Debate: Information On Your Cartridges July 16, 2010 10:55 by Matt Bird
Throughout the daily routine of providing ink cartridges for our customers, and doubling as a superhero in the customer advice and information role, we receive a large amount of queries from customers that we are simply unable to answer
"How much ink is in the cartridge??????"
.... We can tell you how many pages it can print to the industry standard....
.... We can tell you how to get the most out of your printer cartridges....
But there are many situations an exact ink level isn't provided by the manufacturer, and there is a huge outcry to make this a legal requirement....
But I Disagree
Let me start by saying this is not a view of Stinkyink as a whole, but my opinion. I know some colleagues disagree with me. Much like a select few customers may agree with me and.... well, the others will tag me for being shot at dawn.
However, I feel it is a fascinating area to find out peoples views on and discuss. What additional information would people want on a cartridge? Is ink capacity something people are clamouring for or is page yield enough?
To start us off I'll post a debate on the subject I had with a colleague, as we disagree almost entirely on the subject at hand, and shall hopefully provide some food for thought.
Let the Debate Begin!!!
Me: Firstly, let me just say this is purely for ink cartridges. I believe toner cartridges will always be better served by page yield than amount of toner within a cartridge, due to the sheer volume of prints those cartridges can hold. So.... ink. Whilst I do hold the belief that cartridges should come in larger capacities, and that cartridges such as the C9351AE , capacity 5ml, contain a disgraceful amount of ink for a machine... I think that providing the exact ml content of a cartridge would mislead many consumers.
Disagreeing Chum: How can more information for a consumer possibly be a bad thing?
Me: The consumption of ink in printing varies hugely between circumstances, model of printer, manufactuer and what's actually being printed. As soon as ink levels are put on cartridges it will become "This 10ml cartridge, at the same price, is better value for money than then 8ml cartridge from someone else", which is not the case in a vast number of situations.
DC: But keeping the page yield information on the cartridges, in addition to the capacity information, would provide a measure of efficiency for the customer.
Me: But that then opens up issues of misguided conclusions due to the "surely comparable information sets". You have to look past the 'purpose' of the ink cartridge, way past it being a consumable. Customers use ink cartridge information to select their printer in the first place, well before purchasing the cartridge as a consumable. Okay, for an office black and white printer, page yield and black cartridge capacity is a great way to find this information out, but what about the general printer users? Consider these issues literally off the top of my head now, and there will be others:
- The amount of ink used per print varies wildly, dependent on factors such as paper you are printing onto, volume you print each time, printer settings, the list goes on.
- There is no page yield information in regards to cartridges involved in photo printing
- What page yield there is gets quoted at the 5% industry standard. That 5% standard is roughly a third of a page of text, with a 10% error margin on ink usage so is only a rough estimate anyway.
- An equal page yield but different capacities can point to either a higher resolution printer, using more dots per inch (dpi) in images, or an infficient printer just soaking a page with unnecessary ink etc.
DC:But having at least a standard information set for customers to work off, so for example: all page yields are based on standard printer settings onto standard paper, individual page print requests - where any variation from this is a limiting factor on the efficient use of the cartridge. That way at least consumers can see "well, that HP ink cartridge is less efficient than that other manufacturer cartridge."
Me: But you have that now. The introduction of capacities makes absolutely no difference to this?
DC: But to me, the exclusion and refusal to publish capacities is an attempt to deliberately obfuscate the details and inherent value of a cartridge.As long as companies maintain the razor-blade pricing scheme and printers are the cheap part of the printing-process, there has got to be a way to monitor long term printing costs.
Me: I can see how it comes across that way, but I quite like this quote from a Lexmark attorney: ""Treating these sophisticated machines as though they were mere containers for ink is inappropriate," So many factors influence the performance of a cartridge that simply stating the capacity is not only misleading, but an injustice to the performance capabilities of the cartridge.
DC: Avoid the point all you want, forget factors to get the most out of printing, or misleading those doing research into a printer for all occasions etc, it is quite simple. A customer should know what is in the cartridge he is buying, not estimates of performance as a be-all-and-end-all for available information.
Me: I accept that view, that is fine. But all of the complaints in the field are centred around the cost of ink, the limitations of quoting page yields for evaluating long-term performance costs. Neither of those issues are addressed by putting capacities onto ink cartridge packaging. Indeed, quoting the weakness' in estimating page yield then stating capacity being a more accurate measure is a horribly misinformed viewpoint and one which will just lead to confusion when customers start to discover that, wait, 10ml in one cartridge is not the same as 10ml in another cartridge, and start demanding some other form of information to help guide them. Take one major complaint about page yield estimations from a market critic calling for ink capacity.
There is no page yield for how many photos a cartridge can produce.
How would capacity possibly solve this? There is no yield for this as it is so heavily reliant on the actual image being printed, let alone the resolution of the printer being used. Due to most cartridges going in a great selection of machines of varying capability, a yield for them would be impossible. Yet a capacity would provide no more guidance, how far would 10ml of cyan get printing lots of sea views in comparison to printing grassy fields?
There needs to be more information on what affects ink usage before capacities are published on general cartridges. More needs to be done to inform customers on how to personally monitor their ink usage so they can get a feel and idea of how far a cartridge goes, than some standalone figure like capacity. Otherwise more damage than good will be accomplished.
DC: Hmmm. I still disagree. Even with variations to ink usage, capacity as an initial guide, so cartridge A is bigger than B, is a simple enough requirement.
Me: Gah! I'm going to blog it....
1 Response to “Debate: Information On Your Cartridges”
July 16, 2010 11:53
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