Add Printer Ink to your Grocery List

Bread, milk, orange juice, salt, printer ink - printer ink? These days, printer ink is just as likely to end up on my grocery staples list as bread, milk and eggs. If I run out of printer ink in the middle of printing out a school project that's due tomorrow and it's 2 AM, I can actually run down to the 24 hour supermarket and buy a new printer ink cartridge.

As a writer, I have an intimate relationship with my printer, and hence, so is the printer ink, without which it is useless. My very first printer was an old dot matrix style with a ribbon cartridge that produced letters on paper in the same way that a typewriter does - by striking a shape against an ink-coated ribbon. The shape of the letters is formed by 9 pins (in most standard dot matrix printers). By pushing the right pins forward to strike the paper, the printer can form a wide variety of letter shapes and fonts. Just think of the way that an LED clock forms numbers with lines and you'll have an idea of how dot matrix actually makes letters using dots. It was noisy, changing the ribbon was messy, and the print quality was terrible.

The advent of ink jet printers in the mid-1980s completely revolutionized the world of desktop publishing and home printing. Ink jet printing uses the same sort of dot matrix as dot matrix printers - only the pins are replaced by tiny nozzles that dispense a drop of ink. Instead of delivering printer ink to the paper by impact, ink jet printers form letters by pushing out drops of ink in a precise pattern and spraying or pressing it onto the paper. The ink is then heated to dry it and 'fix' it to the paper.  The result is nearly always a clean, sharp printout with near-photographic quality.

Printer ink is the single most expensive part of maintaining your printer. A standard ink cartridge costs between $20 and $50, depending on the make and model of your printer. Most home printers use a cartridge of ink every 2-3 months. If you print more extensively, however, buying printer ink can become quite costly. Shopping around online is a great way to find discount sources of printer ink - but it does require planning ahead to keep one or two cartridges on hand so you don't end up running out to the all-night supermarket for printer ink at three in the morning.

For more information on printer ink or to select from a range of printer supplies and products choose from the following:

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