Ink refilling kits - Do you use them?

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EGD Eric

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Hey there, I'm a student, and I own a Lexmark X85 all-in-one. Its a pretty nifty machine, but now its become useless because my black ink cartridge is out. I checked at the Lexmark website to find that a black cartridge costs 36.99 American (That's like: $54 Canadian!). With that price, I could buy whole new printer that comes with a black and color cartridge, and the cartridges wouldn't cost so much to replace. (My roomate owns an extra printer: An Epson).

I was going to buy it from him, and stick that extra printer in my room, but Doesn't that defeat the purpose of an all in one? To save space? It certainly is nice to have my printer, scanner, photocopier all in one compact machine. Saves a good deal of space in my little rented room.

So instead I bought an ink refill kit (about $50). I drilled a hole into my black cartridge and filled it with ink. It Still doesn't work though. The tech support guy at Lexmark said: Those ink refill kits haven't passed "Lexmark safety approval" yet, and using them will damage the printer over time because the printer tries to force the ink out of the cartridge to no avail, so it keeps trying and trying and wears out the motors.

Is this guy full of it? What should I do?
Does everyone just buy new printers all the time? Is there a landfill full of printers somewhere?
 
I'm not exactly sure where, but you can get cartridges for a fraction of the price on the Internet. My dad buys Epson ones online for about $5 instead of the $30 that Epson charges.
 
Actually, if the price of the ink is so cheap, u should be careful. I read an article in August about bogus ink which sells at a fraction of the original (even resellers and online vendors dont notice any difference in packaging). But these ink cartridges can seriously damage ur printer. They can run out of ink pretty fast, have sub-standard printouts and even explode inside the printer.
 
Yeah, I read that article too, but my dad hasn' t had any problems yet and he won't be heartbroken even if they do explode cause he wants a new printer anyway.
 
lol well then ur good to go... but seriously Lexmark, HP, Epson and Canon all have an enormous market and u can imagine their profits with ink cartridges, especially that it's a product that u have to keep buying. Add to that the explosion in digital photography and u can see an even more enormous profit for these companies.
Why cant they reduce ink cartridge prices a bit?
 
Once it's empty...the jet heads can become clogged with dry ink. Remove the cartridge and clean the jet heads on the bottom with a Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. Reinsert the cartridge and run the "Clean Head" option in lenmarks printer utility. If the ink has dryed inside the cartridge jet head...your screwed.

Then I guess I'm screwed... Its been a while since it ran out of ink. I've tryed using the ink refill kit on this cartridge more than once.

How do I get to these jet heads if they're inside the cartridge?
 
ive heard that if you get a Laser printer (expensive to buy first off) their ink rolls can last hundreds of times longer than inkjet printers, so once you have bought them they are cheap to run.
if you have an inkjet printer don't get new cartriges often, refill it maybe 5 times then replace it.
 
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