save on ink

[3/3/06] On the face of it, the logic of buying refilled ink cartridges seems pretty obvious. A new HP 26A cartridge, for use in about two dozen Hewlett-Packard printers, costs $29 at Staples. Buy a $21 Staples-brand remanufactured unit and you save 28 percent. Go to Cartridge World and you pay $18.39, a 37 percent discount.

Walgreens is installing cartridge refilling machines in the photo department of 1,500 of its 5,120 drugstores. Office Depot is testing the same kiosks in Charlotte, N.C., and Minneapolis. These machines, called the Ink-O-Dem, cost about $40,000 and can refill a cartridge in about 2.5 minutes. "We cut out the middlemen," said Harry Nicodem, chief executive of TonerHead, the maker of the kiosk.

The automation gives Walgreens a price advantage: its HP 26A is $14.50. (You can also refill one yourself at home and, after you scrub the ink from your hands, save even more, 65 percent.)

End of story, right? You would go for the cheaper alternatives. But saving money is not just a matter of finding the lowest price. Two recent studies suggest that the more important consideration is the price per page printed, a number that is affected by the quality of a refilled cartridge.

Hewlett-Packard executives argue that you are wasting your money with refills, which is what you might expect the company to say. Manufacturers have a lot riding on a business model in which they sell ink cartridges that can cost a third of what the printer did.

The company has a point. QualityLogic, a Moorpark, Calif., test laboratory found that while new Hewlett-Packard cartridges had a 2 percent failure rate, 70 percent of remanufactured units did not last as long as promised. Hewlett commissioned the study, but Consumer Reports magazine came to a similar conclusion last May. Testers there found that in almost all cases, the refilled cartridges cost as much or more when evaluated on their per-page output.

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[10/30/04] you can get refilled ink cartridges here