In the thirty-plus years I’ve been working with information technology products, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say something to effect that printer makers sell printers at little or a loss in profit, only to make a killing on the ink to make them go. The problem is that this is usually uttered with a negative intonation, making it sound as if this practice of making a profit on the consumables to make your printer work is somehow unseemly.
Well then, what about, say, Keurig coffee makers, razorblade makers, and oh so many companies that sell refill or replacements for their products? The real question is (well there’s actually two): do the third party ink tanks perform as well, in terms of print quality and page yield, as the OEM cartridges do, and will the third-party inks, as some printer manufacturers have claimed, hurt your printer?
Read the entire review at About.com