Introduction
This article has been written to help the existing owners of ink printers to identify the various choices available when selecting ink cartridges or ink refill kits for their printer. It is written in New Zealand, for NZers, and while the information may be useful in other countries, it is not intended for use outside New Zealand.

If you do not yet have a printer, or are thinking of buying a new one, please refer to the associated article, “Ink Printers – Choosing the right one for your needs”

Cartridges
With few exceptions your printer will use one of two types of ink cartridge:-

1.Print Head Cartridges
These are cartridges with the print head included so that every time you change the ink cartridge you change the print head. This type of ink cartridge is typically used by Hewlett Packard (but not always see below) Lexmark and now Canon have re-introduced these cartridges with some of their latest models.

2.Non Print Head Cartridges
These are just a plastic box full of ink – sometimes with an electronic chip mounted on it. These ink cartridges fit into a print head inside the printer and are typically used by Brother, Canon (but not always see above) and Epson.

3.Exceptions
Hewlett Packard have a split system in their “Business Inkjet” series with a plastic box ink cartridge and a separate user replaceable print head for each colour.

Options
You can significantly reduce the cost of printing by using alternative cartridges, refilled cartridges and ink refill kits.

The “Non Print Head” ink cartridges are freely available as copies, usually manufactured in Asia. You can get these ink cartridges refilled but new copy ink cartridges can be supplied at the same price as, or less than, a refilled ink cartridge.

Some of the “Print Head” ink cartridges, where patents covering the print head have expired, are also available as copies. Otherwise they are either commercially refilled or do it yourself ink refill kits are available.

If the “Print Head” cartridges are commercially refilled they must be individually tested by the refiller. Random testing is only reliable where the starting point for each item is identical, as with new products. Used cartridges provide differing starting points and therefore potentially different results even if they are all treated the same.

Ink refill kits are available to those who wish to gain the biggest price advantage. The best ink refill kits are really easy to use with two provisos. First the refiller must read the instructions before starting the refill. Second, the user must be happy about doing their own refilling. Refilling is more about the refiller’s attitude than aptitude. A person who is nervous or unhappy about refilling should not buy a refill kit.

The quality of ink refill kits varies widely. The kit should have comprehensive instructions, a clip to hold the cartridge while you are filling it and the necessary ink and tools to enable you to fill the cartridge correctly. Refill kits are not complex but you should stay away from those that do not fit the above criteria.

These options give you a wide choice as to how you obtain your printer ink.

Finding your printer ink
Having decided to cut the costs of your printer ink by using one of these alternatives you must now find a source of supply. Be careful. The world is awash with printer ink and the internet has made it easy to buy.

Not all printer ink is created equal. You must use some basic principles or you may buy ink which will ruin your printer. These principles are generally true for doing business over the internet, regardless of the product you are buying, but are worth repeating.

When you look at the website do they display a physical address and genuine telephone number? Preferably an 0800 number so that you can telephone and talk to them. Do they have testimonials you can check? How long have they been in business? Do they offer a guarantee? Do they offer secure credit card processing?

Don’t buy just on price. In this market there may only be a dollar or two between the highest and lowest prices but the inks could be as different as water and glue. So it’s worth while doing some basic checking. Always remember that the dollar you save by buying on price alone could cost you your printer.

You want to put the ink cartridges in your printer and know that they will work, be true to colour and not react chemically with other inks. Buy from a reputable business that offers a comprehensive guarantee and you’ll get these results.

About the author
David Hickman has been involved with computer printers, and ink and toner cartridges since January 1994. Visit Second Image to see how David and his team can help solve your printer needs.

As many photo-printer owners would know, paper and ink costs can quickly exceed the cost of the printer. These six tips will help you get the most out of your photo-printer without leaving a hole in your pocket.
Raise the Resolution: Any digital camera that is less than three years old can capture at least 1 megapixel of data with each shot. This is sufficient to print a good-quality 4 X 6-inch photo; a 2-megapixel image holds enough information to output a higher-quality print of the same dimensions. To generate an 8 X 10-inch print worth framing, you’ll need a resolution of at least 3 megapixels. You’re in a good position if you have a new camera as most new models offer from 4 to 8.1 megapixels.

Adjust your camera to its highest resolution when taking shots that you might want to print. Some newer cameras, depending on the manufacturer’s menu setup, make it very simple to change resolution.
Save your Originals: Don not save the images you plan to print as JPEGs or in any other compressed file format. Each time you compress an image, you lose some data. Before working with an image, make sure it is unaltered and in the TIFF format.

Enhance the Image: Experiment with your image-editing program’s functions such as cropping, contrast, brightness, and other controls until you’re entirely satisfied with the image’s composition. Remember to always save the altered file with a new name.
Plan Your Print Drafts: If you plan to make test prints that you will discard later, reduce the image size and load the printer with plain inexpensive paper. Your printer software may allow you to print multiple images on one sheet.

Use matte-finish photo cards instead of glossy photo paper when printing 4 X 6-inch images. These cards have a nice look and feel, and they cost almost half as much as full-size photo paper. Place the images that you print on 8 X 10-inch glossy photo paper behind glass for added protection from ultraviolet light, and hang them away from direct sunlight.
Save on your ink: Special photo inks can provide your printer with a more refined colour palette. Unfortunately, these come with specific models, and if such ink didn’t come with your model, you may have to buy it separately and install it in place of the standard ink cartridges.

In some cases, photos printed using general-purpose cartridges look almost as good as ones printed using photo ink. Another effective trick is to print your black-and-white photos in colour mode (with standard colour cartridges). This makes the printer use all of its inks to create the tones in your picture, and the resultant prints can be as subtle and precise as pictures printed with photo inks.

Get your Cartridges in Line: Use your printer’s controls to realign your cartridges–especially if you see vertical or horizontal bands, unwanted lines, gaps, or bleeding colours in your prints. Right-click the printer’s entry in Control Panel’s “Printers and Faxes” or “Printers” applet, click Properties, and search for a cartridge maintenance option. If aligning your cartridges does not solve the problem, clean the cartridges with a cotton swab dipped in isopropyl alcohol. Use water merely as a solvent, and clean just the cartridge itself, never the print head or the nozzle plate. Always align new cartridges.

Practice Good Housekeeping: By keeping your printer’s mechanisms clean, you will ensure that the device runs at its best. An occasional blast from a can of compressed air (easily available at electronics stores) will keep dust and bits of paper from clogging the paper path and other moving parts.
Make sure that the small ink nozzles on your print heads are clear of dried ink. Leaving any inkjet idle for even a week or two leads the ink in the tiny tubes that feed the nozzles to dry. Many inkjet printers have a cleaning program in their settings that can handle partially clogged nozzles. Unfortunately these programs use a lot of ink, so use them judiciously. If the tubes are badly blocked, then you will need the services of a professional or an inkjet cleaning kit.

John Sollars is the managing director of Solar Electronics, which are both ink and pc peripheral suppliers based in Shropshire, UK. To access a comprehensive online shop of original and re-manufactured printer ink cartridges please visit http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk where you will find a wide range of consumables including printer paper http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/Paper.html

So you might have already heard about the new Canon Pixma iP4200 that’s doing the rounds in the computer hardware industry nowadays. Everybody is reviewing it, including us.

Canon has been keeping mum over the longest-lasting-photo-prints debate for sometime now. Possible explanations include the newly released Pixma iP4200, with built-in duplex printing; individual cartridges; two paper-input trays; easy operation; inexpensive; great-looking photos; and 100-year print life. Epson, the leading contender for lasting prints, now has competition. The key ingredient to long-lasting prints is Canon’s ChromaLife 100 ink set, included in the Pixma iP4200. The company claims that when used with their branded photo papers, photos printed using ChromaLife 100 inks will last up to 100 years when stored properly.

Compared with the iP4000, the iP4200 is less expensive, faster for business applications, and offers more longevity for photos. However, photos take a little longer to print and earn a lower quality rating than the iP4000, but the overall balance of features makes for an impressive package.

The Pixma iP4200 uses Canon’s Full-Photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) print head, which releases droplets as small as 1pl for each of the 1,536-nozzle cyan, magenta, yellow, and black print heads (plus 320 nozzles for pigment-ink black text), providing an effective color resolution of 9,600×2,400dpi. Two separate black ink cartridges for both a pigment-based black and a dye-based black, significantly improve photo output.

Apart from five inks, the photo printer offers the advantage of two paper inputs: a standard paper feed tray in the rear and a second paper tray that slides into the front bottom. You could now easily load standard paper in one tray and photo paper in the other, and switch back and forth between standard printing and photos without having to swap out paper every time. One eco-friendly feature of this printer includes the ability to automatically print on both sides of a sheet of paper. However, it might take you three times as long to print a 10-page Microsoft Word document in this mode compared with printing one-sided sheets.

The iP4200′s driver can automatically adjust colour balance, you can access sliders that modify the intensity of the individual inks; you can also switch from sRGB to Windows Image Color Management (ICM). Grayscale printing simply requires the tick of a check box, and a simplistic Print Advisor wizard can quiz you on the type of document you’re printing and recommend an appropriate paper.

Other than duplexing, the Page Setup options include size and orientation, number of copies, border/borderless printing, and addition of a background image or a watermark. An Effects tab provides settings for optimizing the image; reducing noise; boosting contrast; or adding effects such as sepia, pink, and other colours. You can save your settings as a profile for reuse in another printing session.

The Maintenance tab offers functions such as nozzle checks and cleaning, printhead alignment, and other tasks, including a bottom-plate-cleaning function that uses a folded letter-size sheet to tidy up before duplex printing.

Graphics quality, rated at the high end of good, is suitable for schoolwork or internal business use, and is marginally good enough for an important client or customer you might want to impress. However, some visible problems with photos include a slight pink tint in monochrome photos and a tendency for some colours to be overly punchy. It was also a little troublesome to get a neutral gray out of the printer as prints tended toward either green or blue depending on the driver settings used.

Refilling the Pixma iP4200 Cartridges

The new Canon PGI-5 and CLI-8 cartridges have an onboard chip to measure the ink level of each individual cartridge. The five individual ink cartridges in the Pixma iP4200 feature bright red LEDs that light up when properly installed. The cartridge lights also start blinking when ink is running low, and the blinking gets faster as the tanks get emptier. The numbers of the Pixma iP4200 cartridges are:

PGI-5BK – Black pigment ink
CLI-8BK – Black dye based ink
CLI-8C – Cyan dye based ink
CLI-8M – Magenta dye based ink
CLI-8Y – Yellow dye based ink

These cartridges are also suitable for Pixma iP5200, iP5200r printers, MP500, MP800 and MP950 MFPs.

Needless to say, many people would like to know if these cartridges can be refilled, or if compatible cartridges are available. As of now (February 2006), compatibles are not available for the PGI5 or CLI8 inks, probably for 2 reasons:

The ink formulations are quite complex, and refill ink manufacturers need to ensure their inks will perform equivalent to the original Canon inks.
Canon has patented the on-board chip; consequently, compatible manufacturers have to be very careful not to infringe that patent, which could leave them open to litigation. Canon recently won a lawsuit against a company in Japan, which was involved in the business of refilling and resale of Canon cartridges. Naturally, this will set back any plans for compatible cartridges.

However, there are refill inks available on the market and refilling instructions are available from ink vendors. Canon has very cleverly adapted their printers; if you refill the cartridges and re-insert them into the machine, a warning message will appear on your computer along the lines of:

“You are using refill ink in your cartridges. If you continue, your printer warranty will be void.” You are prompted to press OK, and after doing so, the low ink warning facility on the printer no longer works. If this is the case, you must be very careful never to let the inks run dry, as this will burn your print head.

John Sollars is the managing director of Solar Electronics, which are both ink and fax toner suppliers based in Shropshire, UK. To access a comprehensive online shop of original and re-manufactured printer ink cartridges including products by Canon please visit http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/Canon_Inkjets.html