One of Dell’s black inkjet cartridges is the M4640 cartridge, which works in a couple of their printers, including the 922 and the 924. If you print a lot and are tired of buying new cartridges, here is a list of all the options you have to replace the T0601, including some alternatives:

Remanufactured M4640 - a remanufactured M4640 cartridge is one that has been refilled to capacity with ink and fitted with a new print head, which is the most important part of the cartridge. We sell these cartridges at a discount compared to Dell’s price.

Dell OEM M4640 - an OEM cartridge is the one that comes with your machine and the one that you would buy directly from Dell. In other words, it is the Dell brand cartridge.

Refill kits - even though some people used to have a bad idea about these, they are definitely the way to go if you want to save the most money. These kits are simple, they aren’t messy, and if you use them then each cartridge refill ends up costing you $5 or less.

Refilling service - if you aren’t into refill kits yourself, then you can have someone professionally refill your cartridge for you. We offer a service called Renew where you purchase a mailer from us for your empty cartridge, mail it off to our reycling center, and then wait about 7-10 days to receive your refilled one in the mail. This works for people who like the idea of recycling, but don’t have the time to do it themselves.

Office Depot has the HP PSC 160 on sale for $77.99 after a $26 rebate. You can save another $20 instantly by using the coupon code 22739351 at checkout, which brings the price down to $57.99 with free shipping. The rebate says it is for $20 off an HP product over $100, but if you click on the box and actually look at the rebate, you will see that you get $26 off the PSC 1610. A little strange, but cool.

The PSC 1610 is an all-in-one machine that scans, copies and prints (it does not fax but you can scan to a fax program on your computer). The 1610 prints documents at good speeds and is capable of printing out photos as well. This machine is not going to blow you away, but at under $60 it is a good deal.

The rebate is good until 3/25 and the coupon code is good until 4/24.

Epson announced on Monday that they expect their printer shipments to decline by about 10% over the next year. The reduction is due to their decision to eliminate some of their “low-end” non-multifunction models. These models are less profitable for Epson, so they decided to focus on the more expensive and lucrative all-in-one printers. They also plan to save money by using more of the same parts in multiple machines.

Epson is currently the number two printer manufacturer in the world, trailing HP. According to the article, they currently have about a 20% share of the market compared to HP’s 35% share. Recently Epson has been losing ground in Europe to Canon and HP, and this decision to scale back their shipments will likely cause them to slip a little in the U.S. market as well.

Focusing more on high-end models would make Epson more similar to Canon, in that Canon does not have a huge number of models on the market and few of them are cheap entry level machines. They tend to limit their supply and focus on either photo or multifunction machines. These days, you won’t really find a simple “low-end” Canon inkjet printer that doesn’t really do anything but print, but you can find a couple from Epson like the Stylus C88 or the Stylus C66. HP has always been the leader in inexpensive entry level inkjets, and with Dell now in that market as well, it probably just doesn’t make much sense for Epson to be there too. As consumers get more serious about home printing, whether for photos or for their small businesses, there will probably be fewer and fewer of this type of machine and in the end Epson will not be missing out on much.

Seiko Epson Expects Inkjet Printer Shipments to Fall [Bloomberg]

OfficeMax has the Canon ImageCLASS MF5750 for $199.98 after a $100 instant rebate. The MF5750 is a monochrome all-in-one machine which is listed at 21 pages per minute. Since this machine does not print in color, it is meant more for business use like faxing, scanning and printing out a high volume of documents. This machine was originally priced at $400 when it came out last year, so this is a good deal if you are in the market for a no-frills multifunction.

This offer is valid until 3/25.

Recently Tom’s Hardware had an excellent and exhaustive review of five multifunction machines currently out on the market. They review and compare the Canon PIXMA MP500, Dell All-in-One 944, Epson Stylus Photo RX700, HP Photosmart 3210 and the Lexmark P6350.

They compare the machines based on their photo printing, their speed and the cost of owning and operating them. Some findings:

-the Lexmark P6350 prints text the fastest in Normal mode
-the Epson RX700 prints a standard photo the fastest, barely edging out the Photosmart
-the HP and Canon seem to perform the best in the photo print quality test
-the PIXMA MP500 is the cheapest to operate over the life of the machine; the RX700 the most expensive

Not to spoil things, but they don’t declare one one winner. Instead, they note that the HP Photosmart 3210 and the Canon PIXMA MP500 stand out above the others. They had a favorable opinion of all the machines except the Dell, which they were “disappointed” with. Regardless, their analysis is definitely worth a read. It is very rare that you will find this much hard data showing the performance of different printers anywhere else. You can read all the reviews you want and get people’s opinions on these machines, but it is nice to see some numbers to put things in perspective.

Multifunction printers call the tune [Tom’s Hardware]

Break out the bugle and start playing “Taps” - HP is discontinuing three of their old school toner cartridges. HP announced that the 92275A, 92291A and 92295A will no longer be produced as of November 1st, 2006. While the 92291A and 92295A were only found in a few machines, the 92275A was a very common cartridge for HP LaserJets and was also used in a number of old Canon, Apple and Brother laser printers. The 92275A was used in the HP LaserJet IIP and IIIP Series, which were popular machines a few years ago and many people may still even be using them today. If you are still using one of these machines, you do not need to start hoarding cartridges just yet, but just be aware that if you have one of these machines and it is on its last leg, it maybe be time to finally put it out to pasture.

Amazon has the Canon PIXMA MP500 on sale for $154.99 plus a $30 mail-in rebate. You can read more about the MP500 in our post, or you can check out a different review from PC Magazine.

This is a solid machine and a very good deal at around $125. You get a good amount of features and since it is a Canon machine, it is going to be reliable.

One of the black ink cartridges made by Dell is the T5480. Like other common ink cartridges with a print head, there are a number of options available for people who are tired of buying a brand new cartridge all the time. Here are your options:

Dell OEM T5480 - right now this is the only cartridge that we sell to replace the T5480. This is the one that comes installed in your printer and the one that you would buy directly from Dell. This is the one that their software alerts you to buy from their online store when your printer is getting low on ink.

Refill kits - available for almost all Dell inkjet cartridges, this is the way to save the most money on ink. For the T5480, we offer a refill kit that is $12.99 and gives you about two refills, which works out to be about $6.50 per cartridge refill. The kits come with simple instructions and the whole process should only take you a few minutes.

Refilling service - if you don’t want to mess around with refilling, you can pay someone to do it for you. The service we offer is Renew and it works like this: you purchase the service, you then receive a mailer and then send away your empty cartridge. About a week or so later, you receive a refilled cartridge. This option works for people who are interested in recycling or conserving, but don’t have the time.

Epson has developed a print head that uses organic light-emitting diodes as the source of light. What the heck does that mean? Well if you want, you can read up on OLED over at Wikipedia, but in simple terms it is a type of technology similar to LED (light-emitting diode). Up until now, it had seen limited use in some displays like flat panel monitors or TVs. It is important because it is an improvement over the current LED technology. Epson would use it to produce smaller print heads that have brighter and more precise beams than their current laser printers feature. The article notes that it would allow them to make smaller laser printers and copiers which would be faster and print at a higher resolution.

Printers get a glimpse of OLED tech [CNET]

Not really a big secret, but this article notes that 15% of all printers sold by Lexmark are sold to Dell. Lexmark manufacturers the printers, sells them to Dell and then Dell brands them with their name. Last year, Lexmark sold $782 million worth of printers to Dell, up from $570 million the year before. The article says:

Lexmark has been criticized by analysts who say the company’s relationship with Dell, which has rapidly gained printer market share, dilutes its own brand name.

While that may be true, it’s hard to argue with hundreds of millions of dollars of sales. Besides, most people probably don’t even know that their Dell printer isn’t made by Dell, so the Lexmark name probably isn’t being diluted in too many people’s eyes.

Lexmark selling more printers to Dell [Kentucky.com]