babyfarmer@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I remember years ago seeing a list of the “most expensive liquids in the world”, and black printer ink was near the top of the list.
Other things on the list were scorpion venom, cobra venom, crab blood, insulin, things of that nature.
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
You can blame Kodak for that. Printers used to be expensive and ink cheap but then Kodak flipped the business model and made a ton. Other printer companies were losing it so the flipped as well. You can also blame the consumers for choosing that model as well I guess
tux7350@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Looking into the history of Kodak is crazy. They used a 13 month calendar and secretly kept a nuclear reactor in the basement for years.
People forget that Kodak was a chemical company, not just photography.
Peffse@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Funny, I had a Kodak printer for years since they had the cheapest ink by a large margin. HP was always the most expensive.
What year did that flip?
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
From the Kodak Wikipedia
Peffse@lemmy.world 6 days ago
That’s wild!
I had my inkjet from around 2011 to 2015. I think it was a C310 but I can’t find any proof of that. I only know it took the 30B/C cartridges.
They were $25-30 for a bundle on a retailer’s shelf while everything else was closer to $50-70 for a bundle on a retailer’s shelf. There was a 20% yield difference between the two, but that’s no 20% markup! I vaguely recall a 30B double pack that was only $15 total, and that’s what I used to buy once or twice a year. None of that hidden “Cyan mixed in the black to make it blacker” crap that HP did either.
How ironic that Kodak rigged the game to make ink expensive, and then others beat them at it.
Peffse@lemmy.world 5 days ago
wait wait… reading comprehension fail on my part. Both that NBC article and Wikipedia are saying that Kodak went against the grain by selling more expensive printers with cheaper ink.