Ink for printers and human blood cost

For last few years I have few inkjet printers. And ink cost way too much for them. So let me share few thought about ink.

My last few printers were about $100 and they actually includes scanner and sometimes fax and also they are network printers so you can place them anywhere where they can connect to Wifi. All these printers where great in terms in print quality, services etc. But they share same problem: ink cost. Usually printers sold with limited amount of ink in cartridges so say after around 100 - 150 black or around 30-50 color pages your printer will ask to buy new ink. And very quickly you will realize that one cartridge will cost around 25% of printer cost. If you go for bigger cartridge then it can be up to 50-60% of printer cost. Sure that cartridge will last few times longer but very often whole set would cost $100-$150. There were research and human blood actually cost less than printer's ink. And question is: why would you buy genuine cartridges if aftermarket full set of them with max volume will cost $15?

Someone would say: quality or original ink is better. Probably if you print photos then yes it will be better and perhaps it will last longer. But anyway it is much cheaper to order prints. It will last definitely longer than from any printer and will be much cheaper. As for other prints I didn't see any difference at all. I printer pictures on normal paper and quality is about the same. Anyway most of the time you print stuff like text, webpages etc where quality doesn't matter. It should be readable and that's all. If you have kids who go to school you will have to print a lot. In our family we are using around 3500 per school year. And it is mostly black and white prints and quality is quite good.

Someone could say that you are damaging your printer. It is maybe true but if printer survives 2 sets of aftermarket cartridges and then die I will make profit at least $70. It probably not nice for environment to replace printer every 2 sets but it is definitely much more profitable. But anyway my last printer is 4 years old and I feed it only with aftermarket cartridges. Still works great. You can imagine how much money did I save.

And lastly usually aftermarket cartridges made from empty cartridges, they just refill and reprogram chips. So I'm kind of helping planet here as well.

And yes I'm aware that printer actually cost much more than price they ask for it and they subsidize it from ink cost. But it is not my problem right? If they decided to go for that business model and it didn't work it is not my fault. Find better model. I'm totally fine to pay $30 maybe even $50 for set of genuine cartridges but I will not pay $150 for god sake. It is way too much. Even if I have no choice then I will be laser printer for black and white.