Thinking of Buying a Canon Printer

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Thinking of Buying a Canon Printer

Sunday, June 15th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

I like Canon printers. Indeed I believe that if Canon really got their marketing act together they could be number one. One reason for my belief is that unlike Epson, HP and Lexmark, Canon’s background has been in the camera business. In that business films (now memory cards!) and cameras have been separate businesses.

To a certain extent (I believe forced on it by competition) Canon has appeared not to have succumbed to the temptation to sell the printer at breakeven, or even a loss, and to make all its money on supplies. Of course they still make most of their money from supplies - but they keep to the formula - higher original cost: lower cost of usage (see cost of usage in this issue of Incartekspressions.

They have also been nice to its dealers. Epson, and to a lesser extent Hewlett Packard have introduced many ranges of inkjet cartridges - often with 6 or 8 products, alarmingly regularly - it seems with every printer announcement. This means so many product lines (or SKU’s as we call them in the trade). I say the trade suffers from “SKU indigestion” (a subject for Incartekspressions 6). Often the only difference is the hard coded identification chip. Canon, on the other hand very seldom changes its range of consumables. Until late 2005, there had not been a significant change on one range (the BCI-3/3e/5/6 - essentially interchangeable since around 1997 and one the lower end since the BCI-21, later 24 was introduced around 1994. There had been improvements to the ink - but not a change which meant stocking numerous lines.

Cost of ownership

To optimise cost of ownership then you should steer clear of being tied to machines where there is no alternative than the printer manufacturer’s own brand of cartridge. I believe that the most healthy market is where there is a good supply of quality alternatives. Competition, and fierce competition amongst the alternative branded products has driven the cost of manufacture down - and for the larger sources - at good quality - quality that for most practical purposes means that ‘the compatible is as good as the original’.

For Canon printers, for example a BCI3e or -6 cartridge costs around £7 (depending on source), whereas a compatible cartridge might cost £1.50. Just run the numbers through Froogle to see!

This advice is hardly surprising from the author of ‘Brand Freedom Day’

Dan” title=”http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=85473&forum_id=40