Digital BW, The Print

> But plenty of people here and on the Photo.Net digital darkroom forum 
> use stock Epson inks and I seldom hear THEM complaining about the 
> clogs-from-hell.   Why wouldn't they complain just as much?

I think it's important that you distinguish between the inks used and
the method used  to introduce them into the system. For example, none of
the BW printing methods require you to use a CIS, but many choose to do
so for practical reasons. Adding an external system to your printer with
additional parts is bound to have different problems associated with it
than a regular printer.

If all you want to do is to compare the stability of the inks themselves
you would need to compare cartridges prefilled with BW inks to original
cartridges. The assumption would also be that when the cartridges were
empty you threw them away and bought new ones, otherwise the refilling
techniques used would be introduced as a factor and it would no longer
be a fair comparison to originally manufactured cartridges.

If you introduce other factors into the equation it may very well not be
the BW inks themselves that are the problem, but the printing methods
used, and that is a risk the user chooses for themselves.

Both Piezography and MIS sells prefilled cartridges with a cost similar
to original cartridges, so you could choose that approach for maximum
safety. 

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no