dmcphoto Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Something like 5 years ago we got a Brother laser printer at Staples for $50 if memory serves me correctly. That's less than a new toner cartridge costs. The printer came with a "starter" toner cartridge that's good for about 700 pages while a "normal" replacement toner cartridge is good for more than twice as many. When the starter cartridge ran out we replaced it with an extra capacity cartridge (they're all the same, just filled more or less) good for about 2600 pages. It hurt to spend more on a toner cartridge than on the whole printer, but buying a new printer every 700 pages is ridiculous. The printer still works perfectly and we are still using the 2600 page cartridge so in all it was a great deal.
As was already mentioned, most printer companies sell their printers at little to no profit and make their money selling the consumables. That's why they put so much effort (and money) into protecting against the use of third party inks. The OEM has the expense of designing, manufacturing, and marketing the printers and protecting their consumables market while the third parties only have to steal an ink cartridge design and sell it. Third party cartridges can obviously sell for much less because they have none of the OEM's costs.
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