ink ripoff

Ana constantly reminds me that I work as a photographer for a living, yet somehow we don’t have any photos hanging in our apartment. I’ve never had a photo printer at home, so it’s my thinking that I’d rather save the money we’d spend making prints at Cord Camera or Printroom.com and invest in a good photo printer. I saw what I thought was a good deal on a decent printer at Staples earlier in the week, but I wanted to do some internet research before pulling the trigger.

I spent better part of the afternoon today looking at printers online. For about $300, I can get a printer that does 13×19″ glossy, archival prints. Both HP and Epson have models in this price range. Doesn’t seem like a bad deal until I started calculating the cost of paper and ink.

HP Premium Plus high gloss paper costs $35 at Staples for a 50-count bundle of 8.5×11. OK, I suppose I can handle that. It’s a heavy, tangible object that will probably outlive me.

Then I start looking at ink.

That’s when I stumbled across the above chart that compares price per milliliter of various common liquids. The cost of HP black ink blew bottled water out of the water, not to mention human blood, penicillin, and Red Bull. I’m not sure about the specific data in the chart, but a recent antitrust lawsuit against HP alleges some ink can run upwards of $8,000 per gallon. The lawsuit also addresses the ridiculous steps printer companies have taken to prevent the usage of “generic” inks.

Now I’m never going to use a gallon of black ink, but proportional to usage, the cost of ink is probably going to be the deciding factor on whether or not Ana gets some wall decoration. Looks like now I have to figure out which photo printer uses ink most efficiently and whose brands of ink are the cheapest. I had no idea this was going to be such an ordeal.