Dell ink too expensive - new printer?

daisyloo

I have a Dell printer which eats ink! I am a student and have spent over £100 on ink since September.

I am supposed to only buy ink direct from Dell but I did try one of these recycled ink places. Unfortunately my printer doesnt like this and they dont work properly.

I am so fed up with shelling out to Dell that I am thinking of buying a new printer. My friend has one with refillable cartridges - she buys ink for about a fiver from tesco! Unfortunately she got it abroad and I cant get the same one.

Any suggestions for a printer that is cheap to buy and cheap to run?

Lil306

Few points:

1 - What ink quality do you print out with (i.e something stupidly high)?
2 - Re printers, EPSOM IIRC usually have it good with ink as they have seperate tanks for colours
3 - What model printer is it, certain manufacturers set them up so you can't use anything except genuine ones, but there are ways to fix it

I know EPSOM have some utility (think it's SSCServe) where the printer flashes a light when it wants a toner change, you run this program and it gives you a load more print outs because the real printer low level hasn't been reached

daisyloo

um - I dont want anything flashy - mostly have to print out lecture notes to take to uni for personal use only. I dont know anything about tech stuff at all. My printer says : Dell photo AIO 926.

All I want is cheap and cheerful!

nembot

There are many companies that will refill your existing cartridges for just a few pounds, have a look on www.Yell.com

Dell will tell you this is not supported and may break your printer, but as long as the company know what they're doing, it's perfectly fine.

Lil306

I'll edit my post as it's a bit messy.

The printer you have seems to be a multi-tank printer, so unless the tanks are really small or your settings are really high in quality the print outs should last a fair amount of pages. I'd suggest changing your printer settings to it's LOWEST quality of resolution

Does your Uni not operate some form of printing policy, I know at Sunderland the students pay a certain amount of money to use the printing facilities there and print out XX amount of pages.

If you really do want to find an alternative printer, I would recommend a Canon Pixma MP180. I personally have one myself and love it. It's a photocopier, scanner and printer with memory card reader and a picture bridge thing, does both all in colour and b/w. They go for about £40 at Argos.

The Ink itself is expensive because I buy genuine cartridges, but you can get HP cartridges as generic kits for a lot less or ink refill kits if you want to save mone

DatabaseError

if colour isn't important - just get a monochrome laser, the running costs are then negligible.
Else, epson all the way...they cost pennies to run

Lil306

DatabaseError wrote: »

if colour isn't important - just get a monochrome laser, the running costs are then negligible.
Else, epson all the way...they cost pennies to run

I thought about mentioning this but decided against it as I'm sure most people need colour on their printers. Otherwise agree with Database, nothing beats laser printers in terms of page per print cost. Most laser tanks on small prints have a yield of about 10,000 pages at 5% yield (I think) these are consumer printers like HP Laserjets.

Smaller ones like Samsung / Epsom I think have a yield of about 3-4000 pages

daisyloo

Oh the laser thing might work - after all I would still have the dell for anything that needs colour!

I will have a look - any recommendations of where or cost?

(and how do i change the resolution on the dell?)

Edit:

Oh and I can prnt at uni for 5p a copy - but that adds up quickly!

Lil306

daisyloo wrote: »

Oh the laser thing might work - after all I would still have the dell for anything that needs colour!

I will have a look - any recommendations of where or cost?

(and how do i change the resolution on the dell?)

Edit:

Oh and I can prnt at uni for 5p a copy - but that adds up quickly!

5p a copy, damn I think that's what Sunderland Uni does. Can certainly add up!

Various printers, you can get them from ebuyer,novatech, argos. All laser printers work out cheaper in the long run.

With regards to resolution on the Dell.
Click start - settings - printers - right click your printer + properties
There will be a tab for quality, click this and drag a slider or click a button for lower

daisyloo

Thanks so much - think the laser printer is the way forward for me.

I never would have thought of that - but over the next three and a half years of Uni it should pay for itself!

Lil306

daisyloo wrote: »

Thanks so much - think the laser printer is the way forward for me.

I never would have thought of that - but over the next three and a half years of Uni it should pay for itself!

Indeed, that's why lasers are far better than desktop printers in the long run

Look carefully though, most laser prints are cheap. It's the toners what sting you, it seems scary because some are 200-300 each, but most normal toners are around 80-100 I believe which usually last around 3000-4000 pages.

Samsung, EPSOM, HP are all good makes for laser printers.