Inkjet printers are like razors - the profit is in selling the blades, not in the razor itself. An ink-jet printer - even a multifunction - tends to be cheap. I have a Canon MX490, which also does faxing and scanning, and it cost me less than $100. If you don't need the bells and whistles, the Canon printers are even cheaper. The ink, on the other hand... I do not buy Canon ink - I buy from Inkjets.com, which I've found to be reliable. I can get two high-yield black cartridges and a high-yield color cartridge for less than $50 with free shipping. Canon ink would set me back about $35/cartridge. I have no idea what kind of page count I'm getting, but I do a lot of printing on the inkjet and don't replace the cartridges that often.
Your best bet for lower page cost is to use a printer like the Epson, which has individual cartridges for the three colors. With a printer like the Canon that uses a single color cartridge, you're going to be wasting ink at some point - once one color runs out, you have to replace the whole cartridge. The only reason I went with the Canon rather than an Epson was because the Epson equivalents were more expensive; I don't do much color printing anymore, so the single cartridge isn't really an issue for me now. |
