On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Mike Miller wrote: > I would not be surprised if HP makes more total on the ink-jet cartridges > than on the ink-jet printers! No kidding. It's King Gillette's old adage - give away the razor and sell the blades. CompUSA lists a black ink cartridge for an HP printer at $19.99. The cheapest HP inkjet printer is $49.62. AFAIK, every printer manufacturer does this. Geek: Why does the "tub of ink" cost 1/2 the price of the printer?! HP: Because the cartridge has fancy electronics on it Geek: What do those electronics do? HP: You know...stuff. Good stuff. It can tell you when you're out of ink! Geek: Why don't you put that logic into the printer? HP: (Getting nervous) Well, then the printer would cost more Geek: But I only have to buy the printer once, I have to buy Ink cartridges every few months! If you're so concerned about cost, wouldn't you like to offer your customers a non-low-ink-detecting version that's cheaper? I mean, come on, we can tell when we're out of ink... HP: (Blurts out) But then the printer won't be able to tell whether you bought a $3 refilled cartridge, or an overpriced $20 official HP cartridge...SHOOT WAS THAT OUT LOUD? And looking into my "Crystal Ball of Conspiracy Theories", I see the future. I see rfid tags embedded into paper, and I see HP and Epson buying a large number of paper mills. _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list