Learn About Ink First
The first rule about printers is to always learn about ink first. This might seem a little silly, but there is some very good logic behind it. It would be easy to assume that when buying a printer the most important thing to consider is the printer itself, right? Not so! There is a reason why so many people go out and buy a new printer every time their old one runs out of ink: because it can be quite a bit cheaper than buying a new ink cartridge is.
Ink is not cheap–in fact it tends to sell for about seven times more money per milliliter than luxury champagne. Or, to put it in plain English, the average inkjet printer costs about $8,000 per gallon of ink! This underscores exactly how important it is to consider your ink before you consider how awesome any given printer is; in the end you are really buying the ink cartridge, the printer itself is just an afterthought, the device that puts the ink onto paper. In order to make the most out of your purchase you need to learn about a few basic areas and make sure that your potential printer is up to par. First of all, make sure that whatever printer you use does not have an extraordinary amount of proprietary security that prevents you from using compatible ink cartridges. Buying generic can save you a fortune. Secondly, make sure that the printer you are looking at does not use incredibly expensive or high quality ink unless you are planning to do graphic design, digital photography or another form of digital art. As expensive as the cartridges can be, it is important to remember that ink comes in quality variations, too. Also, learn how difficult it is to refill the ink cartridges for your printer model; doing the work yourself can save you even more money than buying remanufactured or compatible cartridges can.
Learning the ink before you learn about the printer can be the difference between buying one printer or a new printer every couple of months. Those starter ink cartridges do not last very long (after all, they are only partially filled!), you better make sure you can handle it once the first cartridge runs dry.