Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for September 30, 2014

I can only laugh. and laff some more.

Eat your heart out, Jed Clampett. Rat’s got you beat!

nobody give ideas to rat of using ink to print fake money

At least he didn’t get gophers like the crocs…

Oh, Brother!

Wholesale black ink is about $25 a liter, customers pay $1+ ml for refills and an HP60 holds 8 ml and costs $25 new

There are things far more overpriced than printer ink. Like Apple products.

When I was shopping for my first printer, I bought the Kodak hype about cheaper refills. Foolish me.

And why do refills cost more than some printers, which come loaded with ink?

Pound for pound, the most expensive material is women’s silk lingerie. Gallon for gallon, it’s printer ink.

Perhaps Lio and Ishy should go into that business.

AMEN, brother! I hear you! Stick it to HP! Their ink is overpriced, and my HP printer-copier-scanner took almost no time before breaking down….

Or you can buy an Epson which will always break down right after you just bougt new cartridges you will never get to use.

I have a Canon, and I buy after market cartridges for less than 10 bucks for 2 sets. I bought an HP once. Wasn’t stupid enough to repeat that experience.

And tomorrow HP will send lawyers to Rat claiming that he damaged one of their ink pipe lines with his shovel.

And a talking rat is realistic?

I’ve given it some thought. You should probably seek professional help. Using the forums as impromptu group therapy is not going to be enough to solve your problems.

This strip would cost a fortune to print out.

I believe John Smith was joking (ie – an “ink drill” is not realistic either).

Fifty years ago I suppose we would be responding with puns about ink wells!

Cartridge…wasn’t he the owner of the Ponderosa Ranch?!?

I’m so glad you bought this subject up, price is a rip off for sure… my four colours total, can’t even be a cup of ink $60.00 bucks… Ouch! my butt hurts.

I’m diabetic. They give away glucose monitors for free…and the test strips are more than $1 each. Then the doctor tells you to test your glucose up to 4 times a day..Healthcare may not be a substance, but it’s overpriced too. (I’m speaking of care not lifesaving measures.)

Thank you. I’m glad somebody mentioned the cartridges. Any product you buy in small quantities is going to be priced much higher than the same product in bulk. I suspect, though I don’t know for certain, that what we are actually paying for with our printing is not the ink but the cartridges.(@RipleyKGarfield – good comment re. old Ben Cartridge of the Ponderosa!)

Printers and scanners are all made to crap out quickly from everyday use. I have an HP that became irreparably damaged from one single paper jam. No help line tech could figure out how to get it printing again.

There seems to have been only a small window in which generic replacements for printer ink were feasible. Now most of those little refill shops are long gone.

And the most expensive paint is Testors model paint. 2 or 3 bucks for 1/4 oz., which makes it over $1200 per gallon, for some really crappy paint.

You obviously have checked the price of good Safron spice.$14.95 per GRAM! That’s almost $6800 per pound.It’s legal and available at my local Kroger.

OOPs! haven’t instead of have

@comeonbanana @ekwThat whooshing you can hear is the sound of John Smith’s comment going over your head.

Maybe rat and pig should break into a chorus of “I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire?” A newer version of the Ink Spots classic?

Ink -a dinky-dink-a-dinky-dinky-dinky-doo!!

I recently bought a nice HP printer. Of course it came with ink. When I bought refills later, I found they were much larger than the tanks that came with the printer. If that’s true of all new printers, then you’re not getting the bargain you thought. If they included full size tanks, then I’d say it’s a good deal. Anyway, it’s as if Ford sold new cars for 1000 bucks, but they would only run on Ford gas, which would be slightly overpriced.

Tsoj- but I like when the silk goes missing. :p

now that’s a total downer comment if I ever saw one.

Congratulations, my friend. You have in a few short sentences been able to separate the wheat from the chaffe when it comes to literacy and satire. Almost all the replies to your comment so far have been easy to figure out which is which.

People please google “continuous ink supply system”. I’ve been using an Epson Photo R1800 for at least six years now, equipped from the start with this tank farm system. Last Sunday at a computer swap meet I paid $34 for eight 4oz. bottles (the R1800 is an eight color printer with extra wide carriage). Always wear disposable gloves when refilling the tanks. When you install a CISS kit you should also install something like the “InkRepublic Waste Ink Tube Kit”. After cleaning the print head many times, the waste ink pad will overflow and leak out the bottom of the printer. Also download the “SSC Service Utility” so you can reset the protection counter. Epson printers will lock up after the protection counter reaches its limit, forcing you to visit a printer repair place to reset the counter.

this brother aint never lie. More precious than gold is the elusive printer cartridge especially when there is a big 140 page report due (with graphs). LOL.

it’s not the ink… it’s the whole new printing mechanism; which is a little like replacing the engine in your car when your gas tank is empty.

I had an ‘inkling’ that would happen.

xxx

Dude, you’re reading a comic strip about a rat that has anger issues, a insane army duck, and a goat that reads Shakespheare. Did you expect it to be realistic?

Thanks for the warning about remanufactured cartridges! I knew that seemed too good to be true.

Ink cartridges are of two types, cheap and expensive. The cheaper ones are used in printers with a separate print head. If your print head goes, and it will, it will be very, very expensive to replace. The expensive ones will have a print head in every cartridge. When you replace the cartridge, you are replacing the print head. This makes your printer more reliable. However, if you print infrequently, then your cartridges may expire. They have a limited shelf life. If you buy $60 worth of cartridges and print only a dozen pages before they go bad, then you are better off buying a cheap color laser printer. What you spend on the toner refills will be made up by not suffering expiration losses.If you use replacement inks, do not expect the same results you got with proprietary inks. They are formulated specifically to be used in very tiny amounts, and the surface tension and viscosity of the inks will not be correct. Colors may be off and your printer may be damaged, especially if you have a built-in print head rather than cartridge based print heads.

I actually laughed out loud when I read this.

Comics don’t have to be realistic. Especially this one, but that’s where Pearls gets its charm.

From the horror stories I read about off-brand inks, I determined to never buy anything but the manufacturer’s cartridges, regardless of cost. Had a terrific Canon printer that lasted over 7 years (and I used it a lot) and bought another one when it finally gave up the ghost. As for the comic strip, I have a feeling that Rat was digging into the printer as the comic strip printed and stuck an ink cartridge, so the gusher may be short lived.

Cut me a slice of that, Rat!

Good one.

This reminds me of the Beverly Hillbillies. Wasn’t Buddy Epson the star of that show?

So true…

cartridge ink is MUCH better than OIL!