers too.

The answer of course is to focus on buying a suitable printer and its cartridges first, then to buy the ink:

Three, 30cc bottles of ink, with instructions and a syringe costs just 8 pounds.
Most 'pound shops' now sell separate inks, and 3 x colours for 3 quid will fill a typical HP22 colour cartridge eight times or more. A 99 pence black refill will fill a HP 21 about three times.
That makes approximately four refills for four pounds, depending upon whether you do a lot of photos or a lot of text. Either way, this makes such cartridges very cost effective.

(My NEW HP3940 printer, plus four bottles of ink cost under 40 quid ! This will last about a year of hard work and include many hundreds of full size A4 pictures ! If I need more ink then all is well. If the printer fails, I simply buy another new printer for 19 pounds.
2008: A brand new HP printer with scanner using 21 and 22 cartridges was available from a national shop chain for under 20 quid. In the same shop the genuine HP cartridges were 11 quid for the black and 12 quid for the colour. They also sold refill kits for eight pounds for 3x30cc of colours and 3x30cc of black. Cheap printing indeed and eminently disposable at these prices.
Sometimes it truly is just as cheap to buy a spanking new printer and power supply with its spanking new ink carts, than to buy new ink cartridges.

The ink comes in various forms, the most popular is a pack of three bottles of black or three bottles, one of each colour, plus with a medical syringe and needle, and cost about three pounds.
I have also used solo ink which came in a plastic concertina bottle with a steel needle on the top for a pound each. The ink comes with various rubber bungs for cartridges and bits and pieces. Each kit cost a pound for about 25cc of ink which was enough to fill a domestic black cartridge about three or four times. So a sensibly priced aftermarket cartridge costing anything from 2 pounds to seven pounds, could be filled for about 30 pence, which is about one sixth to one twentieth the running cost.
There are also larger bottles of ink where 125 and 250cc of inks can work out even more cheaper.

More on refilling later.

In Plymouth, there were five ink cartridge shops close to the city centre, so bog only knows what London or New York must suffer from customers being ripped off. Beware - More shops of one type, often equals massive profit margins, and the customer is the one who pays for this.

Please feel a little sorry for the printer manufacturers, as they are trying to maximise profits, but the public continually won't want to pay the exorbitant fees. Its a sort of technology war, a 'weapons race'. The manufacturers tried stinging us with high printer costs in the eighties. After the true costs appeared, they tried stinging us with expensive inks. We should thank people who make cheap inks to keep the manufactures on their toes, but hope that they do not get lawyers to outlaw refilling ink. What ever next - Gestapo style smoking bans or ID cards ? - your vote - your call ! A fairly sensible world please.

Waterproof inks.
If you print out your own maps, which I find very useful as I walk Dartmoor and the coast, and if you get caught in the rain, then most official replacement inks are waterproof or water resistant. I usually walk in sunshine, or at least in dry weather !
If needing waterproof inks then check by washing a dry test print before getting lost with a washed out map and look for printers which use archival quality pigmented inks. See also my guides to Dartmoor.
Always scan and print out the section of the map you need as this is so much easier to carry and read.

Well there you have it, ink does not need to cost you much, it just needs a little checking of the costs of ink cartridges BEFORE buying your printer.

PLEASE DO NOT throw away printer cartridges. - Wrap in cling film or a polythene bag and give them to computer friends, recyclers or charity shops. In most cases you can refill them, or practice refilling them to see if you want to, or exchange them for discount prices on a replacement new cartridge.

Death timers.

I used a very nice, faultless Canon BJC2000, a wonderful printer which I got for free, chucked out from a shop which was updating its interior. It had a print head which was crusty and dry, along with empty cartridges. I suspected it had been lying around for a year. I removed the cartridges, flipped the lever to remove the excellent Canon print head, soaked it in meths overnight, filled the cartridges, downloaded the software drivers from the Canon website and it worked perfectly and faultlessly !
But after six months, it came up with the error that the 'ink overflow tank full' and then refused to work. I then decided that this printer had been used quite a lot and had built up many years of use.

If you use any printer a lot, and I hope you do, then be very wary, - as such a 'death timer' will appear after a year or three. It is officially there to prevent the ink in the felt reservoir from spilling out onto your desktop, a bit like a leaking nappy. When the error code appears, you are on a hiding to nothing (officially), so you are supposed to pay up for an engineer to call, or throw your printer away.

(The ink overflow tank is just a large pad of felt to absorb the inkjet nozzle cleaning ink residue. I easily took the printer apart, soaked the old ink felt in meths, gently washed it, then dried and replaced. The printer was then perfect, except it is not allowed to work until the Canon error code is reset. Resetting the error code was hunted down on the internet and took me about twenty seconds using a code press of the two buttons and power lead. Canon wanted 35 pounds for the service man to call and 'service' the printer. - Boll**ks to that it's easier to buy a new printer. I told the service department that I'm off to buy a HP printer.)

I hunted down and talked to a computer engineer: ALL inkjet printers have such 'death timers'. The Epsons he serviced in my local 'university' would simply stop and demand a service engineer. No excuses, no hints. At least the Canon printer gave a reason as to the problem.

Such 'death timers' are indeed needed to prevent the ink overflow from getting too full, but the printer can at least be allowed to continue. Perhaps the lawyers don't like the thought of an old printer leaking excess ink over the users table and getting sued, such is the litigious mentality of too many narrow minded people nowadays.
Such servicing is not rocket science, often seen as a scam for service departments to make money from ten minutes work and a piece of felt, or a lawyers time bomb to prevent the manufacturer from being sued and to sell more printers.
As an ordinary Joe Punter, I would be quite happy to put up with a simple warning on the screen telling me that the ink reservoir needs cleaning, tick a 'void warranty' and be allowed to carry on using my printer.

So unless wishing to do a little work, always choose a printer as if it is a disposable item, unless you are prepared to pay highly for this service malarkey or you have the reset codes and prepared to do some cleaning or run a slight risk of staining the desk.

Luckily there is a solution to this problem for most printers.
(If the service engineer can solve it, then someone 'out there' also has found the same solution.)

The solution is to 'clean the nappies', then reset the timer codes as used by service engineers.
If you want to buy an expensive printer, always make sure you have total control and not subject to the service engineer to keep it working.
ALWAYS check the reset codes are available before buying any expensive printer.

Canon ink tank reset codes are given at the bottom of this web page and on many places on the internet, such as the good folks at http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/, to whom many of us are eternally grateful.

A little tip I discovered by accident while repairing Epsons, is to use the 820 software drivers on the 830, which then ignores the readings from the ink cartridges. This may work for similar printers which use the same 'print engine', but in a slightly different model.

See later for ways to clean the overflow ink reservoir. (wash the nappies).

Chipped cartridges.

Having the control codes and chip override programmes makes sure that the printer you pay good money for is the printer you are in control of for many years. -

No one would expect to buy a car which stops when it needs an oil change or service. No one would expect that only the manufacturer's gang is allowed to get the car working again and at high cost. This is the way printer scams work, and it is commonly believed that cars and other equipment, even washing machines, will soon be going this way.
So Beware: Such micro chips are already in your computer printer, even your washing machines and cars, even in ID cards. So it is only a matter of time before we customers are pushed into a 'mind set' into accepting this type of consumerist crap and control.
Once the computer became popular, no one has any real freedom anymore. The computer is a real Foustian pact with the devil. So always be wary of these and many other massive corporate scams to fleece you of money. Never allow lawyers or accountants or your politicians to steal anything from you.

So there you are: All printers contain a scam of one sort or other.

In the real world, there are always some nice folks out there, who can help to make a better, nicer world for us all.
Until we get open and sensible printer servicing, you must always consider your printer as disposable and buy accordingly, OR expect to find the codes or software to make it truly worthwhile spending good money on.

There are five main manufacturers of inkjets.

Canon.
Cannon are superb engineers. Until the pixma series, the Canon range has been invariably a line of superb printers, faultless apart from the death timer common to all printers. Well built and easy and cheap to refill, they were excellent printers with easily removed and cleaned print heads which would last many years of excellent, hard work, without hassle.

Despite many other printers others along the way, for 20 years I have always had various canon printers as my impeccable main work horses.
I recently bought a pixma 4200: What a rip off. Cannon have got things badly wrong. After just two months of hassle from new, I have scrapped my brand new pixma. I never had one full page of print from it !
Evidently this is quite common. I will no longer buy a modern canon printer and recommend you learn from the mistakes of others. I still await a reply from Canon for my money back. I now dislike cannon. Perhaps they suffer from 'modern' management.
I happily recommend PRE pixma canons as excellent investments, especially if you refill and intend to maintain the printer yourself for many years. But pixmas are an abysmal choice.

Epson
Epson have to my knowledge, never made a bad printer.
As a fixer of printers, I don't particularly like them, as they are hard to repair, but when working, they do print superbly. Epson have an excellent name for photo printing, mainly sticking with print heads built into the machine and a slightly different print head technology. The only real fault is their introduction of the chipped cartridge, possibly due to cheaper ink manufacturers. You can buy cheap third party chipped ink refills or you can refill them yourself and use the Ruskie override programme. I would recommend Epson's if you want high quality photo prints, but only if you can buy third party ink cartridges, or have a printer on the Ruskies list.
Cleaning the Epson print heads is a real pain, effectively making Epsons disposable. See later.
(I temporarily replaced my appalling new canon pixma with a discarded Epson 830 and was very happy with it until the print head failed, then I had to scrap the printer.)

H.P.
Another excellent manufacturer but with excessive, bloaty' software.
Hewlett Packard have always used the ink cartridge with integral print head until the recent 8250.
All standard HP ink cartridges are excellent and they just get better and better, to give some of the best photo results available. HP have certainly done their homework. You can buy a HP and refill it yourself, perhaps even replacing the expensive cartridges once or twice over a lifetime of many happy refills, and eventually dispose of the whole printer when it stops working. If you like your HP, then or looking out for a spare set of discarded cartridges makes HP life even easier and longer.

I now own a bottom of the range, budget HP 'bread-bin' printer and it has all the advantages of the latest photo printing quality, and al the advantages of my long lamented Canon BJ200, plus excellent modern photo printing quality.

Why a bottom of the range? simple, it uses the same cartridges as the model range printers , so has the same drivers and same technology, so will happily print to the same high standards. The budget device is also easier to replace and often more reliable due to less complexity such as integral card readers, scanner and such malarkey. Keep it simple, keep it reliable.

TIP: Modern HP software is atrociously large, consuming massive amounts of hard drive space, so consider ways around this. My last HP standard install was a massive 300 megs and had just too much totally unwanted software, wanting to email for updates and such crap, and generally being a real pain in the software when all you wanted to do was print.
Luckily, there is a better way.
Begin by going to printers in your operating system, be it Linux or windows, and add a printer, and lo and behold, there is your printer in the list. (Mine was under Hewlett Packard rather than HP.) Install this as the printer and you can circumvent all the horrible HP crap.
Linux has a superb method for printer installing and the latest models often have drivers ready and updated drivers before windows. Even if the drivers are unavailable, Linux can often use generic or similar drivers for excellent printing with unknown printers. Go to 'Sourceforge' for the latest Linux printer drivers :)

If your copy of windows does not have the basic drivers, then install then uninstall the basic HP software which came with the printer. It takes time but uninstalling does leave just the basic HP drivers in place on the hard drive for other programmes to use for printing. Now go to 'install printers' from control panel and search the hard drive. It will find the basic drivers for your printer which were left behind, without all the other crap.

Yes software writers can be daft. - For a recent HP I installed had atrocious amount of software to be installed to run the printer - and then it stopped installing because I did not have a moderately modern version of Windows Internet Explorer - so it stopped. Just how daft is that, - as if any web browser should prevent the printer from working ! - HP are sometimes just plain idiots. I had to rummage around for a recent free internet access disk from an Internet Service Provider and install a later version of IE 5.5. Totally unacceptable tosh. HP software is appalling, massive and never worth the bother. Thankfully, it's the only real H.P. fault.
If using Linux, then veer towards HP, who graciously supply their drivers as open source available for all operating systems, unlike other printer manufacturers, who may only supply windows drivers. When you install Linux, it will automatically recognise and install the printer if the printer is plugged in and switched on - no hassle.

HP printers have another advantage, they often have a wonderful low head height, ideal for fitting into short shelves and have always had excellent paper handling - from the front to the front of the printer.
Finding a discarded or scrapped HP printer is difficult, because they simply refuse to die.

Although many manufacturers may struggle to find ways to prevent aftermarket replacement ink carts, at least HP have the wherewithal to realise that although their cartridges can be refilled, when they do eventually die, at least the owners will be attracted towards genuine HP replacements for another round of refill fun. It simply saves so much hassle for both HP and the owners, who both win in the long run.

Some of the latest HP printers (e.g. 8250) use a very different system to others, where the ink tank is separate from the print head and fed by a connecting pipe. - The ink does not pass left and right with the head, but stays in separate tanks under the front flap. This may be for easy replacement, but it is also believed that this system uses pumps, as it allows the ink to be reversed flushed or cleaned, rather than profligately waste ink to clean the print head. We can but wait and see. These cartridges are chipped and too small for my liking. I have also been told they are easy to refill, but will depend upon the ability to override the chip controls if they prevent constant use, but this awaits my chance to 'test drive' one of these. If this prints as well then this could then make it the worlds best printer. The technology is there, it just has to be made sensible for the punter to use. You may not even need to stop the printer to refill the ink tanks. See Brother.

At the bottom end of the market, HP uses its latest generation of printer cartridges with integral print heads. For example, the 21 black and 22 colour cartridges may be budget at about 11 pounds each, (some places charge almost double this), but are superb and easily refilled. This means that even when the print head dies, you only spend a little to replace.
Warning: ALWAYS refill such cartridges BEFORE they become empty, because the modern micro-fine print nozzles are not so robust as earlier types. If the cartridges are with the printer, they may be low capacity ones, so will need refilling sooner. See later.

Lexmark.
This used to be the IBM printer division which also uses ink cartridges with integral print heads. IBM used to make good hard drives and laptops, but little else of worth and have now moved into less than perfect 'corporate and government software' with its appalling track record, and the dreaded ID card fiasco and probably worse to come. You have been warned. 'Big Blue' and 'Big Brother' are not dissimilar. Billions upon billions of our taxes are being thrown on the bonfire of certain software firms.
Out of IBM printers came Lexmark, who never seem to get good write ups in magazines and are considered by many as budget printers. Nevertheless, they sometimes make superb printers, but not always.
The print quality is not bad, just not up to the high standards at the cutting edges set by the other manufacturers. If you want a cheap, disposable but refillable printer, then Lexmark is a very good budget purchase for office work.
For example: In march 2007 I could buy a new Lexmark printer for 20 pounds and an ink refill kit for 8 pounds, in a local high street general purpose shop so I could refill the three colour cartridge about five times for a total of 33 pounds before affording to discard it. The money saved can then be used to have any high quality holiday photos printed professionally in the high street.
A few years ago, Lexmark tried putting a hidden chip in each genuine cartridge, such that the printer would not work unless this was present. This is a bit like the dreaded RFID chips (radio frequency ID) which may cause great social consternation in the future, as they not only ID you, but can track your movements too.
When the good people at Static Control Components made their own ink cart override chips, Lexmark took them to court and lost. So Lexmark have thankfully stopped this pernicious practice.

Warning: You may wish to be aware that Dell market some of these printers under their own name and 'can only use Dell cartridges'. So be very wary of being stuck with a printer you may not want to afford, yet looks cheap at first sight, but then you have to live with the unwanted consequences. (A bit like ID cards.) RFID has now been approved for insertion under human skin.

Be wary of free printers. They are never free.
In some cases, brand new 'free' printers haven't even been taken out of the box, before being dumped for a better printer. I know of two cases where brand new printers have been sent to charity shops in their unopened boxes.

TIP: Lexmark is touting the 'one cartridge' for its cheaper end domestic printers. A recent customer asked for a 'cartridge 1' for a lexmark, having just paid 39 pounds for it in the high street. After much searching, we could find no pattern version, but a large and well known, popular computer super store was selling them for 14 pounds.
So always keep your eyes open and please don't get ripped off.
They can also be easily refilled.

Brother.
Brother have been quietly making good inroads into home printers. They have been in the game for decades and have always made good, reliable kit. Usually for offices and corporates, but the latest range is most definitely good enough for home photo use too.
These Brother printers use what I consider the most effective design to date. Brother use external ink cartridges with pipes running to the print head. Therefore I not only recommend, but also commend Brother for anyone who wants excellent design, reliability and cost effective printing. As the picture shows, the ink carts are simple, indeed a delightfully simple design and they are subsequently easy to refill, and they even have a little float level in the front face. If you buy these cartridges wisely then they can offer quarter the printing costs of some others. Yes, they can be that cheap, and are still very easy to refill if you so wish.
Well done Brother.

Others.
Other manufacturers also 'make or re-badge' inkjets. But because the main five have the most affordable ink replacement costs, then there is no point looking for cheap replacement cartridges for uncommon printers. If your workplace has such a printer and you can keep their discarded cartridges with integral print heads, then this may offer cheap printing, but unless you have a good reason, I would stick to the big five.

Apple printers are usually rebadged Canons.
Kodak, Compaq and Dell printers are usually rebadged Lexmarks and may sometimes be slightly modified to only accept branded cartridges, so be wary. (possibly RFID.)

I consider all printers as inevitably disposable. - By the time it probably needs a full service or a costly service engineer, often about three years, the print technology has (hopefully) moved on to far better options for your money.

As an ordinary person in the street, (without access to reset codes or cheap ink cartridges) my final choice for photo print quality and refilling is between HP and Epson.
It is a very close call.

At present, I steer clear of Lexmark and modern Canons, as my money can get much better value elsewhere.
As a 'techie', I use older, (non-pixma) canon printers as they are truly reliable, cheap to run and give excellent prints.

For a new printer, HP looks best for print quality and affordability, but only if refilling the ink cartridges at home or using recycled ink cartridges.

Otherwise, like most of the world, you never really go far wrong with a budget Epson, but only if you can buy cheap replacement cartridges !
For high quality photo work, then Epson again.

Perhaps one day, modern printers may overcome the need to waste half the inks keeping the modern print heads clean, then we would all be winners. Perhaps a dedicated park and wash/scrub print head parking zone with my 'wick 'n seal' technology using cheap methylated spirits and a simple, large cleaner refill tank. It is not exactly rocket science. If Epson or Canon want this copyrighted idea from me, I'd be only glad to offer my help.

Happy hunting for your perfect printer.

Printer Use.

Often the printer is wanted as a domestic 'Jack of all trades' and preferably a master of most.
Perhaps a general office use or for homework and general domestic use.
Perhaps for many people out there with digital cameras, where printing photos is important.
Perhaps you just want a basic hack for printing thousands of flyers or adverts.

Many modern printers now allow direct printing onto a blank CD.
(The Epson 300/340 is reputed to have a feeble design of CD printer tray, but probably due to people who simply print thousands of bootleg CD's and DVD's every week. This shows that many people prefer Epson's because they can take a constant hammering at decent costs. If you know how to bootleg, then you certainly know how to buy cheap inks at bulk discount prices, and Epson's seem to like to work hard.

Some printers allow camera memory cards or 'pictbridge' cables for direct photo printing without a computer. Personally I prefer to post edit before printing, so the picture is nicely composed and any details enhanced where needed, such as in dark areas.

Choose according to your needs - yet another advantage of NOT that high street computer package with that free crappo printer.

Printer Use: Quality of print.
Most modern printers are capable of high quality printing.
Even the average printers are surprisingly good nowadays and improving all the time. A few cheaper ones cannot reach the standards of photo quality, but by 2008, few if any bad printers remain.
There is still a debate as to whether a printer needs the light cyan and light magenta inks, as for most people the photo reproduction is often impossible to distinguish. Only if you are a photo expert will these extra inks be needed. For nearly everyone else, the four colours of Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are more than adequate.

Printer Use: Speed.
Some printers are slow, so if using in an office or for many prints, then compare those printing speeds.
Pixmas are VERY fast, but at a high cost. - My pixma took an appallingly long time to get ready, then prints out fast, (when they work) but the OVERALL time to print is appallingly slow for non-office environments. So although fast on paper, it's really crap for single prints.

Learn from my mistakes: With my older canon BJC2000, I print single sheets and pictures at will, with no waiting. But the 4200 Pixma makes a song and dance of the whole start-up affair, that I can only recommend them for batch mode. It's just a pain and wastes even more ink, possibly about two thirds in starting, stopping and 'preening' its print head. If you just want to print one page just now and again, then forget it !
A 'spoilt primadonna' of a printer.
So for occasional high quality printing, HP looks best, with its integral print heads which need less cleaning, with Epson and Brother second. Lexmark fourth then Canon pixmas last.

Remember that in most situations, the 'fastest' printers are often the slowest overall and the least economical.

Printer Use: Positioning and size:
Look for a printer which will fit neatly with the rest of the computer. If your printer is to fit on a shelf, make sure it has a paper feed out tray, or be prepared to modify some wire coat hangers to prevent the sheets from falling onto the floor. Use a tape measure if things look tight.
HP offer low height with excellent front paper handling.

Printer Use: Connectivity:
Most modern printers and computers use USB connectors, but rarely come with a USB cable included in the box.
You should be able to buy a USB printer cable for under three pounds. If you are charged more, then you are being ripped off. Some high street shits shops will charge as much as 12 pounds. USB cables are also available in 'pound shops'.

Older connections.
If you have a very old computer, then look for a printer with parallel input, or budget for a USB card and windows 98SE. A PCI card with six USB ports should cost about 9 pounds.
Some expensive printers can use wireless or infrared links, but these are not worth the effort unless specifically needed. (Use the cable and get faster, safer printing.)

Read a few magazines first.
Lexmark seem to make good and occasionally less than good printers, so you have to check the latest magazine tests. HP are consistently very good, but their massive software sometimes takes time to get around to printing. Epson and canon give excellent results, are fairly fast in computing time and generally easier to live with, especially if in a rush to get the job done to a high standard in an office.
For occasional domestic use, where the printer is mostly left switched off, then HP every time.
For regular domestic use, then a cheap Epson.
(If your daughter keeps printing out 'barbie' web pages, then buy some extra magenta carts ! )

Printer Use: High quality photos.
Always compare any printer preview screens if you are printing direct from camera memory cards. Some screens are awful and some only give menus, not preview pictures. Those with picture screens can be very vague.
Most modern printers can print on glossy paper to that of reasonable photographic printing, but it is often cheaper to get the best photos printed on the high street, with numerous prints being cheap.
High street 'One hour printing' is vastly cheaper than using an expensive home photo printer.
Also checkout the dedicated specialist 6 x 4 inch photo quality printers, then perhaps add a cheaper standard inkjet printer for your general work.

TIP: If you do very little printing, then ANY printer may well clog up if not used for a few months. If you are away from home for six months at a time, then look for a printer using an ink cartridge with integral print head, such as lexmark or HP.
ALWAYS print one sheet a week, just to keep the print head happy, or run a 'clean nozzle' once a week.
If on holiday for a month, look to buy a cartridge storage case, as this will keep your printer ready even after a year or so. I always print a small section of solid black and colour each month to prevent them becoming blocked. for this purpose I have a simple print page on my photo software with a section of each colour, to print out once a week when otherwise not in use.
It was possible to buy older special Canon and HP cartridge cases which have a rubber print head seal and thus keep stored cartridges in better condition for long periods.
My old Cannon BCO2 and BCO5 cartridges with integral print heads have survived in such cases for over TEN years without hassle, although such incredible reliability is academic unless a technology museum curator.
If the printer heads clog up after many months of non use, then at least you have the choice of trying to clean or replacing the cartridge with its print head, rather than simply dumping a printer with a built in print head.

If you want a high quality printer, but only expect to use it just a few times a year, then consider using high street printers, or perhaps a HP. You may wish to keep a couple of spare print cartridges nearby, retained in their vacuum sealed packs, just in case.

If you want to print lots of high quality but do not intend to keep the printer for many years, then the Epson is often a good choice, even more so if you can refill the inks yourself and use override codes.

TIP: If you already have a printer with expensive cartridges, but don't like filling it yourself, then seriously consider changing your printer, not the expensive cartridge !

TIP: If a printer for photo work, always go to a large computer warehouse and check out the print quality by comparing them side by side. There really is no substitute for direct comparisons of the print-out. Take your camera and 'pictbridge' lead, or your memory card to the computer warehouse which has demonstration printers. Have a test photo ready in memory, which usually has a face and a scenic view including a tree and some water, then grab a salesperson to test the print quality of the more sensible printers on display. Finally check the inks are affordable by looking at the replacement inks rack and only then choose the most suitable printer.

Some really cheap printers have just one very expensive, three-colour cartridge.
Cheap printers have two ink cartridges, - a black and a three colour cartridge.
Good, sensible printers have a black and a three colour cartridge.
Better quality printers have four separate ink cartridges, black, magenta, cyan, yellow.

Top photo quality printers also add two extra inks for skin and sky tones, so have six separate ink tanks, which may keep running costs a bit more sensible, especially if photo-print happy.
Some HP printers also allow the black to be replaced with a special photo cartridge which has black plus light cyan and light magenta.

Future printers may have up to ten ink tanks, including pigment black and different coatings, so be wary of the actual running costs, as a set of genuine replacement inks may cost over sixty pounds !

The manufacturers still want as much of your money as they can legally lay their hands on.

TIP: From personal experience with the latest technology and digital cameras, it is often cheaper to go to the high street to get digital photos printed onto 6 x 4 inch photo high quality prints. Even the high street instant print machines at 29 pence per photo can often work out cheaper than any home printer which may cost up to 50 pence per 6 x 4 print.

So check those costs before spending any real money.

Printer Use: Multi - Function devices.

It may seem a great idea to have the printer, scanner and fax machine all in one.
It may indeed be a good idea if you want to use it as a stand alone photo copier or simply to save space.
But when the power supply or the printer dies, oops! there goes the scanner and fax too !
If you only use a scanner very occasionally, then consider a cheap USB scanner which can be hidden away under the desk and used only when needed. Cheap scanners don't even need a power supply and are very convenient, with just their single USB plug.
Many word processors have a fax option, but unless in an office environment, then a fax may not be needed, especially if you don't have a land line or have a fax function in your software office suite.

The point of considering using discrete, separate devices, is that you are not hassled when things go wrong. If the scanner dies, then you are not short of the printer and vice versa. Where used, a separate fax machine is always there for emergency, perhaps to order replacement inks or even a new printer :(

Neither scanner nor fax technology is likely to improve in the next decade, so updating just the printer is always a far cheaper option in the long run. Some 'all in one multi function printer scanners' are also more expensive to run, as the inks are not so cheap to replace. If you intend to refill them yourself, then they can also be harder to refill, once you have lifted the heavier top with the scanner.

(A customer recently presented with an expensive, top quality 'all in one' which had died. The power supply went haywire. It was effectively junk. Upon stripping, I noted the print engine was nothing wonderful - a moderate printer and cheap scanner would have been just as good at a quarter the price. I salvaged the scanner neons, a couple of motors, bottom felts and junked the rest. I did not bother to keep the ink carts as they were not user friendly types.)

Printer Use: All - in - one good :)
The upside is that you can simply place the fax in the scanner and press a computer button to send it, then scan it into a compressed image file for archiving on the hard drive and CD.
They take up less room.
You can also send a picture of your buttocks scanned into the internet or by email when you hand in your notice to quit.

Printer Use: All - in - one bad :(
You are committed to all your eggs in one basket. If the software is trashed by a virus, then you have lost the lot:
With many staff, the multi purpose does not look so clever, as Pat may want to use the printer, Sam to use the scanner and Fred to use the fax. So with separate items, productivity can be far higher.
If you want to use the scanner, and send a fax, and still want to print off hundreds of documents in the background while all this is going on, then separate items begin to look much more sensible and a lot safer in the long run.
They take up more room.

It is always a case of choosing 'Horses for Courses'.

Printer Use: Other considerations.

TIP: If you deliberately buy a disposable printer, then look at the power supply, they are usually 12 to 30 volts DC. I use an old printer power supply which charges up my rechargeable drill when the drills' power supply failed. 30 volt power supplies are great for recharging 24 volt rechargeable drills whose charger has failed.
Some 14 volt power supplies make good car or motorcycle battery trickle chargers.

A personal viewpoint and a few examples.

June 2008. - Every time I update this webpage, the printer game is always changing.
At present, the game as I see it is thus:
The ideal printer would have affordable ink cartridges, be physically compact and be able to print photo quality.
Such a printer does not exist. The budget HP 'bread bin' types are the closest - cheap and print really well and are easy to refill. Look for number 21 and 22 cartridges, which are fairly new design, based on older designs, so will be around for a few years, refillable, and being common, are always available as recycled for about half the price.

For decent 6x4 inch prints for domestic use, I would personally prefer the high street photo print services rather than waste money on any expensive printer. Just pop along with your memory card or USB dongle and get instant or wait an hour for even lower costs. They also make excellent postcards when on holiday.

A disposable 19 quid Lexmark and a seven quid ink refill kit will offer a couple of years of absolutely minimal cost domestic printing and ideal for general use. If you buy new ink cartridges, then you've probably lost. If you refill the ink cartridges, then you have a basic but incredibly affordable printer.

If wanting photo capability at low cost, possibly HP are well worth looking at, even the cheaper versions but neither budget models print on CD's. There is also the option of a third HP optional photo high quality cartridge which has less black but includes pale cyan and pale magenta for very fine photos. When the print heads die after many refills, I'd simply buy a new printer, NOT the cartridges. This is because the printer costs about the same as replacement cartridges, but you get a brand new, shiny printer with brand new print heads, updated capabilities and drivers, and a clean nappy without imminent reset ink counter problems!

If you don't want to refill, then always use an Epson printer, but buy the cheaper cartridges first, then check the printer fits the bill.

The costs are of course, in the manufacturers profits of the ink replacement cartridges.
Even if you only manage three or four home refills of ANY printer, you are often still 'up on the deal' and ahead of the accountants. I might even buy another identical HP but it would probably be updated by then. Only if in the future, the manufacturers have made refilling difficult in their later models would I consider a new set of ink cartridges for an older model.

So unless you want to print CD's or high photo quality at home, then almost any such 'cheapo' printer with reasonable print quality is a good choice if it has refillable cartridges. You can print reasonable photos and general work at almost minimal costs, saving your pennies for the high street print services which will always be as good as is possible.

Much later, when problems eventually occur, such as a death timer, or streaky prints, or nasty crunchy noises or crumpled paper, then simply consider throwing away the printer, especially when repair or replacing a pair of ink cartridges is almost as expensive as a new printer.

(The canon 4200 pixma is now CHEAPER than its set of replacement ink cartridges. No, I will not buy another pixma just to get these full replacement cartridges. I can spend my money far more wisely.)

So beware - these and many similar printers are just another classic case of 'Buy - Refill- Die'.
(or if you are a daft high street consumer, 'Buy - Get fleeced Die' type of printer.)
The worst option is like me, an appalling printer which is not even fit to print.

At the better end of the photo printing market, Epson with cheap aftermarket cartridges is eventually disposable.
You may wish to consider a HP for a very long life if you can refill it yourself.
I do not recommend modern canon printers.

Although I have just advised dumping a printer when the costs of a new cartridge matches or outweighs the hassle or costs, I still wish to impress upon the reader that they can often be repaired, or at least attempted to be repaired. You have nothing to loose. For almost free printing, see later.

Before entering the shops.

Perhaps you have decided to buy a cheapo printer which is easily refillable at home for constant daily use and get your glossy photos printed much cheaper and reliably at the high street or internet photo services.

Perhaps you are prepared to buy a really good quality photo printer and have checked the nappy codes and cartridge pricing.

Perhaps you have decided to buy both, to use the expensive one just occasionally, by printing high quality photos in batches to keep overall running costs down and the cheap refillable printer as a daily hack of all trades.
Perhaps like many, you have decided to keep your old printer and also buy a special printer !
Many people have two printers connected to their computers. One for letters and general chores and one for photos.

Time to pootle off to the computer shop, or to surf that internet - web thingie, whatever that may be.

Do your research.
For instance, I really wanted a canon, as my other canons were superb. The pixma 4200 cartridges were very expensive, but then, I had no intention to buy any ink cartridges, as I had downloaded the manual from the web and noted that they could be overridden, so I would refill these original cartridges as often as I like. And a good job too, as at that time the fifty percent ink wasting disgrace was still unknown to the public.
But even I make mistakes. I have dumped my pixma before it had used up the inks - it really is that bad.

I took my own advice, - if the inks are too expensive - dump the printer - and that includes dumping a BRAND NEW canon !!!

If an Epson and wishing to refill yourself, then download the latest Epson override software from www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml, then check the list of the supported printers.

If an expensive printer and intending to keep it for many, many years, then search the internet for the reset codes for canon, HP and lexmark printers. Make a list of the supported printers.

Check List.
Check if you have parallel or USB connectors on your computer.
If using two printers, then the old printer may use the parallel cable and the new one a USB port.

Check the room where the printer is to be positioned. Width and also the DEPTH to the back wall and HEIGHT, as some printers are really deep and some are rather tall. Use a tape measure if things look really cramped. Will a HP fit where no other printer can ?
It is for such reasons that I like HP 'bread bin' printers, as they feed from the front and exit the paper at the front. - You can literally put them just about anywhere.

Check the inks are cheap to buy OR that the inks tanks are refillable. So first - go to the inks display rack and check the ink pricings.

TIP: If in doubt, simply buy a common inkjet refill kit first and check the desired printer is on the list inside the refill kit. If not, then at least you have that all important refill compatibility list for checking the next likely printer for you to inspect for suitability.

Check the internet for the most popular printers and the cost range you want. You can often buy at the same price in the big local warehouses.

Optional check if intending to print high quality photos:
TIP: Load a 'test print' into your camera memory card, usually with a face for skin tones and some landscape scenery with water, trees and sky. Then take the memory card or on a USB device or camera and any 'pictbridge cable', so you can control the printer from the camera or just the memory card. If the printer does not work with your camera, then it is probably not worth .

If in ANY doubt, leave before opening your purse: - Go to the local cafe to ponder your options.

In the shop.

If you have an older computer without a USB port, then look for printers with parallel and USB connections, or consider adding a PCI card with USB ports in your computer. A PCI card with six USB ports sells for 9 pounds. See also 'using older printers', below.

You may well be suckered into a USB cable for 12 pounds or more. Mine cost under two pounds new and has worked faultlessly for three years.

When in the shops, lift the lids of the various chosen printers to see if you can discern the ink cartridge positions. You are looking for either two cartridges, a black and a colour, or possibly four or even six slots for ink cartridges. Check you are the right printer, not one which has more inks than you want.
You may well be happy with four individual colours for separate ink cartridges for a fixed print head printer, or to look for two ink carts which have integral print heads.
ALWAYS read the side of the packaging to check the printer uses the ink carts you have chosen.

While there, lift a few HP and Brother lids to see the remote versions of cartridges as this may be the future of printing you can already buy conversion kits to modify many printers to this system for about 35 pounds !

Checking the ink cartridges.
When in the shop, check those ink cartridges. They are often packed away from the display printers and are in vacuum sealed packs. So any display printers will not give you an insight as to the ability to refill the cartridges unless they are working display printers.
You will have to note the model, then go to the ink rack and compare any pictures on the cartons. If this fails and you want to refill at home, then buy a refill kit first, then pootle off to the cafe to check which printers are supported on the list.
If this fails, look for similarly shaped cartridges as the technology does not change much. For example, most of the standard HP cartridges look similar and are easy to refill in the same manner. For refilling Epson's at home, you must check the override software beforehand for the supported printers and take the list in the shop with you, or otherwise look for cheap compatible cartridges, then buy some while they are still available.

If in doubt, choose Lexmark for a cheap refillable printer or a standard HP for a high quality refillable printer.

Even the cheaper 'compatible' cartridges in the high street shops are overpriced.
So also check out mail order ink carts which are half the price of the compatibles - especially if you have done your homework and bought a fairly common printer for which everyone and their pet dog makes replacement carts for.

A seven ink cart set for an Epson should be about 40 pounds genuine, or 20 pounds for a compatible set in the high street, and about 12 pounds if you shop around and 7 pounds via mail order. Yes these are actual examples of ink cart prices I can get in January 2007 for a seven ink cart Epson.

The sales staff will tell you that the genuine ones are best and indeed they are, - but by the time you have gone through six sets of cheaper inks, you will probably have saved the cost of the printer and thus all else is pure profit. And if the printer dies, (they last much longer than this) then you simply buy another spanking new printer !

Before leaving the shop.

I assume you left the shop WITHOUT any extra warranty, as you already have a 12 month standard warranty and any printer beyond this is probably cheaper to replace or repair yourself, than to get serviced.
(I'm still trying to get a refund on my appalling canon pixma. Canon suck.)

You should ONLY consider an extended warranty if the printer is really expensive and you expect to use it often and for many years. MAKE SURE the warranty covers ink overflow cleaning and resetting and new print heads, - if not, then there is probably no point in paying for an extended warranty.

For most makes, especially Epson: ALWAYS choose from the selection those which have affordable ink reservoirs. It is the ink which will keep costs sensible. When you buy the printer, also buy compatible ink refills. - No cheap compatible refills no sale.

TO REPEAT: NEVER buy a printer by initial cost,- buy something that will do the job well.

Check the machine prints high enough quality pictures and uses affordable inks.
If using a digital camera, check out the latest options for direct printing.

Some printers have been sold for the same cost as the replacement ink cartridges, so be wary about what this is this saying about the ink vs profit margins for manufacturers. The cartridges that come with the printer may only be partially filled, but can often be refilled at home.

Examples of .
Budget 'Jack of all trades', master of some. - A cheap Lexmark with single cartridge, plus a set of refill inks - 20 for printer, plus 7 pounds for ink refill kit.
Good all rounder for occasional general use - A HP 'breadbin' printer. 30 quid depending upon where you buy.
Good all rounder for daily photo use - An Epson with compatible set of inks. 40 to 70 quid depending upon model.
Good all rounder for many years of occasional photo use - A HP plus four colour ink refill kit. 50 to 70 pounds.
Free - Almost any Older Canon.

Buying Ink refills.

Have a fright, - look at the cost of ink cartridges in your local high street shop.
Now look at ink prices in computer magazines, of the ink cartridge warehouses. There is a great difference, often a quarter the cost and they still make good profits.
(I have seen standard invoices for Epson and canon 'compatible' ink cartridge importers and they are often pennies. Yes pennies. The 'mark up' is phenomenal and always at the expense of the high street shopper.)

Typical of the 2006 generation of photo quality printers is the Epson R300 series, for which a set of six ink cartridges cost 56 pounds for the genuine article. Third party manufacturers can sell the set for 16 pounds, or three full sets of six for 45 pounds. This is much cheaper, but is still not cheap, so the reader must decide just what they want their printer for. I have seen them for as low as seven pounds for a set of five Epson carts, and that is after the shop has added its profit margin. Fill them yourself and reset, then it costs even less.

Canon Bad: My five separate Pixma cartridges are 12 pounds each and after wastage, is far worse than my BJC200. Bad news all round. (The pixma is now being sold for LESS than the replacement ink cartridges - Just say no.)
Canon Good: My Cannon bjc 2000 printer cartridges cost 199 pence for black, and 249 pence for 3 colour. I have seen the trade receipts but tell how much a shop gets to pay for them, (but they are well under 50 pence !) As they refill easily, I don't even pay this much for my ink - I get many refills from an ink refill kit.

I recently found '2 for 1' on ink refill kits, so I'll leave you to guess just how little it costs me to print out lots of A4 pictures :))

The nicest solution is a four ink printer, so you can refill the inks yourself.
If wanting a six ink printer, then make sure you can refill the black, cyan, magenta and yellow, then only buy the few other uncommon colour cartridges, although pale magenta and pale cyan are now also available as refill inks.

Ink cartridge design can help or hinder, nice or horrible.
A nice piece of design is that some of the latest tanks are transparent, so you can easily see when they need replacement, rather than rely on a highly dubious integrated chip, or to wait until the print is missing a colour. With most printers you just lift the lid and the printer automatically moves the print head to the middle for ink level inspection and replacement or filling as required. I resorted to lifting the lid of my thirsty pixma 4200 and injecting ink direct into the cartridges without removing them, glug, glug, glug, I'd hate to consider the genuine replacement ink costs. I just hope our government don't use these, as our taxes can't take much more of a rip off.
Some Epson cartridges are a nightmare, - see later.

To repeat - when buying your printer, check those ink costs.
Make sure it's not chipped if you want to do your own refilling, or check the cost of chipped ink replacements.
If the ink cartridges are chipped, but more than two quid each (3 Dollars) then look for reset programme before buying. There is nothing more annoying than the computer saying the yellow ink tank is empty, yet you can patently see that it is still a quarter full. - Ahhhg !

If the cartridge costs 10 to 26 quid, (usually with an integral print head) but can be refilled easily, then it is usually cost effective, as you will be buying a home refill kit. - Then when the print head dies after a year or so, simply buy a new cartridge or even a new printer.

If Epson win their court case in 2006 against globally cheap replacement inks, then you must seriously look to ink tanks which can be refilled by hand. If Epson win, the market place will simply be divided between those who pay through the nose for inks, or those who can refill their own tanks. There may also be a burgeoning replacement ink tank refill / recycle service, using a swap of genuine tanks refilled by local shops. Many people will certainly offer this service if Epson wins, as it's money for old rope.

Not all manufacturers are consistent. So always check those ink cartridges.
The classic HP and Lexmark cartridges with integral print heads are easy to refill, apart unknown aspects of the latest 360 cartridges with rounded casings for the HP 8250 which use a fixed print head. A self fill product was advertised from after market suppliers, but has since disappeared, so it can be done but may need software modifications. Unlike the rest of its HP cousins, this unusual design may be far more economical on ink than similar fixed head designs. It is early days for this, so until more info is available, stick to the classic designs with integral print head for easy and affordable filling if you want a good HP printer for general and photo use for many years.

For those who want to print plenty of high quality photos regularly, then Epson actually seem to be playing a smarter game. Although they were the first to use the awful chipped cartridges, their printers at least do not waste the inks too badly. So if you can get cheap replacement cartridges, or your printer is on the epsoneone list (see below) to allow you to refill, then this looks the best route for a mid to top range printer.

I know of no printer without some scam, hassle or bugbear.

I tend to like Epsons, as the free Ruskie over-ride control programme ensures this remains a hard working, yet cheap to run piece of high quality engineering, as nearly all modern printers are. But cleaning Epson fixed print heads is not easy and more often than not, I have to throw otherwise good Epsons away.
The old style canon print head shown here is separate to the ink cartridges and so easily cleaned or replaceable, but costs almost as much as a new printer. But at least this easily removable print head allows any owner to give it a good cleaning and get it working again, rather than dispose of this printer before its time for the big recycle bin in the sky. Most canons have easily removable print heads, so when they eventually fail or get cruddy, at least you can remove it easily and have the chance to try and clean it fully. Nice one Canon. Removing Epson print heads is a right pain and is described in detail later.

'Chipped' ink cartridges.

Mainly Epsons. Don't dispair if you have such a device. You may wish to steer clear of ink cartridges with chips built in, as these may be easy to refill, but the printer can prevent them from working afterwards. If you unfortunately have a printer using chipped cartridges, then it is best to look for cheap pattern replacement cartridges which are usually half to a third of high street prices.
Alternatively, they may be able to be refilled, but you will need a chip setting tool or some software to override the manufacturers software, see the excellent Ruskies at www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml can also help override the chip state, as they know the merit of good value and good printers.

There are two ways of overriding the chips, either by resetting the chip, or if the chip be written to, then it is 'frozen' and does not count down further. If the latest chips need freezing, then you should do this immediately upon fitting a new cartridge, as you cannot reset a fully empty cartridge chip.
Because of these annoying chips, the printer sometimes says the ink cartridge needs replacing, even when the genuine ink tank obviously has ink remaining ! - The answer is obvious - download the over ride software.

Many people refill and although it can be a bit messy, it is extremely cheap and you always have plenty of spare ink on hand, day or night !
A local shop was recently selling 'two for one' on colour ink refill kits - I was in consumer heaven and enjoy a good giggle when passing those high street ink cartridge display racks :))

You cannot refill using ordinary ink, as the ink you use in your pen is not the same. A lady friend tried using everybody's favourite school ink, 'Quink' but it ran out the bottom. We saved the cartridge and flushed before refilling correctly. Some may giggle, but at least she made the attempt which is more than many people.

The correct printer refilling ink is commonly available in packs, usually a black set or a three colour set for under ten quid which includes instructions and a syringe.
The ink comes in various forms, the most popular is a pack of three bottles of black or three bottles, one of each colour, plus with a medical syringe and needle, and cost about three pounds. Buy them when they are discounted or 2-for-1 offers. There is also solo ink which comse in a plastic concertina bottle with a steel needle on the top for a pound each.
The ink comes with various rubber bungs for cartridges and bits and pieces. Each kit cost a pound for about 25cc of ink which was enough to fill a domestic cartridge about three or four times. (Or fill a massive HPC1823D once). So a cartridge costing anything from 2 pounds to seven pounds could be filled for about 30 pence, which is about one tenth to one twentieth the running cost. There are also larger bottles of ink where 125 and 250cc of inks can work out even more cheaper.

If you listen to official sources, then the ink cartridges with integral print heads can be refilled, but the heads tend to fail after a few refills. From personal experience, cartridges are often good for up to twenty refills. But even if you only get three refills from one cart, then you are still well ahead of the game. I have managed many more than this and my older canons have been filled almost a hundred times. (I do miss those older cannons : (

Just because you are saving money, doesn't mean you can't get further ahead: Look out for free, empty cartridges or from discarded printers: Some of my cartridges came 'complete' with an unwanted printer. Ask your local charity shop and friends in offices. Always give the charity shop a reasonable value of the item. The more you give, the more the needy receive. Then you can have a spare cartridge which can be refilled ready for instant use and of course, extend the working life of the printer.
I personally recommend NOT having a spare ink cartridge, as filling them may be great, but they can often leak before it is time to replace them, so just use one ink cartridge and keep any empty ones in a sealed crisps packet with a little meths or alcohol, for when the present one eventually becomes useless.
I have a perfect spare HP22, but it leaks if filled, so I simply keep it in a sealed crisps (potato chips) packet with some paper tissue soaked in methylated spirits.
Keep the packing of the original cartridge as it can be used to seal and help protect the head of any replacements. It is also possible to buy the highly recommended special HP and (early BC02/5) canon storage cartridge cases, which have a rubber print head seal and thus keep stored cartridges in good condition for a year or more.

There are no real problems with printer inks being incompatible with most printers, as the ink technology is far finer than any nozzles. I have filled a cartridge with integral print head over twenty times before it died, and I was told that five times is about the maximum. Yes it was an old Cannon, a BC03 cart.
My old canon 2000 with the separate ink tanks had been refilled with ink over fifty times and showed no intention of being less than perfect until the electronics failed. So in reality, it's not the differences between original inks or aftermarket inks, but the way the printer is used and maintained.

The only differences in inks is the dyes or pigments, some of which are not waterproof.
The more expensive, pigment based black inks are used for archiving, where degradation from sunlight or many decades of retrieval is important. Some printers now use two blacks, one for archiving and one for photos, so you may wish to get this piniky in your choice of a new printer. But for most people this is simply irrelevant and only experts will note any difference. Only where making posters for bright sunny shop windows should decent inks be used, and then only if needed for six months or more in direct sunlight. In such cases, use the original inks if the manufacturer supplies any special inks. For all other uses, the refill kits are just as good as any. Most people don't care if their documents remain perfect for more than a year in bright sunlight.

Read the refill instructions for your cartridge, as the typical refill kits have magnificent lists of over a hundred makes and models.

How to refill.

The plastic ink cartridge is a plastic container with an exit hole to the print head and usually contains a foam core.
There are two main forms of cartridges, this with and those without the print head.
Those without the print head are removed for the first time, and a small hole made in the top, usually where the vent is. Before filling, it is recommended to place some vinyl tape over the bottom hole, so the ink does not leak out. The tape is removed a few minutes after filling, so the internal pressure relaxes and the tape also prevent unwanted drops of ink staining the table or old newspaper.
The tape also allows the ink to settle in the cartridge for a while before inserting into the printer, or if used for long term storage of spare filled cartridges. As the vinyl tape has to be removed before use, simply place a longer strip of tape, so that it is obvious that it must be removed, by even the silliest of office staff.

Some Epson cartridges have an easily pierced piece of tape over the bottom feed hole, and this is best cleaned, then covered in thin selotape(tm) or parcel tape, as this can be easily pierced on the Epson print head spikes. The tape can be stuck up the sides of the cartridge for extra security.

Cartridges with an integral print head will also leak at the bottom when being filled, but not so much as bare cartridges. Nevertheless, the ink may often leak, so place a little paper tissue under the print head nozzle to prevent unwanted ink drips.

The basic routine is to remove the cartridge, use a small screw supplied with the kit to make a hole in the appropriate place, of which the better refill kits have an accompanying guide.

Older HP cartridges: On some colour cartridges, you may have to remove the top cover such as the green HP and grey BJ21 shown here. The large capacity BLACK HP cartridges DO NOT have the top removed.
Insert a small pocket knife blade and prise the green top off, as it is held in place with a little glue. The tops are replaced after filling, simply secured with a piece of sticky tape.

The grey BJ21 easily shows the three colour holes for filling and has the piece of tape to keep the lid on after filling.

Where the colour cartridge contains three colours, then three holes are made. These holes are often a case of simply enlarging the vent holes.

If you do not have the filler guide, then explore in the following manner:
First make a small hole where you think the top of the ink reservoir is. If a three colour cartridge, then make one exploratory hole at a time.
If a common cartridge, such as Epson's and later HPs and Lexmarks, there may well be a piece of plastic film and under this a serpentine vent channel, At the hidden end of the vent channel is the best place to probe with the hole.
Dip in the clean needle or a cocktail stick and test for any ink colour.
(If no ink is found and it's a colour HP with a big green or grey cap, then you may need to remove the cap. So first make a bigger hole and look inside for an empty space. If so, then remove the cap.)

With the first hole made, now check the colour of the ink. You may find resistance part way into the cartridge, which is the foam to prevent sloshing, so sharpen the injection needle by scraping on fine abrasive paper or nail file until it has an angled sharp point or use a cocktail stick.
Probe for other colours as needed. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID AS SHOWN HERE !
The lid has been removed for illustration purposes only, although it does make refilling easier, but he ink will overflow into the other chambers and contaminate them. So never remove any covers, unless you intend to seal the joins between the various colours. - this cartridge was reassembled with some glue between the chambers and the lid held with some tape for good measure.
If you should, by accident put the wrong ink in a chamber, then open it up, remove the foam, wash under a tap and wash out the chamber, then dry fully and put a little meths cleaner in the bottom of the chamber and print a few pages of solid colour until the chamber runs clean. Then reassemble and refill.

Mark the holes appropriately with their colours. I scratch C Y or M beside the appropriate holes on colour carts or mark the positions inside the printer cover.

This is a picture of the HP No.22 colour cartridge; note the simple holes in the lid. Consider if this is rocket science. The answer is of course, NO.
I used a Swiss army knife to perform the lobotomy and a piece of masking tape to effect a successful rebuild. (I really must get around to gluing the lid back on.)

Under the foam is a little piece of filter paper over the hole down to the nozzles and that's all. The real technology is in the incredible nozzle area, but the user is only required to keep filling the foam filled chamber with the correct ink.
Where the foam is compressed or dense, then a sharp needle is best, so the ink can be injected HALF way down in the foam, without damaging anything delicate on the base of the ink chamber, or causing ink to flow out the top rather than sink into the foam.

Eventually the nozzles will indeed fail, as do all things.
But unless you let the cartridge run dry and if unlucky, should 'cook' the nozzles, then you can fill happily and so easily. There are NO booby traps here. You know that when it eventually does fail, so if a HP22 cart, you only need pay another ten quid and have no other hassle. No chip setting nor counter crap and no cleaning of printer heads.
If I cannot find the printer reset codes then the answer is simple - I look for another cheap HP printer using the 21/22 cartridges and carry on as before, using my old carts, with a spare set remaining in their boxes. As such printers cost about the cost of a pair of carts, then I am simply ahead of the game.
It is for such cartridges as this that I have moved to HP.
(Note : The 'rebadged?' budget Canon 2200, has almost identical print engine and suspiciously similar ink cartridges to the HP21/22, but at twice the cost.)

If your ink tank is not clear or not on the refill kit list, then buy just one cheap replacement tank and when it empties, probe it or disassemble. In the worst case, you may need to wash it in water to see how it is constructed internally so you can fill any subsequent ones safely, easily and of course, fully.
Usually an ink cartridge does NOT need to be taken apart, just a probe with a cocktail stick to see which sections contain which colour inks.
If you must disassemble but reuse, then wash in water, allow to dry, then fill with a little alcohol and run a print test of a full page with meths to clean the nozzles. Empty, then fill with a little ink, sit the nozzle on a piece of paper tissue to help wick out the ink, then fit into the printer, allow to stand for a few hours or overnight (or a couple of days if very fine nozzles) then test.

There is always one design which stands above the rest.
Without doubt, the easiest to refill are the Bother cartridges shown here - you don't even need to remove them and can refilled them in situ, - even while printing !
They really are very nice carts, with all the best attributes: They are clear so you can see when filling them, they are not in the print head so there is no need to slide the head across, and they are separate with high capacity. They have an upper black finger grip through which you can easily refill. Because they use remote pipes to the print head, then there is no need to prime or other hassles found with separate ink carts fitted directly to a print head.
They even have little internal floats to recognise the ink levels.
I really cannot find any fault with this design other than the printers are more expensive than the disposable budget designs now available. When the print head fails, its probably time to buy a new printer, whereas with integral print head designs, you only need to replace a print cartridge.
I am not sure, but have been told that these printers reverse flush the nozzles occasionally by pumping back up the ink to clear the nozzles and thereby greatly improve the sparing use of inks rather then piss the ink away to clean the nozzles, like other designs of print heads do. I still await a free Brother so I can play with it - unfortunately they are very reliable.

Filling.

WARNING: NEVER tape over the bases of three - colour ink cartridges which have integral print heads. The tape always causes the colours to bleed across to the other nozzles and so the blue can contaminate the yellow nozzles and cause excessive green colour for many pages. - Just let these print heads bleed freely onto a paper tissue or kitchen towel as you fill them.

TIP: If you have just cleaned a separate print head (e.g.Espon) then you may have a minor problem priming the print head. - Start by filling the (Epson) ink cartridge exit hole first, with a drop of ink or meths to fully fill the exit aperture to help prime the print head. Then carefully tape up the filled exit hole. Now you can fill the main ink tank reservoir. If you have cleaned the print head then this priming of the exit hole with ink and tape is often needed as the ink path down to the print nozzles may be dry and not contain any fluid to help prime the nozzles by capillary or wicking action.
By priming the exit holes of the cartridges then taping them, the ink in these exit holes is forced down to the nozzles when the cartridge is inserted. I have only had this minor annoyance with Epsons, as canons seem to use a self priming capillary action with a sponge head.

Injecting the ink.
Simply inject the black, cyan, magenta or yellow ink into the appropriate cartridge holes until it is about 80 percent full. Inject the ink slowly so the ink does not overflow and has a chance to soak though the internal foam.
Never force the ink into the cartridge, but only use slight pressure and allow it time to fill.

In some ink cartridges, you may feel the needle pushing into the foam core. Filling from low in the tank foam will ensure the ink fills neatly and fully through the foam core. If you insert the needle just a short way into the top of the tank, then the ink may take ages to settle its way down into the reservoir area.
Injecting deep into the foam allows a more fuller filling.
Do not push the needle all the way as you may damage the bottom paper filter near the print head.

With some, long thin, separate ink colour tanks, such as on the latest Epsons and Canons, the tank has two sections, one with the foam above the exit hole and a clear section containing just ink. The refill hole is in the ink, and not in the foam section. The filling hole will need a rubber seal or a piece of tape to prevent any slight chance of spilling as the print head flies left and right while printing.

TIP: If the print head drips ink while injecting, then the cartridge is being pressurised, so make a larger hole to allow the air to escape. Otherwise, push the needle into the cartridge, then suck out some air before injecting the ink, so the cartridge takes the ink, but otherwise remains mainly in a vacuum condition.

TIP: As pushing the blunt needle into the foam can crush the foam, it is better to sharpen the tip of the needle by making an angled sharp edge by rubbing it at an angle of 45 degrees on a piece of fine wet and dry paper or on a oilstone or simply dragging it along a piece of smooth concrete such as a floor. Your kitchen knife sharpener may also work.

TIP: Where the needle is inserted from the top (e.g. BC21 and Epson's) I usually fill with the needle three quarters into the reservoir area, and inject very slowly until there is a bubble around the hole, showing that the ink level is getting near the top.

TIP: Where the needle is inserted from the side (e.g. BC02), position the tank on its side, so the needle tip is near the base, so the ink can fill from the bottom up for a full, neat fill.

TIP: Unless the cartridge is transparent, tilt the cartridge at a slight angle so the filler hole allows the ink to over-spill, to prevent overfilling.

TIP: If intending to refill cartridges, then the refill kits with three inks usually supply just one needle and syringe. Always start with the yellow refill, then the red, the cyan, then the black, so any residual ink in the syringe is not going to darken the lighter inks.

TIP: The second and third times you buy refills, always get the full kits so you have a separate syringe for each ink, to save having to clean them.

TIP: If you can buy the inks in their own bottle with integral needle, then this saves the hassle of using a syringe, and you can simply inject the ink direct from the container. In some designs of printers, you can even get to inject the ink without removing the cartridges, which makes life very nice indeed.

TIP: If in a busy office, you get through a lot of black ink, then look for a printer with a large black ink tank and keep the spare ink, ready for use, in a direct injection bottle such as the upper one in this picture. Then you need only set the printer to the 'cartridge replace' position, - open the printer lid, - insert the needle directly into the black tank, - (reset any counters) - and be printing again in seconds.

TIP: If not a transparent ink cartridge, then note or guess the internal ink volume of the chamber, then use enough ink to refill to three quarters. The first time, the ink may overflow, or simply the internal pressure will cause bubbles beside the needle, and always a few drips from the nozzle, SO GO SLOWLY and take note for the next time you refill, you will know just how much to inject and it will become second nature. This is the advantage of using syringes, as they are clearly marked with the volume which is delivered and you can fill the syringe with a little less than the maximum capacity of the cartridge, so it will not over fill or cause unnecessary mess.

TIP: When filled, cartridges with integral print heads can be dabbed gently on to clean paper kitchen tissue to check the inks are wicking their way to the print head, and to clean any excess ink bleed, caused by injecting the ink.

TIP: When a refilled cartridge fails to print properly, especially those with integral print heads, then leave them in the printer overnight, as this usually allows the inks to settle and nearly always print happily on the morrow, (or after a few days if a very old and knackered print cartridge).

Filling is very simple.
Filling is VERY economical.
Filling gets very easy after a few times.

If the printer drinks ink, then dump the printer or buy inks by the larger bottle, 250cc or more. Glug, Glug, Glug.

If you get your fingers inky, then buy disposable plastic gloves, or go carefully. Always have a couple of kitchen paper towels to hand. One for any bleeding from the nozzles as they fill and one for general cleaning.

Gradually as you get proficient, you may get very confident. You may, like some of us, prefer not to remove the cartridge, but inject directly into the fitted