I’ve unplugged my ink jet printer, quite possibly for good. I finally got sick and tired of paying out the nose for those expensive ink jet printer cartridges.

I was a faithful OEM ink jet printer cartridge buyer for years. Sure, I paid a premium, but they were always reliable. Then I figured I’d see if I could save a few bucks by buying a nifty ink jet cartridge refilling kit. It all sounded great in theory, but in the end, it wasn’t so nifty for me. After dutifully following the instructions, the cartridges simply refused to work. Instead of saving a few bucks, I promptly ate the cost of the kit … and ended up going back to the real deal HP cartridges (after trying a set of off-brand cartridges).

The light finally went on after years of feeding the color ink jet beast. I realized that we didn’t really need to print everything out in color. I took a good look at the LaserJet that sits next to the ink jet, and smacked myself in the head with a “d’oh!” that would do Homer proud.

These days, everything gets printed in black and white on the LaserJet. Compared to the color ink jet, the LaserJet toner cartridges seem to last forever. While it seemed like I was replacing my color ink jet cartridges every month or so, I can’t remember the last time I replaced the toner cartridge in the LaserJet. (Alas, by mentioning that, I’ve probably doomed myself into replacing the toner cartridge tomorrow.)

While I may go for days without printing a single page, when I do get into printing mode, I do it in a big way. I bought my first laser printer in the days when I was writing a lot of books. Cranking out the chapters with a laser printer is a breeze … click print, go get another cup of coffee, and the stack would be waiting upon my return from the kitchen. Using an ink jet for the same role always proved to be a test of patience, as it would take forever for the chapter to print, if in fact something didn’t jam in the printer’s inferior feed mechanism.

Laser printers may have higher up-front costs when compared to ink jets, but those costs quickly fade over time. The more pages you pump through a laser, the better the economics. Ink jets can be much less expensive to purchase, but the operating costs can be positively hideous when printing in volume.