Inkjet, Laser, or FedEx Office?

Getting your document (or webpage, or whatever) printed out attractively on paper seems, intuitively, like it should be one of the cheaper things that you can do with your computer. And for some people, it is. But there are some interesting and/or infuriating exceptions.

The inkjet printer market used to be dominated by models that shared a common design feature; the widgetry that actually sprayed the ink was built into the replaceable ink cartridge. On the one hand, this meant that if everything worked as designed, the most crucial working parts wouldn't clog, and you'd never have to worry about their wearing out. On the other hand, the cost of replacing them with every cartridge change was much higher than for just tanks of ink. To make matters worse, those early printers often didn't work as designed, and often had to have the cleaning cycle run several times if the last page printed was more than a day previous. Since each cleaning cycle discarded a bunch of ink, it could easily mean that an infrequently-used early inkjet could have a per-sheet cost of printing that exceeded 50 cents per page. (In one particularly memorable case for me, an HP 855c managed to have a per-page cost of over $5 per properly-printed full-color-output page over the three years I had it. I still use their lasers, but I don't buy their inkjets at all.)

Later versions of inkjets arrived on the market using just a replaceable ink tank; the better ones used individual tanks for each color. Although the cost of the ink remained high, the per-page printing cost was reduced...and if generic ink tanks were available, the cost could drop to under a penny a page. To reduce the competition from generic ink, the printer manufacturers switched to ink tanks with a small, inexpensive (but proprietary) chip in the end; without the chip, the printer failed to recognize the tank's presence, and often wouldn't work at all. If that chip was actually measuring the ink usage instead of just keeping a theoretical tally of it, this might have been laudable...but in reality, the chips tend to tell the printer that replacement is required even though there's still plenty of ink left. And as before, each cleaning cycle uses up a bunch of extra ink. Individual chipped tanks can cost $60 for a set, and may last for as few as 30 pages or as many as 1200, depending on what's being printed and how often the printer is used. For people who print things multiple times per day, every day of the week, the newer inkjets usually aren't a bad deal...but if you often go for days at a time without generating any hardcopy, even these later inkjets can be much too expensive to operate.

Laser printers, on the other hand, have a cost per sheet that's pretty much determined by how much toner is used for each page. Text doesn't use much, and typical lasers can print a page for at most a few cents. Laser cartridges don't remain functional forever, even if they still have plenty of toner left; the user who prints just a single page infrequently may still find that in the long run, a laser's output isn't really cost-effective.

On the other hand, if there's a FedEx Office store nearby, one additional option is to just ditch the whole printer-ownership thing, and upload documents to their printer. The per-page cost still isn't cheap, and you really need to carefully preview what's going to be produced, but it has the distinct advantage of not requiring space on your desk, and not requiring that you keep consumables around that, in the case of inkjets in particular, end up getting wasted more than used.

My recommendations:

For daily, heavy use, if color output isn't needed, get a laser.
For daily, heavy use, if color is needed, get an inkjet that uses separate tanks.
For daily, moderate use, both inkjets and lasers are suitable.
For daily, light use, stay with a laser unless color is required.
For less frequent use, stay with a laser unless color is required.
For occasional use, abandon trying to have color output, and get a laser...or just print out your hardcopy at a nearby FedEx Office if that's a viable option. (You may spend less, even in the long run, than you would by buying a "cheap" printer.)

Color lasers have a high per-page cost regardless of how much they're used; unless you need their specific qualities, I can't say that I would recommend them at all.

There you have it. Kill some trees.

Product Review: H-E-B Pomegranate Black Tea

Short version: Eeeeewwww!

For those who live outside Texas, H-E-B is a grocery store chain that serves much of the central and eastern part of the state; it's generally a reliable source for comestibles of all types, and their store brand items have tended to be pretty good in the past. This, sadly, is not one that I can recommend.

For the sake of accuracy, the item is sold under UPC 041220648030, and it's a box of 20 bags with a total net weight of 1.27 ounces. The price was less than $2, which seemed like a relative bargain given the much stiffer tabs for the majority of the boutique brands. At best, this means that I have lost less than the price of a hamburger, and will only be discarding 1.21 ounces of product, plus packaging. (Yes, I could take it back and get a refund, but it's hardly worth the effort for this small amount, and I didn't keep the receipt anyway.)

One would hope that a pomegranate black tea would have some fruitiness about it, including perhaps a bit of the aroma, flavor and color of the presumed ingredient. What presented itself upon brewing was a light-colored non-reddish cup with a pronounced crushed-snails aroma that was not improved in the least by the added slight minty note. It was distinctly reminiscent of the cough syrups containing guaifenesin, a mucus-loosening medicine. I took one experimental sip to discern whether the flavor might redeem the brew, but alas, the taste proved only slightly less offensive than the bouquet, with not a hint of fruit about it in any way.

Recommendation: Serve this brewed very strong, to people who you prefer never to have visiting you again in the future. Use boxes of it as a gift in the annual Secret Santa ritual if you're planning on swapping to a new job in January anyway. Give it to the obnoxious loon next door who's been going on at length about how proud he is to be a teabagger. But don't drink it yourself.