Digital said:
A major factor is - how often do you use the printer? If you don't use it
frequently, maintenance cycles on power-up will consume a lot of the ink -
some estimates suggest as much as half the ink in some cartridges can be
used up this way. And every time a new cartridge is installed, the other
cartridges contribute ink to flush the head.
Of course the other factor is what the balance of colour usage is with your
photography.
Unfortunately, without special simulation testing of ink depletion,
mimicking typical usage over a long period of time, your question is a bit
like asking how long a piece of string is.
Ian
Digital Photography Now
http://dpnow.com
It's been done by quite a few users monitoring usage over extended
periods, and the figure of about US$1 per 10x8, based on US ink prices
is about par for the course. Duty cycle, paper types used, colour
density etc of images all have an impact, but as a ballpark figure that
one seems pretty good.
The flushing of ink on cartridge changes is a known quantity - 3.09
grams total (0.386 grams per colour). As such, sometimes it's a
reasonable option to swap out a nearly empty cartridge when one is
empty, but it's nowhere near the stupid statements that are posted by
some saying to replace all cartridges with less than half etc.
A once respectable UK based magazine "PC Pro" ran some tests on the
R1800, after collaborating with Hewlett Packard shills - Spencer Lab of
NY, who knew exactly how to make the Epson look very bad compared to an
HP model that had printhead-in-cartridge design. They suggested that
the tester remove all the cartridges at regular intervals (daily IIRC)
and weigh them in order to assess yield per gram of ink for a typical
user. Add 3g per day wastage to ink usage, plus the additional waste
from cleaning cycles dealing with inevitable clogs if near empty
cartridges are inserted (as the risk of air entrainment is higher, and
the printer suspends auto-cleaning if it detects that one cartridge will
run dry), and the appalling result that they created was understandable.
Of course showing that one of HP's greediest ink guzzlers was cheaper to
run was the objective of HP/Spencer and (to give them the benefit of
doubt - dimwitted rather than corrupt) PC Pro "experts". AFAIK they
have failed to respond to criticism of their "lab test" or publish a
retraction. Perhaps they were embarrassed by the possibility that they
were "taken in" by Spencer Lab, when at the time it was patently obvious
from visiting their website that their sole reason for existing was to
create biased test methodologies, conduct tests, and prepare reports for
use by HP marketing.
