[smileLP]

a few yrs back i tried some HP or Canon compatible ink cartridges and remember the quality was not nearly as good

have they gotten better?

the prices for the compatibles are obviously much cheaper

anybody have any experience w/these?

thanks

[larkost]

The real problems with refilled cartridges (that is what they are) can be twofold:

The first potential problem is if the cartridge has the print head as part of the cartridge. Since these not engineered to last indefinitely you do get lower print quality on them as they wear out. Usually you can get through a second usage without noticing it much, but they do deteriorate.

The second problem is that you never know what sort of quality to expect out of a refilled cartridge. Since the only reason they exist is price, it tends to be a low-bidder sort of market, and you get a lot of bad stuff out there. Sometimes it will be great, sometimes not. You just have to figure out how much risk you are going to take.

Oh... and if you are thinking of archiving your printouts (say, using the photos in an album to show you kids when they grow up), the re-fillers are never going to spend the money for colorfast inks. If that is not an issue, then you don't have to worry about it.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by smileLP:
a few yrs back i tried some HP or Canon compatible ink cartridges and remember the quality was not nearly as good

have they gotten better?

the prices for the compatibles are obviously much cheaper

anybody have any experience w/these?

thanks

For printing text, and low quality stuff, they may be okay. For printing photos, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

[Mediaman_12]

I have stopped using 'compatible' ink carts since one gummed up the print heads on the Epson printer at work.
The printer totally stopped printing magenta. Even after multiple driver 'head cleanings' and attempts at printing large blocks of magenta in an attempt at manually clearing the head. We where about to toss the printer, but someone decided to go and buy some 'different' ink form the office supply store as a last attempt to fix it. One 'head clean' later it was as good as new.
The ink in the original ink carts' must have some sort of solvent in it that keeps the heads unblocked, the refills must just use any old ink.

[cpac]

ps - this should go in the "peripherals" forum as it has nothing to do with the OS.