Printer Cartridge Price Fixing
This may be a little off topic but I think it's important enough that you'll let me
get away with it.
A few weeks ago I sat at my computer, frustrated while waiting for web pages to load. I use a satellite connection and it's usually pretty spunky. So
out of desperation I switched to my back-up dial up service. As most of you
know when using a dial up service there is a icon in your system tray that
lets you monitor the activity of your
dial up session. You can see how many
bytes of data are being sent and received. Well I had everything shut down
except this monitor and I sat there, with dropped jaw, as I was watching millions of bits of information being transferred from my computer to God
knows where.
After doing a bit of research I discovered that my computer was compromised
by spy-ware. Spy-ware is a file or program that will constantly send research
data back to the organization that planted it in your computer. Usually information
like your browsing habits and downloads. They use this data to improve their
advertising and target markets for various products. You can get infected by downloading certain programs and even just visiting a web site. You can
protect yourself better by disabling the Active-X controls in your browser. For IE6 click on the Tools tab, then Internet Options, then Security, then
Custom Level near the bottom. Disable all the Active-X controls.
Anyway, my computer was running so slow that is was almost unusable, especially when surfing the web.
I found this free program called Ad-aware that removes these files that are
associated with spy-ware. It tracks them down and quarantines them so they can't work any more. It's very professionally done and when I used it
on my computer it found 558 spy-ware type files. After cleaning them out I
was flying like a jet airliner once again!
Here is where you can get this program for free:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
As fate would have it the site was down when I went to send this mailing.
You can also get it from Tucows, here:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/236049.html
Printer Cartridge Price Fixing
By Stephen Bucaro
Printers are one of the biggest rip-offs in computing today. Companies like
Hewlett Packard (HP) and Canon throw together a bucket of cheap plastic parts and charge you $150.00 for it. Then, they price gouge you for the ink
cartridges.
CNET.com analyzed the cost for inkjet printing and reported that the costs
ranged from 14 cents to $1.32 per page. If it costs 21 cents per page and you print only an average of two pages per day, the annual cost of ink
would be more than the cost of the printer.
The ink cartridge for a low end HP printer, containing only one tiny ounce of ink, costs a mind boggling $30.00! That's price gouging, and all printer
manufacturers are doing it. That's called PRICE FIXING and it's illegal. To
add to the rip-off, some of them put all the colors into one cartridge. Then
you have to buy a new cartridge when only one color runs out, wasting the remaining ink.
This price gouging makes it impossible for businesses like direct marketing
or mail order to survive. The only way you can protect yourself is to refill
your own cartridges. Most people feel that it is too difficult or too messy to
refill cartridges. But for the cost of a new cartridge, you can refill your old
one 12 times (per color).
If your business on average prints 200 pages per day, refilling cartridges could bring your costs down from $15,330.00 to $1,277.50 per year. This is based on 21 cents per page, your actual cost per page could be much
higher. With this kind of savings, you can afford to screw up a few cartridges
while learning. If you spill some ink, you can afford to re-carpet the entire house.
(The author is plugging another company for refill kits but we won't give that
out. Atlascopy has refill kits for most of the popular printers....
http://atlascopy.com/refills/atlasbrand/inkjet_refill_kits.htm
)
The same idea
applies to laser printer toner cartridges. Can you afford to pay $400.00 every
time your HP 1200se toner cartridge runs dry? A good place to get toner refill
kits is tonerrefillkits.com. They also provide detailed online well-illustrated
step-by-step instructions. You can refill the 1200se cartridge for only $12.95!
(after one time $12.95 purchase of tool kit.)
Printers are one of the biggest rip-offs in computing today. I don't know why the FTC is not investigating illegal ink cartridge price fixing by printer manufacturers. For now, the way to protect yourself is to learn how to refill
your own cartridges.
Copyright(C)2004 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintain
your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web
site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com
Till next time.
Happy printing
Barry Shultz
Atlascopy, Inc.
http://atlascopy.com
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