Cost Of Printer Supplies....

[johnny pinwheel]

Originally Posted by TheSpyder

I have an answer for you. I also have a laser printer, a Brother black and white printer. Cartridges are about $45 each, but, I buy the replacement ink powder in bulk which reduces that $45 to about $15.

The quailty is the same and, once I got the hang of it, it takes 5 minutes for the refilling.

These are not advertised or endorsed by the actual printer companies, but work fine.

my friend does the same thing. i just buy the form or post parade. the 4 to 6 bucks ends up costing less time and money. then again, i'm not that patient.

[joeydb]

I have a color laser printer. I found that the cheapest place to buy toner is off of ebay. There are several people selling brand new toner cartridges and using ebay as a cheap store front.

The CMYK color lasers require four different toner cartridges: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Black runs out the fastest.

I like the color laser because it allows me to print out my own metrics from computer-based analysis in color. At a glance when I go to the track, I can get a clear picture of the race very quickly.

[SlewsMyHero]

I haven't printed out PPs in a long time, but when I did I would set my laser printer to print in "draft" mode, which uses much less toner. The print did not come out quite as dark, but it was certainly readable. Check to see if your printer has a draft or "toner saver" mode. Another thing I used to do is print to both sides of the paper. I would print my early cards, then flip the paper over, and print my late afternoon or evening cards on the reverse side. This is a big paper saver. There's no reason not to use both sides of the paper, especially when you're concerned about cost. You'll have to do some experimenting so that you know which way to put the paper in to print on the reverse side.

[docicu3]

wow.....great suggestions from all of you and by the crack of clouds, I mean dawn.

I have an HP P1505 laser that I can see now has 5 separate ink settings as well as an "economode" setting that visibly uses even less ink than the lowest density setting. Who knew!!! None of these options are explained or noted in the HP manual.

Back to counting how many PP's and TGH figures you can get out of a 36A cartridge using "economode" and ink density 1.

Are there commercial kits for refilling the ink? That must really lower the cost? Frugal is fun....thank you all for the help.

Great to see you Jack.....