generic ink in printer?
 

I spent 10 minutes trying to decide if I should put this question in Electronics, Computers, Photography or Knowledge, so it must be General.

I have a shiny new Canon i960 printer. The generic inks are cheaper than the Canon brand, but how do they rate? Are they just as good? Are there certain manufacturers that I should avoid? Should I suck it up and buy the Canon brand ink?

Bottom line - how do I get good cheap ink in this thing?

I have been using refill kits for years some work great some are crappy, I suggest that you experiment with them and see how you like the. I got mine from Sam's club and it refilled my black ink 15 times. The only problem is that the color one didnt work great cause on my printer I had to pull the top of the cart off and it never went back together the right way.

Best Buy sells Basix inks and they are not refill kits, but actual cartridges. I have heard some good things about them so long as you can read directions and install them correctly.

Check the warranty -

Not sure if it's still true, but at one point with HP printers, unless you used new HP cartridges, you voided the warranty.

And how would HP know?

the little microchips that are located on the ink carts that aren't allowed to be reverse engineered to be on the cheapy and refill carts. (thank you DMCA)

those little buggers track lots of info... er.. could possibly. dammit.. my tinfoil hat keeps falling off.

I bought some knockoff cartridges for my HP online for a third of the store price. Haven't had a problem yet.

It's ink. It's just ink. Test it to make sure it isn't watered down too much, but in the end, it's all ink.

If you refill your HP cartridges before they get too low, the chips won't know the difference.

The chips would be on the ink cartridges, not in the printer itself, so whatever information they store is irrelevant to HP's warranty procedures in relation to printers that use(d) generic ink.

It depends...i've have some printers that hate generic ink, some that doesn't, and some that like only certain types of generic ink. Try it and if it doesn't work just try a different brand.

there are always people that tell you such things when they call for support :rolleyes:
worked for 19 months in tech support so I have experienced similiar things; I supported Laserjet models so not quite the same though.

it's hit and miss. sometimes the quality of the ink is a bit faded, but acceptable. i have been doing it for years with cannon and hp cartridges. lately, i have been getting tired of loading the ink myself and i found this guy near buy who's business is retooling cartridges and then reselling them.

he is more expensive than doing it myself, but cheaper than a new cartridge. and, the ink quality is still hinky.

as for voiding the warranty, i challenge any mfg to void a warranty without a photo of a retooled cartridge or an actual cartridge. how would they know unless you told them?

Actually counterfit ink has been flooding the market lately. If you are going for cheap ink, buy only from big name companies. In hundreds of cases that were brought to public attention the fake ink cartridges damage the printers beyond the point of possibly being able to be serviced. It's your risk.

I have had good luck refilling my black ink but have had NO sucess in refilling my color ink

I had a Canon that didn't mind cheapie black or color. I gave $2/blk and $7/clr. Never any problems. It lasted just about as long...probably 95% of the life of the OE Canon cartridges, so it was well worth the money.

i refill all the time. Haven't had a problem yet and saved a hell of a lot of money.