2nd March 2011

Some of you will have received an email today with exciting news!  (If not email john@kc-inks.co.uk to be added to our mailing list.) Not only are we going on an amazing adventure this July but you get a chance to win a years supply of ink!  All the money raised is to be divided between two charities Spinal Research and The RFU Injured Players Foundation.  You can donate here
http://www.justgiving.com/KC-Inks-Ltd and here
http://www.justgiving.com/KC-INKS  Just make a donation, use the code SPONSER next time you place an order and you will be entered into a prize draw for a years supply of ink!  You will also get a free pen with your order.  To keep up to date with all the action as we prepare for our adventure take a look at our two other blogs
http://www.kc-inks.co.uk/Charity_Drive this is purely about John and our chosen charities http://inkandprintercartridges.blogspot.com/ and this one is about ink, printers, offers, giveaways and anything else that is happening!  Hope you enjoy reading about all that we are doing - get donating and be in with a chance of a years free ink!!!!







My first blog is going to be about Brother! KC Inks is affiliated with Brother as a BROTHER APPROVED INDEPENDANT RETAILER.  That means you a going to hear lots about Brother with a few bits here and there about the other printer companies.  Mainly I will cover things like new releases, reviews, comparisons and anything else I can think of but to start with I thought a little bit of background about Brother would set us off nicely.

 

Here at KC Inks we sell a LOT of ink (covering all the main brands) and Brother printers.  I’ll tell you a little story later about why we chose Brother over the other companies you may know.  

The information about Brother is taken from their own website.  The company was incorporated in 1934.  Based in Nagoya, Japan they now have offices throughout the world and manufacturing plants in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, America, Malaysia, Ireland and the UK.  Brother has operations in 28 countries and is sold in more than 100 countries.

The UK subsidiary began in 1959 in London, but moved to Manchester in 1968, into a sewing machine factory (don’t just make printers you know!)  The Manchester office is the headquarters of Brother Europe.  Brother also has a factory in Ruabon, Wales making typewriters.  The Manchester office also provides sales, marketing, technical support, warehousing and distribution and a customer support call centre.  I think that the British call centre is SO important – speaking to somebody in this country who understands relieves so much of the associated frustration!

They also have an ISO9001 which is and internationally recognized standard for Quality Management Systems which includes; quality of service and repair, consistency of order processing, operational controls and customer liason procedures.  They recently won the Microsope ACES award for “Envirnomental Company of the Year”  Brother were the only printer manufacturer to be nominated.  Another accolade was scoring 100/100 in the “Ethical Company Organisation’s Good Shopping  Guide” for the fourth year in a row.

So that is probably enough about Brother for the moment, apart from adding why we chose them!  First of all the customer service.  I firmly believe good service (with a smile) is the way forward in any business.  Make everyone happy!  I think Brother are good at this!

A long time ago (before I became a printer geek) I bought a Brother fax machine, not very expensive, just to plod away at the back of the office.  Then one day I printed some holiday snaps out on it....... and they came out really well!  Then I did a photo album for a friends birthday, again good results.  Which I thought for a little fax machine was rather good!  Since then we have gradually replaced all the printers (inkjet and laser) in the office with Brother and are of course very pleased with them.  All because of that first little fax......

 

INKJET PRINTERS 

 Many of you are looking for a little guidance on which inkjet printer to buy. We have been selling ink cartridges for well over 10 years to domestic and commercial customers throughout the UK and Europe and over that time we have picked up a little insight. We sell the manufacturers own brand of cartridge at the best prices you will find as well as the cheaper alternatives.

The most important thing to remember when buying a printer is -What is it going to cost me? No not the price of the printer the cost of the replacement ink, or if you like the what is it going to cost you per page to use. Quite often the cheapest printer to buy is the most expensive to actually use, sometimes one set of replacement inks cost more than you paid for the printer.

 There are two main types of inkjet printer

 Multiple cartridge machines mostly take 4 cartridges one black and one each of cyan, magenta, and yellow but can take many more.

Advantages / Disadvantages

1                    The big advantage of this design over printers that take two cartridges (one black and one colour) is that in the two cartridge machines the colour cartridge is split into three compartments (cyan, magenta, yellow) and when one of these compartments is empty due to you printing a lot of one colour (lots of blue sky in your holiday pictures, or lots of sunburn! ) you have to throw away the other two compartments ink and all.

2                    The cheaper alternative ink cartridges for these machines are brand new copies of the genuine article often for a fraction of the price.

3                    The main disadvantage is that these machines have a print head inside the printer that clogs with dried ink over time. This happens with genuine ink as well as the cheaper alternative version. The only way to prevent this from happening is to do regular print head cleaning from new, do not wait until you have a problem. Using the compatible ink will probably shorten the life of your printer but by the time it happens you should have saved enough money to replace it several times over. Remember to clean your print head.    

 
Cartridge with Printhead machines

1                    The advantage is that every time you replace your cartridge you replace the printhead in your printer. Theoretically leading to better print quality and longer printer life.

2                    The disadvantage is that most of these are two cartridge machines – see above.

3                    The cost of the genuine replacement inks is high, as they include a printhead.

4                    The brand new alternative inks are not available for these machines. The alternative inks are genuine cartridges that are remanufactured. You can have your cartridge refilled in a shop literally with a syringe and needle the other option is the professionally remanufactured version. These are recycled cartridges which are factory refilled. They first have their microchips checked, then they are spun in a centrifuge to empty them completely to avoid contamination. They are then streamed to clean them before vacuum filled. Finally they are tested. They are more expensive than the brand new alternatives and have a higher failure rate.

5                    When a set of genuine replacement inks costs nearly as much as a new printer maybe extended printer life is not an advantage!  

I will go through the makes of printer but please remember that this is my opinion.

Epson are the most popular brand of printer for the domestic market and offer a wide range of attractively priced printers to suit most requirements. Most of the new printers take one range of cartridges. These mostly take 4 cartridges one black and one each of cyan, magenta, and yellow. Brand new cheap alternative cartridges are available across the range with savings of up to 90% being achievable over genuine cartridges.  The new cartridges have microchips on them which can cause recognition problems, do not buy the cheapest you can find, do not change all your cartridges at once always change them one at a time, we are up to version 7 on the microchip on the most popular cartridge (Epson brings out a new version of microchip to keep in front of the alternative manufacturers) so purchase your cartridges from a trust worthy source or you might end up with the right cartridge but the wrong chip – useless!

Epson printers have fixed print heads  that clog up over time causing banding (lines from left to right on your printout.) and complete blocking. The only remedy is to do regular print head cleaning from new, don’t wait until you have a problem. Using the compatible ink will probably shorten the life of your printer but by the time it happens you should have saved enough money to replace it several times over

The modern Epson printers do not measure how much ink is in the cartridge they do a page count and estimate. The result is that even if you use genuine ink when the cartridge says its empty there will still be ink in it, so you be throwing ink away. This is more of an issue with compatible cartridges as they normally have considerably more ink in them than the genuine cartridges, the chip is tweaked so more pages are printed than with the genuine cartridge but ink will be thrown away. The only way around this is to use cartridges with a resetting chip there are a lot of cartridges around advertised as double capacity and they do have double the ink compared to the genuine cartridge but all you do is throw it away as the printer counts the pages printed not the ink in the cartridge.

 Hewlett Packard HP are a quality make of printer with a wide range of models to suit most requirements most have their print heads built into the ink cartridge. The genuine ink cartridges are widely available and quite expensive. The remanufactured cartridges are readily available and are generally good value compared  to the genuine cartridges and they are fairly reliable, they are not as cheap or as reliable as the brand new replacements that are available for other types of printer. As the remanufactured cartridges depend on recycled cartridges there is usually a lag of up to a year from the time a new model of cartridge is launched to sufficient empty cartridges being available to make the remanufactured cartridges readily available. Not all new printers use new model cartridges so check before you buy!

 Canon are an other quality make of printer with a mix of ink cartridge types. The multi cartridge printers take the brand new replacement cartridges, which seem to be very reliable, some people sell replacement cartridges that do not have a microchip on – these are very cheap and you have to take the microchip off the genuine cartridge and put it on the replacement, this is not a satisfactory solution. These printers have fixed print heads  that clog up over time causing banding (lines from left to right on your printout) and complete blocking the only remedy is to do regular print head cleaning from new, don’t wait until you have a problem. The majority of these printers have replaceable print heads, when the print head will not clear by doing multiple print head cleans you can easily remove the whole print head. This allows you to soak the print head in tepid water to dissolve the dried ink and clear the jets. Try to do this in a way that does not damage the contacts and try not to get covered in ink! When you get to this stage it is kill or cure so its worth a go and it is surprisingly effective and can be done several times successfully. If this does not work replacement print heads are available for most printers from Canon but you will have to be careful because these can be as expensive as a new printer!

Canon printers that take only two cartridges with the print heads in the cartridge are cheap to buy but the replacement inks are expensive. Remanufactured replacement cartridges are available  but are not the most reliable and are fairly expensive.

 Lexmark printers mostly have their print heads built into the ink cartridge. These printers are cheap to buy but tend to be very expensive to buy replacement inks for. A lot of people once they have purchased a cheap printer are shocked to find that one set of replacement inks cost more than the printer did! They restrict where they sell some ink cartridge models to keep the price unrealistically high and also try to restrict the supply of recycled cartridges to the remanufacturers  for the same reason. Remanufactured cartridges are available but only for a couple of model lines.  

 Brother printers are well built and have a wide range of specifications to suit most requirements. They all take the brand new replacement inks and the cartridges do not have microchips on them. They are multi cartridge machines and work very well with compatible inks. The cartridges hold a good amount of ink with little wastage and I believe are the best value per page when using compatible inks.  Brother printers have fixed print heads  that clog up over time causing banding (lines from left to right on your printout.) and complete blocking. The only remedy is to do regular print head cleaning from new, don’t wait until you have a problem. Using the compatible ink will probably shorten the life of your printer but by the time it happens you should have saved enough money to replace it several times over.

Our experience points us to believe that Brother printers are currently the best choice of printer on the grounds of quality of manufacture, quality of output, and most importantly the cost of printing. This is why we decided to sell them and all printers sold by us come with a free two year warranty.

 The choice is yours…