The chips are down
Unsurprisingly, computer printer cartridges are more expensive than vintage champagne. An investigation by British consumer group Which? published yesterday found that “Epson inkjet cartridges stopped printing even though in some cases there was enough ink to print over a third more pages”.
Here’s the full press release:
“Many of the printers tested gave premature warnings to change ink and toner cartridges, but most gave users the option of continuing printing. However, embedded into Epson’s ink cartridges are chips that stop the cartridge working before the ink runs out. A Which? researcher managed to override this system and print up to 38 per cent more good quality pages, even though the chips stated that the cartridge was empty.
“Epson cartridges are pricey – a T026201 cartridge costs about £21 and holds approximately 12ml of ink. This works out at around £1.75 per millilitre for ink, which makes it over seven times more expensive than vintage champagne (a bottle of 1985 Dom Perignon works out at about 23p per millilitre).
“Epson said that customers are free to reset these chips to get more ink out, but it will continue to use them ‘to protect the customer from accidentally damaging their printer or producing sub-standard print quality, by unknowingly draining the ink cartridge and damaging the print head.’
“Which? experts think that damaging the print head is unlikely if consumers stop printing as soon as they see a drop in quality.”
I’ve harped on before about the sleazy price of cartridges. I hadn’t thought of comparing it to bubbly, though. Good one.