Hopefully, once the patent expires, we'll see a lot of competition in the dye-sub ink market. That'll entail a lot of work for us end-users to sort out the good from the bad, but it should result in some much cheaper ink.Janners Mugs;45718 wrote:You could be on to something... I'll watch, hope it comes off!
It's seems scandalous that Sawgrass charge £240 for four inks (100ml of each) which you can buy for about a tenth of that direct from China. No wonder they're so keen to protect their patent and to put others out of business. For what little work/R&D that they do, they must be raking it in.
The point I'm making though is that, when the patent expires, this kind of cheap ink will flood the market and there are bound to be both good and bad variants just like there are with other third party inks. Sorting the wheat from the chaff will be an experience and a half. One thing's for sure, though, it's currently much easier to put third party ink in an Epson or Brother (through refillables or a CISS) than it is through a Ricoh. I'm sure that will change but those people who bank on Ricoh probably won't have the freedom and options of those who use Epson and Brother printers. Perhaps that's the real reason for the current "advice" to buy into Ricoh?
