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Sick of Paying for Computer Printer Inks? Kodak wants to

Sick of Paying for Computer Printer Inks? Kodak wants to Change all That

It's forever been a kind of lesson in economics how the manufacturers price a computer printer so that they lose 30% on the sale, but make up for it by selling replacement cartridges at a 1000% markup. Printer ink prices weren't always this expensive. Ink prices, over the last 10 years have gone up by about four times. You could easily buy a computer printer for $30 today and the very next month, spend about $70 on buying replacement cartridges. If you are asking yourself why printer ink has to be this expensive, it's a rather obvious question. HP for instance, has a $30 billion imaging business; they find that the printer business gives them three times as much in profits as their computer business. And most of those profits come from price gouging with inks.

Not every computer printer manufacturer is trying the same tack to stay in business though. Kodak, a company that's been trying hard to find a footing ever since its photographic film business evaporated, has been wondering if it can turn the printer business model that every other manufacturer has been following on its head, and ingratiate itself to the consumer. They have been trying to price their printers to be somewhat expensive and to price their inks to be quite cheap. With their line of photo printers, they are pricing their cartridges at about a quarter of what the other makers do. While Kodak photo printers put out pictures that are considered to be the best in the industry, their ink prices are among the lowest. In the (admittedly small) photo printer market, they've made quite a dent.

HP's way of dealing with this has been to try to bribe all the major retailers into dropping any cheaper alternatives. Staples for instance, has for long had its own line of printer ink cartridges that could save you about $10. Yet at any Staples store today, and you only get HP's own consumables. HP has bribed Staples into dropping all third-party consumables. But Kodak's new system of making a profit on the computer printer sale and leaving the ink alone has kind of made a large-scale impact on the rest of the market.

HP, Canon and Lexmark have begun to sell super-cheap printers. For instance, you can buy a Lexmark printer for $40 now. It's almost like a new printer with starter-cartridges installed is cheaper than a new cartridge now. Still, consumers do continue to just buy printers based on what kind of features the machines have and not based on the price they will have to pay for ink. Manufacturers don't make it any easier on their consumers either. It can be very difficult to compare one printer with another for how much it will end up costing you in ink purchases. They package inks in different sizes and there is nowhere you can go for easy information on how many pages of print you can get with the ink that goes with any kind of printer.

For the consumer, the good news though is that they just aren't printing that much anyway. People have easy Internet connectivity everywhere now and they don't need to print things out as much as they used to. Still, it's a shame that Kodak's policy of being honest with the consumer hasn't really won it any points. Only the really educated customer notices what Kodak is trying to do.
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