Digital BW, The Print

If what many of us believe is true, that Epson's business model in this 
area is to sell razor blades (ink at thousands of dollars per gallon) 
and that the razors (printers) are just the hook to get us to buy the 
blades, they have to spend enormous sums to keep their blades impossible 
to reuse (refill) and difficult to copy.  Once copies have been made, 
i.e. once MIS and others have found third-party cartridges that can be 
used in Epson printers, Epson has no choice but to discontinue the old 
razor and move on to a new design which takes only a new blade.

Frankly, I don't think worldwide interest in B&W inks for Epson printers 
rises to the level of a miscellaneous adjustment in the financial 
reports that Epson sees, but the flood of "compatible" color cartridges 
from dozens of different vendors at fractions of Epson prices does get 
their attention.  As long as their business is selling ink, we cannot 
expect stability in cartridge design, unless and until they come up with 
one that cannot be  (functionally) duplicated.  If that ever happens, 
our only choices will be to find another printer platform that can use 
our third party inks (but I believe all printer makers are following 
Epson's business model to some extent, which may make an alternative 
platform hard to find) or move to the giant printers that use external, 
or easily refilled internal, ink supplies like the floor-mounted Epsons 
(7600, etc.)

Or, the state of the art may move and we'll all be doing our work on 
Xerox machines.  Wonder what the business model would be there?  
(Probably the same - I spent multiples of the cost of my laser printer 
on replacement cartridges over the years that I had that printer.)

Cheers,
Kip

jerry78008 wrote, in part:

>My impression is that it would be so much
>nicer of Epson to have kept the cartridges compatible, but that Epson
>changed the cartridges for the newer c88. I would greatly prefer that
>they are the same cartridge, as I cannot find low cost c88 cartridges
>yet, however plenty of c86 cartridges. 
>