We have a perennial problem at my house when it comes to printing.. we always seem to be out of ink. My wife is a Mary Kay consultant (ladies.. she would love to be your consultant if you don’t have one – go to www.marykay.com/lderryberry) and has a need to print out tons of color flyers, many times on demand. I don’t care whose printer you use – ink is expensive. It is honestly cheaper many times to trash your printer and buy a new one each time you run out of ink because the hardware is a loss leader – the real money is in the ink.

Enter the Continuous Ink System, or CIS. A CIS is a set of ink tanks, attached tubing and dummy print cartridges that are designed to fool your printer into thinking that the ink cartridges are always full. The printer ink is stored in the outboard ink tanks and is delivered to the dummy cartridges via the tubing. CIS systems ship with a full set of ink tanks – that’s the equivalent of about 8 standard-capacity ink cartridges for each cartridge color.. all for about 36 bucks. The cost savings is staggering when you consider that the 4-cartridge system that most printers today use cost about $17 each ($68 for a complete set of cartridges) times 8.. $544 worth of ink. Damn.

The ease of installing these systems really depends on your printer. I prefer Epson printers and is seems that most Epsons are fairly easy to install the CIS on. Bear in mind that with most printers you’ll have to leave the cover open so take a long hard look at your printer before you buy – all-in-one printers might not be the best choice if you do a lot of scanning. Print quality seems to be the same as standard cartridges out of the box, but here’s where you can improve upon the CIS system. You can buy higher-quality ink if necessary so you can really fine-tune your colors.

I’ll put a plug in for the ebay seller I bought my system from.. the ebay store is buyinknow123 and they are located in New York. The provided instructions were top-notch and they offer support after the sale if you need it.

Happy Printing!



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