New Look to Oinkinkstore.com

We have just redid the look of www.oinkinkstore.com.  Listening to our customers, we found three things that needed work.

1.  Take off the ads – DONE

2.  Use some sort of Color scheme – Done

3.  Get pictures of all your products up there – In Progress

We have streamlined the website by taking all the ads off.  Links for our empty program and RIO refill program are now on the side bar.

IE not printing correctly – what is to blame?

Had a customer with an unusual problem a couple weeks ago.  They could print from My Documents, but anything from IE (Version would only print the header and footer, no body.  Do you know how hard that is to research?  Well, here is what I found.

1. Check your add-ons.  Some add-ons can cause problems with printing in IE, so it is recommended to turn them all off, and then try printing.  If it works, then starting turning them on and printing.  Repeat process until it doesn’t work or they are all turned on.
2. Do you have MSIA installed?  MSIA stands for Microsoft Software Inventory Analyzer.  Apparently when this is installed it causes the printing to not work correctly.  It is not required for anything so uninstalling it  causes no problem (According to Microsoft)
3. Double and triple check the cartridges.  This was my customers problem.  We could print in black/white mode, but once we turned the color on it failed, why?  Her cartridge was shorted and empty.  It should have still printed what it could with the black cartridge, but for whatever reason it didn’t.  Darn Lexmarks (She has a Lexmark X75)

Hopefully if you run into this problem it is an easy fix.  Happy Printing.

HP 02 and 02XL versus O-ink HP 02XL Replacement

The HP 02 cartridges were a nice change for HP in the last few years.  They decided to go to a single color cartridge system designed for photos.  Using Dye based ink to get the best photos (I know this is up for debate) instead of a Pigment Black and Dye colors.

We often get people asking about our cartridges and why we are around the same price as HP.  Couple reasons.  1. The chip needs to get replaced after ever fill.  2.  The amount of ink we put in is much more than HP.

Recently HP has came out with HP 02XL cartridges, which you can only find as Sam’s Club in the 5 packs, that claim a 50% increase.  So the question is, how much more ink does HP put into the cartridges?

HP 02 Black – Official HP 10ml – XL 15ml

HP 02 Cyan and Magenta – Official HP 4ml – XL 6ml

HP 02 Yellow – Official HP 6 ml – XL 9ml

HP 02 Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta – Official HP 5.5ml – XL 8.25ml

Here are the prices for the XL’s, each color is $13.15 and the Black is $24.44 (Based off from a 48858 zip code).  The Standard HP’s Black is 19.99 and the Color is 10.99.  Now for O-ink

O-ink HP 02 Replacement Black – 30ml – 17.99

O-ink HP 02 Replacement Color – Each – 10ml – 9.99

Average Cost per ML is the following

Black – O-ink $0.60 – HP Standard $2.00 – HP XL $1.63

Cyan and Magenta – O-ink $1.00 – HP Standard $2.74 – HP XL $2.19

Yellow- O-ink $1.00 – HP Standard $1.83 – HP XL $1.46

Photo Cyan/Magenta- O-ink $1.00 – HP Standard $2.00 – HP XL $1.59

The numbers speak for themselves I believe.  Link for the O-ink HP 02XL Replacement 6 pack is here.

Staples information wrong on Brother MFC-790CW

If you order off from Staples.com and own the Brother MFC-790CW, be careful.

We regularly use Staples.com as a reference site for what cartridges go to what printers.  However, they have some miss information on the MFC-790CW.  They list the LC61 standard Brother cartridges, as well as the high capacity LC65 packs.  (link is here)  So, after seeing that, I ordered the LC65 for the customer, which is a better value.  Customer came back in two days later and asked if I could install it cause he couldn’t.  Neither could I, it didn’t fit.

I refunded his payment and then started looking.  I went to Brother-usa.com and decided to look on there.  Sure enough, the MFC-790CW only takes the LC61 cartridges (See Here).

So as a reminder, the LC65’s will NOT work with the Brother MFC-790CW, only the LC61.

Kodak ads run wild, but what about the products?

Kodak has started to run a lot of ads promoting their printers.  I saw 5 of them in a two hour time limit on March 29th.  They are promoting low cost print options.  Which is good, people need to save.  but is the quality and cost really there to get them to switch?

I looked at three websites, pcmag.com, pcworld.com, and reviews.cnet.com to see what their reviews on the printers were.  Most of the reviews were okay, but the common theme was, you can better spend your money elsewhere.  Quality of the printer and print-outs were not great was in almost every review.

One of the big things Kodak was mentioning in their ads was the low cost of their printer ink.  It does have a low cost, I will give them that, but does that low cost turn out to be a low cost of ownership.  NO.  According to PCMag.com, printing on a light duty (you can see how they determined that on the website), over a three year period, Kodak was the most expensive.  Most of my customers I would consider them light duty printing, with the exception of the businesses.

I have yet to recommend any Kodak printer to any of our customers, and I plan on keeping it that way.  Low cost cartridges is one thing, but you must have the quality behind it.

A very big recycling list

We often get asked “where can I recycle this or that?”  And most of the time, I am baffled.  However, thanks to the great folks over at PCmag.com, they have made it easy for me and you now.

They have complied a list of everyone who recycles tech products, you name it it is on the list.  Here is the link.

Of course, if you need to recycle printer cartridges, look at us first.  Here is our link.

HP Security Risk on Lasejet Printers

A great article from samedayinkjet.wordpress.com on the latest HP network risk on Laserjet printers.

Here is the link.

Staples changes ink recycling program

Walking into my local Staples today, they had a nice big sign by the door.  It simply read, Starting Feburary 1st, 2009 Staples will limit the number of cartridges you can recycle to 10 per month per person.

So instead of 3 per day, now it is 10 per month.  A drastic reduction.  Good news is they still recycle all HP, Dell, Lexmark, and Kodak cartridges.

Circuit City, I bid you adios

Well the word came out on Friday.  Circuit City is closing the remaining USA stores by the end of March.  And now you are seeing blogs and articles regarding buying stuff from a company going out of business.  Is it really a deal, what happens if it breaks, what about my old extended warranty?  I am not going to get into that, look on MSN and Yahoo for that information.

I want to talk about their printers.  A while ago, I made a post regarding CC and Lexmark printers.  That their exclusive printers they sold from Lexmark were really Europe models, which means you needed to get your cartridges from CC, or Lexmark UK (and on some, Lexmark.com).  Now with them going out of business, what does that mean for the supplies.  (see my article here)

On some cartridges, O-ink does have the replacements, like the Lexmark #2 and #3.  Others like the #4 and #5 are available on Lexmark’s website.  Most of the people who did get them from Circuit City just might have to get a new printer.  I hope Lexmark smartens up a little and will offer the CC only cartridges on there website.

Even though I did not like this marketing practice that they did, I do feel sorry for the over 30,000 employees who will be out of a job by March 31st.

One last Price Increase for the Year

2008 might as well be called the “Year of Price Increases.”  Nearly all the major printer manuafacture’s raised the prices of their consumables (I believe Epson is the only company who hasn’t.).  In face, one of my most popular articles in this blog deals with the HP price increase.

Well, it all leads back to HP again.  I just received information that on Jan. 1st, 2009, HP will be increase the prices of their supplies (Printer cartridges and such) by an average of 5% due to “economic conditions”.  Who cares that they do remain profitable for the entire year and still make lots of money and the rest of us are struggling .

So Happy New Years, you now have to pay more for that printer cartridge, unless you go to our site oinkinkstore.com or our sister site samedayinkjet.com