I recently purchased an HP OfficeJet d145 all-in-one fax/scanner/printer/copier, and it's excellent. It's got a flat-glass scanner plus a sheet feeder, so it does both copying and faxing very well. Print quality is great too.
But this unit has separate printheads from ink cartridges, and it turns out that the full refill kit is six items retailing for more than $200. Each of cyan/magenta/yellow/black printheads are separate part numbers, and the color ink cartridge is separate from black. I'm not sure why they did this, but I suspect that the printheads can be of higher quality (because they last longer) than the ones embedded the ink cartridges. I can't figure out why they don't have a "printhead kit" with all four.
That the supplies are more than half the cost of the printer (the same kit goes in the lower-end units as well) suggest that HP's doing really well. It might be seen as a "ripoff", but more likely is that the printer costs much less than the unit itself would cost without the consumables being such a profit center.
But this is a great unit - I'd totally buy it again.
Posted by Steve at March 03, 2003 03:44 PM | TrackBackLooks great. My Xerox DocuPrint M750 does the same thing (having a seperate ink cartridge for each color, the black one is high capacity though) and in the end its much better than having them mixed, because if you run out of one color in a mixed cartridge you can't use up the other inks. It's as good as dead. However my inks only cost around $15 a piece, with $20-$25 for the black one...
Posted by: Techie2000 on March 6, 2003 03:58 PMWhat a total ripoff! I have an all-in-one and if my color in cartridge is empty.....I can't just print in black. They FORCE you to go out and spend $35 dollars to install a new color cartridge (even if you don't want to use color) before you can FAX, PRINT, etc. This shold be a class-action type of suit or judgement. DON'T BUY ONE OF THESE UNTIL YOU FIND A MANUFACTURER THAT DOESN'T HOLD YOU HOSTAGE!!!!!!!
Posted by: Michelle on January 13, 2004 03:33 PM