I am looking for a good Ink saving vista/win7 friendly multifuntion duplex printer than dose not piss on itself to use ink every gdamn chance it gets with reasonable priced ink? I have a Office jet g85 I love it easy to take apart clean and stuff but HP decided not to update its drivers..I mean works fine in XP but vista the printer dose not work in win7 the scanner dose not work and neither dose duplex printing......I guess a 800$ printer is only really good for 7 years if you are lucky....
The latest Canon printers are now using a downsized cart 9ml (chipped of course) that has an increased cleaning cycle frequency to waste more ink. It's been stated that a full set of carts, on being exhausted, uses almost 4% of the 'waste ink' capacity of the printer. When 100% is reached the printer quits with a warning to take the printer to a service centre to replace the waste pad - although I think there is a software kicking around that will simply reset the counter. Since these printers use dye ink I cannot imagine why the waste is not evaporating over time - it does if I spill some on a tissue. You can refill the carts using cheap ink from the likes of Hobbicolors on eBay - but you must submit to a warning from the printer that the ink monitor will be turned off etc. If eyeballing the ink level once a day is too much of a chore, there's word that a chip re-setter is now available that will fool the printer into resuming it's monitor function on the refilled cart.. Canon printers now weigh less than in the past - less solid stainless steel parts - more pressed steel and plastic - but the ones with individual carts are still better than most others in the price range.
My uncel has a cannon it drinks ink and never wants to be out of it....I found this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828113432 17-25$ for all its ink, which is not bad. I love the manufactured carts!