The ink tanks don't look very large on this <epson r200> printer.
<edit mine>
They are not huge, but they are not overly small either. Somewhere in
the 13ml to 15ml range IIRC. The non-photo models might give you a
larger black.
Is there a point where
the cost of replacing the printer is more economical than the ink? E.g. I
hear you cannot run the printer on black only if even 1 colour is only used
up.
Each time you replace the black or any tank in the offical way it goes
through a cleaning cycle, and it cleans all the tanks. So that in it
self limits their life. On the otherhand some use of the color ink is
reccomended to keep the heads from clogging. There is a utility called
SSC that allows you to actually look at the ink drop count. This would
give you an accurate picture of whether or not it's actually using
colors other than black in your printing.
http://www.ssclg.com/epsone.shtml
IIRC the printer won't print with an empty tank. It's not a good idea
anyway as headclogs are a pain to remove.
I liked this printer as a photo printer... I had my issues with it, big
issues, and franky I no longer use it... but if I did use it I wouldn't
use it to just print black unless we are talking graphics then i'd
consider grey inks from a 3rd party. For text printing i'd consider a
Canon, or an HP, or one of Epson's non-photo stylus models, or better
still a nice ecconomical laser.
