paulr

Apparently they refill them,but as long as they work,wow thats some saving!!!!!!

Jye

Epson ink can last for 100 years without fading (I've not yet tested this ), they are now supposidly archival quality. If that doesnt matter then fair enough, go for it.

paulr

Not for photos,just general stuff.

paulr

Doing a search on S/Net there is some scepticism over compatibles/quality/reliability.

I notice there are "genuine" ones on Ebay?

ando

I work(ed, if you read this in a week as I'm changing jobs), for a place that sells a lot of compatible inks. Now there is a lot of crap compatibles out there, and some cartridges are easier to make work than others. Generally cartridges that have a head on them are recycled, i.e. HP and Lexmark, the ink place buys empty carts or refill yours (like Cartridge world), this tends to be a bit hit and miss in my opinion, clogged heads plus they're using a generic ink for all models, however on the most part Epson, and some brother ink tanks are headless so they're cheap to remake and clone so you get a 100% remade cartridge (Jet Tech are a good brand in my opinion, bit pricey but good), we buy Jet Techs in for about £2 and mark them up to £6ish, whereas Epson we're buying them in for something like £9! Now Epson are making these "originals" in a higher capacity than the compatible guys are, plus they don't have to do R&D to copy the carts and copy-protections chips like the likes of Jet Tech do, and they're hugely more expensive! That gets me onto chips...another thing that makes compatibles a bit dodgy the chips make the process of refilling/cloning *a lot* harder, the best bit is, they say the chips store the ink levels...do they hell...they're there to make it harder to copy, and therefore so the likes of Epson/Lexmark/HP can keep their prices artificially high.

Toners have a higher success rate for the recycle refilling method, ahh takes me back to the time when I used to spend whole days filling 98A cartridges for the HP LaserJet 4. It's sad to say, but that cart' was a work of art, you would get 1 in 100 fail, even if you didn't change the drum, (our company policy is to always change the drum because we'd bung in as much toner as possible!)

Rant over@!~!'!~!@

stockcar

always had major problems with "copy" cartridges on our C64.....................gonna buy some 'pukka' ones and see if i can sort the crap colour, etc. out............

ps. they were a good brand from the local computer supplier and work fine in our other printers.....

alyn

paulr

Thanks Ando..interesting reading.

jowl

The schools I work in have been sold compatible inks by the LEA. They're RUBBISH.

Printers actually beyond economical repair due to fcuked up heads etc.

There was also a noticable drop in quality and longivity of the compatible carts.

Needless to say, they now but originals!

ando

It's a pity, but it does happen but it's like everything, you can get many brands of tyre but just because certain brands of tyres or even remoulds will put you into a hedge it dosn't stop us from shopping around for the best alternitive to what the dealer sticks on the car, you just need to find a decent make and you could save ££££££££'s

I won't mention the bad ones because scoobynet might get their ar35s sued off, but those JetTechs are tasty, ebay is the best place to get them for pennies.