Hardware Toner - The Future is NOW!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Who will Transform Toner Cartridges into the Future?

Zink, which stands for Zero Ink, is a small company with pretty big ideas. They believed right from the start that their mission was to “shake up” the NORM of the inkjet printing world and convert it to an “Ink Cartridge Free” system. The Company started back in 2005, with its own management team. It took on some private investors, acquired the technology and assets to build what is now known as its imaging team. In 2007, they purchased a manufacturing plant from Konica Minolta where it produces the technology. The combination of these assets developed an “imaging” technology that catapults the toner world onto the next level, which we will call “cartridge less”.
Basically, it’s all in the paper, that’s the technology.
This new way of thinking, out of the box so to speak, will deliver to the market digital printing without the use of toner or ink cartridges. In addition, to feed the new technology, Zink will be able to bring their own printing products to the market as well.

This small company has aligned with some heavyweights in the industry to achieve their goals. Polaroid has been fingered to develop a digital instant mobile photo printer. Rather than use a ink cartridge to produce color on a piece of photo paper, it uses a patented paper that will release crystals which will produce colors when heat is applied. This can have a huge impact, like the Polaroid camera did some years age, for digital cameras. Imagine printing a digital quality photo from your digital camera!

The company’s mission statement reads as follows: The relentless pursuit of inventions and partnerships to enable millions of customers to enjoy the magic of “Zink” enabled products. This is in and of itself a bold and forward thinking statement that is determined in its quest to reinvent the inkjet world.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Secret To Almost Free Toner

Before I get right to the point on how to achieve "Almost Free" printer cartridges, the prices you will find for toner cartridges on this site, Tonerr.com, are already 7% to 10% below the famous wholesale printer supply chains, such as Staples.

Let me give you a real life example. If you purchase a Hewlett Packard brand HP#57 (C6657AN) cartridge, you will pay $34.99 at Staples. At Tonerr.com, you will pay $32.99, a savings of $2.00 or 5.7%.

Now, let's get down to the subject at hand, the First Biggest Secret. If you read my home page, you now realize that purchasing brand name printer cartridges, like in our example above, is WASTING YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY! If you had purchased the HP#57 re manufactured printer cartridge instead (which are brand new parts contained in a recycled shell) will cost you only $20.99. That is $14.00 cheaper than Staples price or a 40% savings.

Ok, so you are probably saying that's not "Almost Free" yet. Yes, you are right, but now I will let you in on our Second Biggest Secret. If that is the only purchase you make, you can apply a 5% discount coupon code if your total order is $35 or more. That means an additional $1.05 off the $20.99 price or $19.94, which is a Savings of 43%. Not bad, but if you spend over $55, you will receive 10% off your total order. That means $2.10 off the $20.99 price or $18.89, which is a Savings of 54%. In addition, you get FREE SHIPPING on orders over $50.

There you have it! Still want to shop at Staples? Remember, our ink cartridge products are 100% guaranteed for one year and are rated "Platinum" by Biz Rate for customer service.

To your success at reducing your printer costs!

The Hidden Cost in Any Printer Purchase is Toner

Today, the cost of printers is unbelievably low. You can find brand-name photo printers for under a hundred dollars, and workhorse laser printers for under two hundred dollars. Color inkjet printers remain a bargain, starting at around a hundred and twenty-five dollars. If you're not careful, though, what you save in the purchase price of a printer goes down the drain when you have to buy replacement toner cartridges or ink cartridges.

When deciding which printer to buy, it pays to determine the cost per page printed. That cost is calculated by the cost of the cartridge you use. Let's say, for example, that you purchased a black and white Brother Laser Printer for $150 and an HP color inkjet printer for $150. A new Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) toner cartridge for the Brother printer costs about sixty-five dollars and will print about 2,500 pages. The black ink cartridge for the HP only costs about thirty dollars. Great deal, right? No, because the black ink cartridge will only print about 800 pages. The Brother cartridge will give you a cost per page of a little over two-and-a-half cents, whereas the HP cartridge ups the ante to three-and-three-quarters cents per page. That may not sound like a lot, but over the course of printing the equivalent of ten cartons of paper, or 50,000 pages, you'll pay $625 more for the HP ink than you will for the Brother toner.

But what if you're not in the market for a new printer, and are churning out page after page with the printer you now own? Chances are, you're paying a premium price for that Original Equipment Manufacturer LaserJet toner cartridge or inkjet printer cartridge. A great way to bring down your cost-per-page is to choose a less expensive option to replace your laser toner or inkjet ink. The two least costly options are compatible ink cartridges and re-manufactured ink cartridges.

Before you listen to the hyperbole from printer manufacturers that say that compatible and remanufactured cartridges will ruin your printer or produce inferior quality printed pages, ask yourself this: Don't printer manufacturers have an enormous economic stake in making sure you buy their brand name printer cartridges? Of course they do. They sell their printers at such a low cost precisely because they know that you'll need replacement print cartridges, from which they make huge profits.

Compatible laser toner and ink cartridges are made and sold by companies other than printer manufacturers. You can find reputable toner and inkjet cartridge sellers online who take pride in providing products that meet or exceed the specifications set forth by printer manufacturers. Compatible cartridges will work fine in your printer, and won't void your printer's warranty. Essentially, they consist of a previously used casing with all new parts and new toner or ink. Similarly, re-manufactured cartridges are previously used and refilled with toner or ink, but are rigorously tested to ensure their quality.

The bottom line is that toner is the hidden cost of any printer purchase. Why pay for your printer time and again by paying premium prices for OEM cartridges when you can save up to 76 percent of the cost by buying compatible or re-manufactured cartridges?

Why You Should Use Compatible Ink Cartridges

In today's world, we all use personal computers for either personal use or for a small business. Chances are that we have a printer attached to it.

Over the past ten years, the market and use, for both personal computers and inkjet printers, has increased dramatically. Technology, over the same period, has brought the cost of computers and printers down. However, the usage of printers has increased tenfold. As a result of this increase, most people quickly found that using brand named printer cartridges, such as Lexmark and Hewlett Packard, became quite costly.

Enter The Compatible Ink Cartridge
So, what are compatible ink cartridges? Simply put, they are a reused ink cartridge shell with all new parts contained within that shell.

So What Are The Advantages?First, the quality that is produced from this cartridge is just as, if not, better than that of the brand name ink cartridges. The result will be professionally made documents.

Second is cost. You will see that over the long run, you will save anywhere from 54% to 76% using compatible ink cartridges.

Third is that using compatible ink will NOT affect the warrantee of your printer. It is illegal for a company to void your warrantee just because you use a compatible ink product.

So it makes PERFECT sense to purchase compatible ink products.

Why the "Brand Name" printer ink companies HATE Third Party Vendors

Do you think it has something to do with money?

If you purchased a Lexmark or Hewlett Packard inkjet printer over the past year, you must have noticed that the price you paid was surprisingly low. However, the ink cartridges that they sell with the printer will cost an arm and a leg, Right? (you might want to read "How to tell which printers are cost effective" ) What gives?

Well, the logic big companies use is something like this: price a brand new Gillette razor really low so you can sell the replacement razor blades really high, make sense?

Consumers are getting increasingly mad about having to pay high prices for brand named ink cartridges, like Lexmark and Hewlett Packard. "The brands dominate; together, Canon, Epson, Hewlett Packard and Lexmark account for 84 percent of the ink replacement market" states Tom Spring of PC World Magazine.

Enter the independent third party vendors. They are trying to capitalizing on a $21 billion dollar market need, by selling compatible ink cartridges and ink refill kits. Can you blame them for finding a niche that consumers are crying out for? The big name companies claim that third-party vendor ink is inferior to the brand-name versions. But are they?

Everything I have read or have experienced indicates quite the contrary. According to Neil Slade's research on testing compatible ink cartridges, he states, "Not only did I test nearly a dozen brands of inexpensive inks (two tests over a long period of time) none of them failed (even the ones with bad color) by clogging my print heads-- especially the G&G ink, which I have used for a year to print tens of thousands of documents. Of all the inks I tested, only Arrow failed because of bad cart ink flow, not even because it clogged the head."

It has been published that the gross margins on an Epson ink cartridge, for example, can sometimes top 60%. However, the Lexmark's and Epson's of the world will deny those percentages. Why then would they go as far as to plan implanting a chip inside their ink cartridges? A chip you say? Because the printer you purchased from them would only print once it recognizes this chip, thereby virtually eliminating the compatible ink cartridges market.

The brand name manufactures are also defending the reason for the high cost of replacement ink by saying that they are spending huge amounts of spending on technology improvements. "Predictably, Hewlett Packard and others say their cartridge prices aren't high considering the cost of research and development and manufacturing the equipment. Mr. Jotwani points out that at Hewlett Packard, an ink jet printer cartridge is very sophisticated. For example, each has 40 microscopic nozzles that precisely expel billions of ink dots across a page. Hewlett Packard is also attentive to ink quality to assure uniform viscosity and color".

So, after all is said and done, do you think it all comes down to money? The big brand name companies are just trying everything in their power to justify the cost of their ink products.

How To Tell Which Printers are Cost Effective?

Before you purchase your next inkjet or laser printer, you will need to understand the importance of the term "Yield", which we will discuss in a moment. For now, let us take a look at the various elements that go into determining the cost of printing just "One Page".

We can identify two major costs. The first being the cost of the printer and the second being the cost of toner. An Inkjet printer usually runs anywhere from $50 to $300, while a Laser Jet can cost you $200 up to $6,000 depending on the type (Color vs. Monochrome).

As far as the purchase of ink, generally the cost of ink for an Inkjet printer is cheaper than that of a Laser printer. However, you will need to buy it more often than the laser cartridges you purchase for the laser printer. But does buying an expense printer cost you less in ink or does purchasing a cheaper Inkjet printer mean that it does not matter what the cost of ink is? Can we include a common denominator that will determine just how much your printer is costing you? Or better put, what is the cost of printing just "One Page"?

Well, for one thing, you will need to learn a new term called "Yield". This is defined as dividing the cost of the ink by the number of pages you can print with one cartridge. For example, if it costs you $40 for your ink cartridge and you can print 500 pages, then the yield is 8 cents per page ($40/500=$.08). Compare this with a laser cartridge that costs $150 which produces 10,000 pages per cartridge. The cost of this cartridge is like sticker shock compared to the inkjet printer, right? But this cartridge will only cost you 1.5 cents per page to print. By doing this simple calculation, you can better determine which printer is the most cost effective on a "cost per page" basis.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Does Anyone Know Tomy Xiao?

If you read my articles on "The Future of Inkjet Cartridges" or the "The Future of Inkjet Cartridges-Part II", you are aware that my purpose is to keep YOU, my valued customers, informed on what I feel the trend is in the printer industry.....(Look out Staples)!

Yes, for now, we are pretty much stuck with the never ending toner cartridge world. A world where the powder or ink can wind up all over your clothes when changing the cartridge in your printer, sound familiar? Better yet, are you recycling your toner cartridges? That can be a royal pain as well. If you scanned my most recent article, "The Link Between Toner and the Digital World", paper is the link that crosses the industry into the 21st century.

How does all this relate to Tomy Xiao? Well, that is the new digital camera which contains a printer made by Zink, the company with the paper and printer that makes the cutting edge technology. The new TOMY xiao™ TIP-521 Digital Camera with Built-in Printer is a full-featured 5 megapixel digital camera with a built-in full color ZINK™ printer. The xiao™ is a first of its kind integrated digital camera and printer that allows consumers to capture, view, and immediately print their digital images without ink, anywhere. Photos can now be viewed and shared right away - anywhere and all from one device. The xiao™ produces borderless, full-color, 2x3" (5x7,6 cm) prints in less than 60 seconds.

The xiao™ features a "retro" design and innovative built-in software to enable a variety of entertaining printing options from templates to borders. It also features an IrDA receiver so that you can print images sent to the xiao™ wirelessly from other IrDA devices.

ZINK Technology is fully developed and market ready. In fact, the first ZINK-enabled product is already available for sale. ZINK is changing the way the world thinks about printing.