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Speaking The LANguage
You might think that all laser or inkjet printers are pretty much the same, and basically, they are. Manufacturers such as Canon Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Lexmark International Inc. don't make a lot of money on each printer they sell. The big bucks come from selling you supplies such as ink cartridges over the life of a printer.
A network printer might cost US$3,000 or US$4,000 to buy, but the cartridges can add up to more than that over the life of the printer. For the printer manufacturer, the consumable supplies represent predictable recurring revenue at a high profit margin.
But buyers don't always purchase their supplies from the OEM. Some of us are environmentally friendly and buy recycled, or remanufactured, printer cartridges, which often cost less than new ones. This practice is so prevalent that cartridge remanufacturing is a multi-billion-dollar business.
Here's where the fight gets nasty. OEMs don't like losing out on cartridge sales, so in about 1996, manufacturers started putting chips in the cartridges that hinder their reuse. These companies claim the chips...