With school season approaching at a deadly rate, those damned printer companies will continue to laugh their way to the bank once again by spoofing us with those chipped plastic cubes that they claim to call ink cartridges.  Is it just me or have they been shrinking over the past several years?  Like computer hackers, we have resorted to ways of saving on ink with those annoying refill kits that create a mess, and the evil engineering minds at the ink companies have answered back with authentication chips that basically revoke any refilled supply.  But still, it hasn’t stopped third party vendors from coming up with even more solutions to save on printing, so if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em -well, at least that’s what the folks at Epson have come to terms with.  Their new eco Tank line of printers ($379 & up) promises to allow for a multitude of printing without the woes of running out for ink cartridges.

I seriously am not falling for that going-green bullshit by accepting the idea that these guys are trying to cut down on plastic… I am convinced, however, that they somehow are throwing in the towel by winning over the countless disgruntled consumers that have forked over hundreds of dollars in small incremental packages of ink, four colors to boot!

But unfortunately, I think they have rolled in the price of ink in their msrp ($379 !!!! & UP !!!!)  Thankfully, for their older cheaper models way under the $200 range, you can still buy a continuous refill station from third party vendors like inkxpro included with ink for under $75, which is a pretty damn good bargain when printing daily.

I still give Epson mad props with taking the baby steps for designing a printer with an affordable ink solution.  In the end, you will still save money, and it’s a step in the right direction.