An all too common experience in dealing with computer printers is to go out and buy an inkjet printer for forty or fifty bucks, thinking that you’re getting a great deal. Then when you get the printer home and install it on your computer, it still seems like a great deal. You can print in color, print in black and white, and even print photos. Life is good for a month or two. Then one of the ink cartridges runs out and when you go to the store to buy a new one, you find out that you’re going to have to pay thirty dollars just for a black ink cartridge. Then you start to think that if the color cartridge, which costs thirty five to forty dollars is about to run out too, it would be cheaper to just buy a new printer! Besides being wasteful and expensive, this experience is just frustrating!
Now Kodak is poised to jump into the inkjet printer market and correct this injustice all in one fell swoop! When Kodak releases its line of inkjet printers in march it will turn the whole inkjet printer and ink industry on its head by offering printers that cost a little more than the ink jet printers on the market today, but take ink cartridges that cost substantially less than those that competing printers take.
So far, the majority of manufacturers of inkjet printers- like Epson, Canon, and Hewlett Packard- follow a business plan where they make little or no profit on their printers and then make massive profits on the ink cartridges. This makes a lot of sense from a business point of view. After all, selling the printers at a huge discount can be looked at as an investment if it prompts the owners of those printers to continuously buy the cartridges that turn an enormous profit.
The problem with this business model is that it gouges consumers and limits their freedoms. For example, right now it typically costs twenty nine cents to print the typical four by six inch photograph at home on an inkjet printer. When you compare that to the fact that you can have a photograph printed at a retail store for about nineteen cents, it becomes obvious that people who print their photos at home are paying extra for the convenience of not having to go out to the local Wal-Mart to have their photos printed. This is a problematic business model because it subject the consumers to having to restrict their use of the printers in order to conserve ink to the point where the ink is affordable. This in turn makes them extremely likely to jump to buy any product that offers them a cheaper and less restrictive alternative, which is exactly what Kodak is counting on.
In fact, even with the additional cost of the new Kodak printers, it’s expected that they will allow home users to print those same four by six inch photos for something like ten cents each! When you add up the savings over the course of a couple hundred photographs, it’s easy to justify spending a little more on printer!
A leader in technology reporting, Julia Hall has published articles about the latest digital devices and gadgets for over ten years. After graduating from MIT with a degree in electrical engineering, Julia turned down huge salaries from some of the most recognized fortune 500 companies in the world to pursue his dream of becoming a leading consumer advocate. Julia uses her expertise to cut through the too good to be true deals offered by high tech companies to reveal the real steals and the real duds that we’re bombarded with daily. If you enjoy staying on the cutting edge of technology, whether for business or pleasure, but find yourself occasionally confused by the overwhelming information out there let Julia be your guide.
Tags: computers, electronics, entertainment, technology
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