Epson has been battling with third-party ink cartridge and continuous-ink system manufacturers for a while. Several companies have decided to settle:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061129-8323.html

Epson derives much of its revenue from selling ink cartridges, and if it can limit or eliminate competition it will have a monopoly on its inks. This will very likely mean increased ink prices as there's a definite lock-in from customers who already own Epson printers and are stuck with using their inks as competition goes or is required to pay royalties to Epson.

Lexmark tried the same trick but Epson is successful as it relies on patent protection.

Yet another reason for me to stick with Canons.

Sorry to be out of the loop on this. I have an Epson 2200 and haven't really paid much attention to developments with other manufacturers. I gather one is able to buy third-party cartridges for HP and Canon at significant savings? How do HP and Canon ink prices compare to Epson?

Thanks

That's quite a complicated question and I don't know of any definitive studies done on that. The problem is that ink cartridges vary in size by manufacturer, different printers use different amounts of ink and of course the subject matter of printed material.

When I bought my non-photography printer (Canon Pixma ip3000) Canon had the lowest per-page printing in the ~$100 printer category. Whether that's the case for photography printers is another case altogether.

really sad to see that. Epson has such great printer, but the ink is real expensiave.

talking about 3rd party ink and continous ink system. I have been using InkRepublic ink system for more than a year, it has been completely functional in my R2400. I use this printer almost every day, and have put through more than 1000 pages. I can say I have been saving possibly more than $2000 equivalent epson dollars.

this is the cis I am using
http://www.inkrepublic.com/ProductDetail.asp?item=R2400