Ron Baird said:
Greetings Stan,
I am not sure if the article is real but I doubt that the information is
correct. Kodak uses technology that is quite advanced and innovative in
how ink is created and used. I know we provides excellent results and
Kodak printers do indeed use less ink.
I will not be getting into any discussions with Measekite on this but will
say that Kodak is doing well and our customers are quite happy. It seems
to me that it would be counter productive to leave ink in a cartridge so
you could sell more ink at the same cost? The creation of the high quality
ink used by Kodak is costly to manufacture, and it simply does not make
sense to leave ink in a cartridge and then hope to sell more of the same
ink? I doubt any manufacturer would do this. It would cost Kodak or anyone
else too much money in the end. Seems foolish to leave more than a third
of the ink in a cartridge.
I will be glad to help if you have any questions but will not argue with
Measekit for obvious reasons.
Talk to you soon,
Ron Baird
Eastman Kodak Company
(snip)
Ron - There have been many complaints in the past about Epson cartridges
leaving considerable ink when showing that they are out. I know from my
experience that Canon bci-6 carts keep a certain amount of ink in the sponge
area as well. These Canon carts have a full capacity of about 13-14 ml. and
leave about 2 ml. in the sponge. Both Epson and Canon printheads are
protected by not permitting the user to print until the cart runs dry.
Canons will clog and/or burn out and Epsons can clog and get an air lock,
as I understand it. It appears that the intent of the mfgr is to use the
last few ml. of ink to protect the printhead and not to sell more ink. The
question with Epsons, however, was did they use excessive ink for cleaning
cycles and estimate badly, leaving an excessive amount of ink in the cart
when registering empty.
I also have read that some of the newer HP carts, when they run a cleaning
cycle, inject the ink back into the car and get more net coverage for the
ink volume in the carts.
The bottom line is not that there is some ink left in the cart to protect
the printer, but what the cost per page for comparable cover is. It would
be interesting to see comparative studies done with the same image files on
each mfgr's printers to get the coverage per dollar of OEM ink cost. Of
course, the expected life of the printer and original cost would also have
to be factored in if someone were really looking at total cost per page.
The elusive subjective evaluation of print qualiy would also come to bear as
one makes a decision to purchase a particular mfgr and model.
