Inkjet Printers/Refills

[Chip Fossa]

I have an HP Inkjet printer/scanner/fax.
It costs almost $30 to replace the 'black'
ink cartridge and a little more for the 'color'.
On late night TV saw an infomercial on this
inkjet refill kit for both black&color, and costs about $30.00. Can refill existing
cartridge from up to 4 or 5 times for both.

Does anyone have one of these? Do they work
like they are supposed? They say, all you do
is pop the lid on the existing cartridge and insert this 'hypo' type needle into the sponge of the unit, squeeze and fill.
It sure is getting expensive to replace ink cartridges. Maybe that's why printers are now relatively cheap. They don't tell you, you have to buy their cartridge, and at a
considerable sum; especially cause the thing is so expendable.
Chips Ahoy

[Jeremy Steele]

It's like King Gillette said..."give the razors away, screw 'em on the blades".

[Jack Stoner]

You can buy refill kits at Office Depot and probably other large office supply stores. Usually you can get two or three refills before the cartridge goes bad and starts dropping "dots". Sometimes you can get more but 2 or 3 is fairly average.

I used to have a Lexmark and three refills seemed like the magic number.

[John Gretzinger]

There are a couple of things to keep in mind. The ink carts have sponge in them to help keep the ink flowing evenly. The three refil rule of thumb has to do with the sponge failing and no longer holding the ink nicely.

Some printers sense the ink volume by various methods - Epson tends to "count" the number of passes, so taking an ink cartridge out and putting it back is not a good thing.

HP seems to be pretty good at handling refils, as is the Lexmark (formally IBM).

Some of the bigger electronics resalers (Fry's, etc.) and office supply stores (Staples, Office Depot) carry these refil kits.

I've used them and they seem to work best on non-Epson printers.

John

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MSA D-10
'63 Gibson Hummingbird
16/15c Hammered Dulcimer

[Chip Fossa]

Gheez fellas.........I AM SORRY! It never
occurred to me that these kits would be in stores. Usually the INFOMOFO crowd will drop a product, once the market has, or is getting close to being saturated. Scuse Me.

[Hill Phillips]

I drilled a hole in the top of the ink cartridge and filled it myself with a sringe.
3 times so far.

[Chip Fossa]

Thanks everyone for the helpful tips. Looks
like it's back to Staples.
Chip