FStoppers bought an inexpensive inkjet printer and found it tore through cartridges disturbingly fast. Investigation revealed that the razors-and-blades business model is plainly out of control. Cartridges now come almost completely empty: the black cartridge has 3ml of ink in it, is good for about 35 pages of text at a cost of 45 cents per page.
Further tests revealed extremely wasteful behavior by the machine, using more ink than required and going through cleaning cycles every time it prints a page, even if nothing is printed on a page. Print 300 blank pages and you'll run out of ink! He proves you can refill the tanks, too, without loss of quality or damage to the printer–at least until the DRM system figures out it's supposed to have run out, and quits printing.
The sheer audacity of this Canon printer/ink combo takes the breath away, even with HP right there gulling its customers. It's enabled by the lack of regulation or other legal recourse, and these companies having undergone some kind of reputational ego death enabling total contempt for their users.
Once more for the record: Epson Ecotank for inkjets, Brother for laserjets. At least until further notice.
