In the last few years, more and more people are turning to continuous ink systems to supply ink to their printers rather than use the regular branded printer ink cartridges available from the manufacturers of their printers. The reason behind this is simple: continuous ink systems are a lot more economical to use than regular cartridges.

It is a sad fact that the recession being experienced worldwide these days is forcing people to cut back on expenses. Gas prices are up, and so are most consumer products. Most people are in the mood to save money and scrimp on whatever they can to be able to cope with the rising prices.

Printer consumables are undoubtedly expensive. Sure enough, printers come for only a few quid, which makes buying new printer models quite encouraging for most printer users. Unfortunately, printer manufacturers make their money from the printer consumables that they produce, namely ink cartridges and paper. The harsh reality is that it is actually more cost-effective to buy a new printer every time one runs out of ink than to buy new printer ink cartridges.

But that would be a waste, would it not? It is very wasteful to buy a new printer every time the ink cartridges go empty. It is also not environmentally friendly to throw away a printer that has hardly seen much use just because the ink has run out, even if the machine was disposed of at a recycling centre. Thus, it is a must to look for more viable alternatives to buying expensive brand-name printer ink cartridges and to dumping almost-new printers.

Into this scenario comes the continuous ink system. In a continuous ink system, a printer is fed ink from an external source through a series of tubes. These tubes are connected to the printer head where regular cartridges would have been set. The external ink sources are bottles of ink of different colours containing as much as 100mL of ink.

A continuous ink system is a lot cheaper than regular branded ink cartridges. A unit of this system may be priced the same as set of regular branded ink cartridges, but the main difference lies in the fact that the usable ink that a continuous ink system has is ten times more than the ones contained by the regular cartridge.

But more than that, there is hardly any ink wasted in a continuous ink system. It is possible to use the ink contained in an ink bottle in such a system right to the last drop. Also, this system is a lot more convenient. With much more ink in a bottle and with the bottle sitting outside the printer and visible to the user, one can print continuously without worrying over one colour of ink suddenly running out. The user can easily predict when he or she would need a new bottle of ink.

Continuous ink systems are great because they are economical and because they are efficient. These continuous ink systems are ideal for heavy users of printer ink.