Ah, we’ve seen our first big response to Kodak’s announcement of less expensive printer cartridges, and HP is the respondent.

On April 25 HP announced their plan to save consumers money on inkjet cartridges. Their plan: The more ink you buy, the more you will save. It is a bulk purchase plan that will reward purchasers with price breaks based on the amount of ink they buy. How does it work?

HP says they will color code their cartridges to match the needs of three different types of users. We assume they did some research to determine who the three different types of users are, but as it is their logic breaks down like this.

Standard cartridges will come in a blue package and will be priced at $14.99. The standard designation is for the bulk of printer users who don’t really do a lot of printing.

The “Value” or “XL” cartridges will come in a green package and are designed for the heavy printer users. These cartridges will cost around $30.00. These cartridges are supposed to be bigger and hold more ink.

Finally, the red packaging is for those needing specialty print outs that are high in quality and give the appearance of professional prints.

My response . . . huh? Hasn’t HP already tried a strategy very similar to this?

Think back a little.

Before HP made the switch to their “short numbers” cartridges used to have, well, long numbers. For example HP’s C6578 cartridge became know as the hp 78 when short numbers became fashionable. Before it was know as the hp 78 you had a variety of choices for this one cartridge. You had the C6578G cartridge that came with the printer. You had the C6578D cartridge that you could buy at a mid range price. And, you had the C6578A cartridge which had the highest price point. In many cases you would find another letter after the G, D, or A.

What did these letters stand for? Well, they simply designed now much ink was in the cartridge. The G was an entry level cartridge that contained a small amount of ink. It’s goal was to get you quickly started printing, but to very soon run out and create a need for more ink. The G cartridges were not available for sale, so the only choice was to move up to the D or A cartridge. The D cartridge was a half filled cartridge, while the A was a completely filled cartridge. Of course, with more ink came a higher cost. This same letter strategy and ink amount was also employed in all other HP cartridges.

So now we see the Standard (blue), Value/XL (green), and Specialty (red) designations. Seems like G, D, and A all over again. Also, HP has produced a new generation of cartridges that holds less ink than the cartridges before them.

For instance, the hp 78 D used to be the most popular color print cartridge. It held 19ml of ink and cost $34.99. Now the most popular cartridge is the hp 57. It holds 17ml of ink and costs $34.99. What difference does 2ml make, well according to the HP website, about 50 pages.

Bottom line is we are now back to more decisions for the consumer. Which color box to buy? Of course the color box you choose will impact how much you spend. We’ll reserve final judgment on this plan until we see it in action.

What do you think?

(Photo Courtesy of Yahoo!)