Pricing for refilled cartridges in this series is:

• PG-210 blk  $11.99
• CL-211 color  $14.99
• PG-210XL  $14.99
• CL-211XL  $18.99

At present we have a couple of cores on-hand that we were able to resuscitate, but most of those we had collected have sat empty too long for us to reuse. We would encourage you to bring in your freshly emptied cartridges for us to refill. You may have to wait 10-15 minutes but you’re more likely to get a cartridge that works. Eventually we’ll build up a backstock of these and have them available for purchase in quantity.

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Reusing ink cartridges benefits both the environment and your pocketbook, but there can occasionally be an issue with a reused cartridge that causes it to not give out ink or fail to be noticed by your printer.

The following tips are generic and may not apply to your particular printer. If the cartridges you purchase from us are not performing to your expectations and the following suggestions either don’t work or don’t apply, please call us for specific solutions to your problem.

“My printer says the cartridge is low on ink or empty when I first put it in.”

Some printers are able to detect a cartridge that has been in another printer. This ability is provided by the software in the printer and cannot generally be over-ridden. The electronics on the reused cartridge isn’t resetting the page counter in the printer, and that page counter is the only way the printer has to know how much ink the cartridge contains. You can usually ignore these warnings of low or no ink and print normally. You will have to monitor the quality of your prints to know when the ink cartridge is running low since the printer won’t warn you. To dismiss these warnings, click the “OK” button until the dialog box goes away. Sometimes checking the “Don’t display this dialog again” option in the warning window will prevent the printer from popping up the same warning every time you start to print.

“My cartridge seems to have dried out and won’t print properly even though I’m sure there’s still ink in it.”

The first thing to do in these cases is to run the printer’s built-in cleaning process. You shouldn’t run it more than once as it uses a lot of ink. If that doesn’t produced the desired result, take a paper towel and slightly dampen it and place it on a surface that won’t be discolored or damaged by ink. Tile is a good surface. Hold the cartridge with the print head against the paper towel for about a minute. Since water is a larger molecule than ink, you should start to see a bloom of ink form around the print head. This is the water wicking out the ink. Usually this is enough to moisten the print head and get the ink flowing again if the only problem was ink dried on the print head. If the cartridge still isn’t printing correctly, bring it back to us and we’ll either fix or replace it.

“I bought the right cartridge for my printer but it doesn’t fit.”

We get a phone call like this about once a week; it’s not as rare a problem as you might expect. The usual cause is the failure to remove the tape and/or clip from the cartridge prior to installation. We use a very light adhesive tape over the printhead  on black inkjet cartridges to protect them from damage or even the casual touch and we combine the tape with a plastic clip on color cartridges. The clip is intended to prevent color mixing at the printhead and to keep air from getting into the printhead. When removing the tape, be sure to only remove the light adhesive tape. Do not attempt to remove the brass electronics strip that constitutes the printhead. This will guarantee the cartridge can never be used again. We like to say that if you can’t remove the tape with your fingers, you’re probably trying to remove the wrong thing. Pliers are not required to remove the tape.

“My photos look dull using your cartridges.”

First, make sure you aren’t printing photos in “draft” mode. Check the settings in “printer properties” and be sure you have “Best” or “Photo” selected for the print quality. Second, for the best possible results using our cartridges, be sure you’re using the photo paper recommended by your printer’s manufacturer. Inks are formulated to work with certain types of photo paper. Saturation and drying time are particular to the recommended paper. Printing photos on ordinary copy paper will result in dull colors and saturated paper.

For the very best results when printing very important photos, we recommend you use the manufacturer’s paper and ink. Because we have to manufacture our ink using different components than the OEM ink to avoid legal complications, we cannot make the same claims as the manufacturers do about photo quality and longevity. Our inks are not archival quality inks, and that, usually combined with acid-free paper, is required to attain the promises made by the manufacturers as to photo quality and their claims that their ink won’t fade for 100 years.

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One of our customers inquired today about portable inkjet printers, and while there isn’t a source of reviews comparable to the ones for laser printers that I could find, I did run across the following that I hope will be of some help.

Portable inkjet printers are a compact and lightweight option for use with laptops. They can run on battery or electrical power; some even have an optional adapter to run off a car’s cigarette lighter. Reviews say that portable printers can’t match the speed of desktop printers and cost much more both to buy and to run. They are made for low-volume use. Many portable printers are Bluetooth compatible, which means that they will work with a wireless adapter and can receive input from a PDA or mobile phone.

The Canon Pixma iP100 (*Est. $235) receives great comments from CNet.com’s Justin Yu, who says that its speed and resolution are top notch for a portable printer. Print quality is also praised and text is said to be clean, with Simon Williams of TrustedReviews.com stating that the iP100 is on par with full-sized, desktop inkjet printers.

The iP100 is an update of the Canon Pixma ip90v portable printer, and there are several notable improvements. These include a larger number of printheads, higher color resolution, 50-sheet input capacity (an increase of 20 sheets), faster printing and, according to the CNet.com review, a slight improvement in print quality. Connectivity options include PictBridge, USB and infrared for connection to cell phones. There are no memory card slots and the iP100 printer does not offer Wi-Fi connectivity.

HP’s Officejet H470 portable printer (*Est. $220) does not fare as well at CNet.com, where Justin Yu says problems include “fuzzy” and “blurred” text. Photos print out smooth, Yu says, but colors are flat and lack saturation. PC Magazine’s M. David Stone largely agrees, saying the H470′s text quality is “subpar,” and notes banding when printing in certain modes. U.K.-based PC Advisor sees similar issues, but the reviewer writes that swapping the default black ink cartridge for an optional six-ink photo cartridge resulted in “superb” output on photo paper. Simon Williams of TrustedReviews.com, on the other hand, feels that the H470 performs well for a portable printer, and that its print speeds actually exceed HP’s specifications. He also disagrees with negative assessments of the H470′s text printing, saying that even when reproducing small fonts there is only “slight fuzziness” around the edges.

Reviews that contrast the HP Officejet H470 with the Canon Pixma iP100 are inconclusive as to which is the superior product. M. David Stone at PC Magazine notes that while the iP100 is superior in speed and some aspects of print quality, the H470 wins out in such areas as ink cartridge yields. Both printers have some similar costly, optional add-ons, such as Bluetooth adapters and lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

If you are searching for a portable printer, there are some key differences in features between the Canon Pixma iP100 and HP Officejet H470 that may help you choose the best model. Most notably, HP’s H470 offers Wi-Fi connectivity and memory card slots. It also costs less to equip and operate; for instance, the H470′s optional battery costs around $50, while the iP100′s is twice as expensive. HP even offers a soft carrying case — a frill missing with the Pixma iP100. If you do not need these options and value print quality above all else, however, reviews indicate that Canon’s Pixma iP100 is the better performing portable printer. (Source – Consumer Search)

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Different types of inkjet printers form their droplets of ink in different ways. There are two main inkjet technologies currently used by printer manufacturers:

• Thermal bubble – Used by manufacturers such as Canon and Hewlett Packard, this method is commonly referred to as bubble jet. In a thermal inkjet printer, tiny resistors create heat, and this heat vaporizes ink to create a bubble. As the bubble expands, some of the ink is pushed out of a nozzle onto the paper. When the bubble “pops” (collapses), a vacuum is created. This pulls more ink into the print head from the cartridge. A typical bubble jet print head has 300 or 600 tiny nozzles, and all of them can fire a droplet simultaneously.
• Piezoelectric – Patented by Epson, this technology uses piezo crystals. A crystal is located at the back of the ink reservoir of each nozzle.

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  The crystal receives a tiny electric charge that causes it to vibrate. When the crystal vibrates inward, it forces a tiny amount of ink out of the nozzle. When it vibrates out, it pulls some more ink into the reservoir to replace the ink sprayed out.(Source-HowStuffWorks)

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Printer.com, the largest proprietary database of printer ink and toner prices, announced their price indices show most major manufacturers are increasing their retail pricing anywhere from 3% to 6%.

This affects not just one or two manufacturers, but appears to affect all manufacturers. As of September 2008, HP increased the list prices on all Mono and Color LaserJet Print Cartridges by 5%, as well as approximately 5-6% on Inkjet Cartridges. Lexmark and Xerox also raised their pricing on printer supplies in November 2008 with 5% across the board for Lexmark and 3% to 6% for Xerox. Brother, Canon and Oki soon followed suit.

Printer.com’s Director of U.S. Operations Bob Crum, says, “Expect the ink and toner cartridge price increases to remain until several months after the recession has been put to bed. No one likes increasing prices, but ink and toner are often very profitable revenue streams for printer manufacturers, and incremental price increases just make business sense for a lot of organizations looking to increase profit margins in tougher financial conditions.”  (Source-PRWeb)

These increases were all enacted last year, before the severity of the economy was fully appreciated. Expect to see further cost increases this year from the major manufacturers as they attempt to keep their revenues consistent with past years.

Cartridge sales are keeping some of these companies solvent. They have to continue to raise prices to keep their profit margin consistent.

Resolution: Check the serial number printed on a silver sticker on the back of your B640 faxphone. If your serial number is between UKK52923 and UKK55442, UKK60513 and UKK99999 or YKK02001 and YKK20000, stop using this machine immediately and call Canon USA tool-free at 888-280-7858 (8am-midnight Eastern time Mon-Fri and noon-8pm Saturday) for a free replacement. There is no charge for picking up your recalled machine. Canon asks that you not return the unit to the retailer where you purchased it.

We are now able to reset the chips on the Canon CLI-8 series of cartridges which includes the PGI-5 black.  This means your printer should now see the cartridge as new and reset its page counter, the means it uses to determine the ink level.

If you weren’t able to use our un-reset cartridges before, please stop by and try our reset ones.