Your eyes do not deceive you! Brandon said farewell to the Gnook last Friday, but due to an editor’s fudge, it was discovered that we still had a few of Brandon’s columns in reserve. Enjoy today’s and tomorrow’s!

Are you sick and tired of paying high prices for printer cartridges? Gnomie R.G. Brooks tells us how he gets his ink on the cheap.

I find people are buying printers without considering the economics of the print cartridge. HP, Lexmark, etc. have for function and greed purposes built a patented print head into their carts, forcing third party ink sources to either break the law, refill blank carts, or pay fees to reproduce the technology. Users don’t have many options and are stuck paying the high prices for OEM carts.

Most Canon and Epson printers have separate carts, and alternatives can be purchased very cheap! The manufacturers have tried to discredit and discourage third party ink carts, and I don’t blame them, but if the price were close, I would go ahead and get the brand name carts. However, when OEM carts are $34US or $22US or whatever, and you need two or maybe four in a set, the “Made in China” carts I have been buying for two years for under two bucks each are hard to ignore. And truly, I have had only one bad cartridge in a hundred. If the chemistry or the colors are off, I haven’t been able to tell, and I print calibrated color photos all the time.

People should realize that the price of a printer keeps on after the initial purchase. Sometimes one set of carts is more than the printer! Not for me!