I think I am spending too much on my ink cartridges for my inkjet printer. I understand there are cheaper options like refilling the cartridges. Has anyone experience if it has good quality or other issues ?

There are multiple options that you can try. Refilling at Wallgreens, Staples or CartridgeWorld is certainly an option. If you use the printer for day-to-day work, the quality difference may not be noticeable. For printing photos, the difference may be noticeable sometimes. See more detailed information at http://all-about-my-money.com/?p=17

I buy the pre-refilled ones for $2.

http://www.nodebtplan.net/2008/01/25/the-cost-of-ink/

Steps:
1. Sign up for fatwallet.com
2. Visit 123inkjets.com through the fatwallet site.
3. Spend $50 for 12 ink cartridges and shipping
4. Earn $11+ in cash back
5. Win

The best way to save money on ink is not to buy it. Inkjet printers are a horrible rip off in every way. You should never buy them. Ever. If they come free with a new computer, try to get something else, or else use it 'till the ink is gone and take it in for recycling.

You can get a quite decent laser printer for $130, such as this one. It will get over 3000 pages on a single toner cartridge that costs the same as a new inkjet cart which will get < 200 pages. Plus, the laser will be faster, have better print quality, etc.

If you need occasional color, print it out at work or a print shop. If you are one of those rare people that actually needs color regularly at home, you can get a color laser for <$250.

Also, laser printers tend to last forever. I have an HP Laserjet4 that I picked up at auction for $25. After putting in $25 worth of parts it has been going strong ever since. It was released in 1992.

Many years working in IT has taught me to be careful with recycled ink or toner cartridges. Many places that do this use bad techniques or poor quality product and in the long run it ends up costing you more when the bad ink/toner destroys your printer.

Most manufacturer's will void a warranty if recycled product is used in the printer and it is not just so they make money off of the toner/ink purchase.

Also most repair people (even the one's with no stake in selling ink/toner to their customer's) will tell you that a lot of the recycled products out there are not a good investment.

Your best bet for saving money really is getting a laser printer. If you must keep the ink jet for now, search online for sales or watch your local office supply/warehouse stores for sales and pick it up then.

I'll agree to disagree. If you look at HP's profits, a large portion come from their $1,000+ / gallon ink sales. That's how much it costs on average and is absolutely ridiculous.

Laser is a good way to go, but if you are going to do ink jet and can find a reputable recycled partner (like 123inkjets above), it's better than paying $30 per cartridge.

One of my favorite places to get replacement ink cartridges is Laser Monks. It's a bunch of Cistercian monks that do ink replacement super cheap. And the profits go toward helping support the monks, and their service projects.

Check them out at LaserMonks.com

I buy junk Chinese made cartridges on ebay. I get about 5 sets (black and 3 colors) for roughly $28. the ink takes a bit longer to dry but otherwise works fine.

I use a Canon ink printer that has separate CMYK cartridges. I go through the other colors much faster than the Yellow. So it helps that I don't have to replace a multi color cartridge just because one color ran out.

I've been saving the empties with the intention of going to CartridgeWorld (they actually pickup and deliver), but claims like knikki's always give me pause. Has anyone here been using CartridgeWorld?

I will certainly consider a color laser at some point.

Laser printers are the way to go. If you do a lot of printing, the are much cheaper per page. If you don't do a lot, the toner doesn't dry up between prints. Text and color are crisp and clear and there's essentially no drying time for heavily colored documents.

That said, I'm not sure I'd use them for photos. If you are printing photos, look into online printing. They are usually cheaper per print, and as long as it's a good company, will use better inks and paper. You upload the photos, they print them out and mail them to you. I haven't used any of the services first hand, though. I've heard Snapfish is good (by HP), and I think Flickr does this also (?), but I'm sure there are tons of others.

For the remanufactured toner cartridges, they are either hit or miss. As expensive as they are, I'd be concerned about getting a 'miss.' Where I work, we've had two large, bad batches of remanufactured cartridges. They leave streaks, or leave streaks blank, spotty, etc... We've had a few good ones in the past, but these recent ones have been total crap. In a business environment the cost difference isn't worth the time and hassle it takes to deal with the bad cartridges. Whether it's worth a possible hassle is up to you.

Lazer is the way to go. Lazer Toner does not effected by the weather. The system is much stabler than the ink system.

My 2nd brother printer I think it is HL1440 was in storage for 16 months before I put it back to the table. It workds fine for additional 12 months before I got a new printer.
My brother MFC can print out up to 3600 pages before the warning light is up. Additional 150 pages before the color is noticeable.

A reasonable Color Lazer from Brother or HP are under 300 and Toner price is very reasonable.

I get the staples circular in my email and stock up when there is a sale.

i was just at office depot today checkthing things out.
and i was told there is a modle by HP that with just strate black ink (black and white) it will get about 2300 pages per cartidge
i can not remember the modle number but i was suprised at the number is just black and white page count per cartridge.
when i find this out again ill let every one know.

We bought a monocolor laser printer about a year ago, and I'm very glad we did. We rarely print things at home, so we'd get very few prints from the inkjet. We got this printer from Newegg (I don't get anything if you follow that link, I just like my printer and I like Newegg). The quality is great, and since it's networked, it's pretty easy to print from any of the computers (I'm running 3 flavors of Linux and 2 of Windows.) The only thing I really want printed in color is generally photos, and it's worth the $0.20 to send them to Wolf or Walgreens. As they have printers that are designed for that sort of thing.

(I'd avoid Snapfish personally. I've lately had bad experience with them.)