Hewlet Packard's Dirty Little Secret.

You wouldn't buy a half-full gallon of milk, would you? How about a half-full bottle of expensive champagne? Most people would answer with a resounding 'no', but a half-full product is exactly what you're getting every time you pay full price for many new Hewlett Packard inkjet cartridges.

The evil "starter cartridge"

Sometimes they call these "starter cartridges" or, like Lexmark, they call them "moderate use" or some other euphemism that really means they are charging you more per measurement of ink. Many times, Hewlett Packard makes ONLY partially filled inkjet cartridges for a particular model of inkjet printer. For example, ALL of the new #02 inkjet cartridges are half full at best. Currently, Hewlett Packard does not offer any high yield versions of these cartridges, so the consumer is stuck buying partially filled cartridges. THink4inc sells brand new generic versions of these cartridges that are filled to their true capacity. See our chart below.

Not the Worst of it

The Hewlett Packard #02 cartridges are not even the most drastic example of under filling inkjet cartridges. The brand new Hewlett Packard #93 inkjet cartridge has just 5mL of ink, divided between three colors! That's just 1.66mL of each color, and Hewlett Packard sells the cartridge for $19.99 each, which means you are paying a whopping $4.00 per mL of ink. For comparison, Think4inc will only recommend printers and cartridges whose ink is less than $1.00 per mL when available.

Luckily, a quality replacement is almost always available.

Think4inc Ink and Toner Cartridges sells ONLY full cartridges when available. In fact, many times we sell cartridges with MORE ink and toner than available from Hewlett Packard. Whenever you see a JUMBO! cartridge at Think4inc, it actually has MORE ink or toner than the original manufacturer puts in its highest yield cartridges for that model.

See how HP is trying to stop "JUMBO!" cartridges?

This image shows how Hewlett Packard designed their HP #92 cartridge to prevent them from being turned into JUMBO! cartridges. When you cut the top off, you find that Hewlett Packard has molded a separate, smaller chamber to hold ink, inside a normal sized cartridge. In fact, the HP #92 cartridge is identical to the HP #94 in size and potential volume except for the chamber that Hewlett Packard has used to divide the inside of the cartridge.

*Hewlett Packard prices and volumes from HP.com as of June 15th 2006

Oh and by the way, think Lexmark wouldn't pull this kind of trick?