Posting prizes.

Putting a Kodak 7" Digital Photo Frame in the post to Northern Ireland. We are giving away Papermate pens with any order (while stocks last) and a photo frame once a day. All you have to do is place an order to be in with a chance! Hurry we will only be running this for one more week!

Mondays winner is...

Mrs M from Belfast! Congratulations, a Kodak 7" Photo Frame is on it's way to you. To find out more see http://www.kc-inks.co.uk/

We have our first winner!

The first winner of the Kodak 7" Digital Photo Frame is......

Mr P from Seathwaite!

Congratulations, check back to see if you have won after the next draw on Monday!

The next wave of freebies is here!

Ok so we are on the next lot of goodies! For any order placed you will receive a Papermate Flexigrip Gel 0.7 pen (blue ink).

The best bit is........... every day we will put all order numbers into a draw. One lucky person's order will be drawn and they will receive a Kodak 7" Didital Photo Frame! Completely at random - get your orders in!

We made it home!

What an adventure! We saw lakes...

Drove on beautiful avenued roads....

Went up high mountain passes ( I am ashamed to admit that I cried - 7,500 feet, the road the width of the car and no barriers...)

Even above the clouds...

Down into ravines...

And over scary bridges...

There will be a video of the Col du Turini soon!

A short break...

I will not be writing anything for the next ten days or so because I am off on my holidays! John and I are going on a big adventure, we are driving across France to Monte Carlo......... in a 1974 Ford Granada! That makes the car five years older than me, and with John being on crutches I am the lucky person who gets to mend the car if it breaks down! I don't know how! So if you don't see a new post in just over a weeks time it will be because we have broken down on top of the Alps. Wish us luck!

Price Comparisons

Here are some price comparisons you might find interesting! These prices are correct on 07/09/10. All comparisons are for the Epson T0715 genuine (as pictured above) and compatible quad packs.

First up the genuine cartridge comparison.

Asda £34.47 + £4.95 delivery = £39.42

Tesco £34.98 + £5.00 delivery = £39.98

WH Smith £37.76

Viking £33.47 + £3.40 delivery = £36.87

KC INKS £34.23 FREE FIRST CLASS DELIVERY!

Even without delivery we are cheaper than everyone else! You can't count Viking because you HAVE to order and have it delivered with them! Our free delivery is first class, you should get your parcel the next day!

Now the compatible price comparisons (remember this is for a quad pack 1 black and 3 colours)

Asda £18.92 + £4.95 delivery = £23.87

Tesco £20.99 = £5.00 delivery = £25.99

WH Smith don't do compatibles.

Viking £26.78 + 3.40 = £30.18

KC INKS £14.99 FREE FIRST CLASS DELIVERY!

WOW! Now that really is a lot of savings! Our compatible cartridges generally contain more than double the amount of ink compared to the genuine cartridges. And remember we haven't lowered our prices to make them look more attractive to you, these are the prices that we have held at this level for most of this year! So happy shopping....

Brother

KC Inks Ltd are a Brother Approved Independant Retailer. I thought you might like to know a little background and why we chose Brother and not somebody else. The information about Brother is taken from their own website.

The company was incorporated in 1934. Based in Nagoya, Japan they now have offices throughout the world and manufacturing plants in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, America, Malaysia, Ireland and the UK. Brother has operations in 28 countries and is sold in more than 100 countries.

The UK subsidiary began in 1959 in London, but moved to Manchester in 1968, into a sewing machine factory (Brother don't just make printers you know!) The Manchester office is the headquarters of Brother Europe. Brother also has a factory in Ruabon, Wales making typewriters. The Manchester office also provides sales, marketing, technical support, warehousing and distribution and a customer support call centre. I think that the British call centre is SO IMPORTANT - speaking to somebody in this country who understands relieves so much of the associated frustration!

Brother also has an ISO9001 which is an internationally recognized standard for Quality Management Systems which includes; quality of service and repair, consistency of order processing, operational controls and customer liason procedures. They recently won the Microscope ACES award for "Environmental Company of the Year" Brother were the ONLY printer manufacturer to be nominated. Another accolade was scoring 100/100 in the "Ethical Company Organisation Good shoppong Guide" for the fourth year in a row!

There are a couple of reasons why KC Inks chose to affiliate with Brother. First of all customer service. I firmly believe that good service (with a smile) is the way forward in any business. Make everyone happy! I have found Brother to be very good to deal with.

Secondly from my own experiences. A long time ago I bought a Brother fax machine, not very expensive, just to plod away at the back of the office. Then one day I printed out some holiday snaps on it.... and they came out really well! Then I did a photo album for a friends birthday, again very good results. Which I thought for a little fax machine was rather good. Since then we have gradually replaced all the printers (inkjet and laser) in the office with Brother and we are of course very pleased with them. All because of that first little fax....

Brother Printers

Brother printers are well built and have a wide range of specifications to suit most requirements. They all take brand new replacement inks and the cartridges do not have microchips on them. They are multi cartridge machines and work well with compatible inks. The cartridges hold a good amount of ink with little wastage and I believe are the best value per page when using compatible inks. Brother printers have fixed print heads that clog up over time causing banding (lines from left to right on your printout) and complete blocking. The only remedy is to do regular print head cleaning from new, don't wait until you have a problem. Using the compatible ink will probably shorten the life of your printer but by the time it happens you should have saved enough money to replace it several times over.
Our experience points us to believe that Brother printers are currently the best choice of printers on the grounds of quality of manufacture, quality of output and most importantly the cost of printing. We have a lot of printers (laser and inkjet) in our office and they are all (bar one specialist printer) Brother. We started off with an assortment of every brand and have gradually replaced them all with Brother printers as they have either broken, gone wrong or the cost of cartridges has become to high. I will tell you a bit more about Brother in another post.

Lexmark Printers

Lexmark printers mostly have the print head built into the ink cartridge. These printers are cheap to buy but tend to be expensive to buy replacement inks for. A lot of people once they have purchased a cheap printer are shocked to find that one set of replacement inks cost more than the printer did! You wouldn't believe how many people come into the shop and find out the price and watching their faces fall when they realise that their printer is not a bargain after all is horrible. Lexmark also restrict where they sell certain cartridge models to keep the price unrealistically high and also try to restrict the supply of recycled cartridges to the remanufacturers for the same reason. Remanufactured cartridges are available but only for a couple of product lines, meaning you have to buy the genuine cartridges, there is no alternative. Lexmark printers mainly take two cartridges (one black one colour) so you are back to the old problem of when one colour ink runs out you have to replace the whole cartridge, throwing out ink in the process and wasting money. The printers themselves are good quality but the price of running them is prohibitive. The phrase I hear most when a customer is buying a set of Lexmark inks is "it would be cheaper to buy a new printer" and guess what it is TRUE! So my best advice is not to buy a Lexmark and save yourself some pennies!

Canon Printers

Canon are another quality make of printer witha mix of ink cartridge types. The multi cartridge printers take the brand new replacement cartridges, which seem to be very reliable. Some people sell replacement cartridges that do not have a microchip on - these are very cheap and you have to take the microchip off the genuine cartridge and put it on the replacement, this is not a satisfactory solution. If the microchip has the slightest little mark or scratch it won't work and you have wasted your money. These printers have fixed print heads that clog up over time causing banding (lines from left to right on your printout) and eventually complete blocking. The only remedy is to do regular print head cleaning from new, don't wait until you have a problem. The majority of these printers have replaceable print heads, when the print head will not clear by doing multiple print head cleans you can easily remove the whole print head. This allows you to soak the print head in tepid water (boiled and then cooled to make sure it is pure) to try to dissolve the dried inks and clear the jets. Try to do this in a way that does not damage the contacts and try not to get covered in ink! When you get to this stage it is kill or cure so its worth a go and is surprisingly effective and can be done several times successfully if you are careful. If this does not work replacement print heads are available for most printers from Canon but you will have to weigh up the benefits as they can be as expensive as buying a new printer.
Canon also do a range of printers that take two cartridges one black one colour (cyan, magenta, yellow). As explained before the big disadvantage of these cartridges is when one compartment is empty you have to change the cartridge, it will not print if you have run out of one colour. This means throwing away ink. There are remanufactured cartridges available but again they are dependant on supply of recycled genuine cartridges and are more expensive than brand new replacement cartridges.
Canon printers offer very good photographic quality, the nearest you can get to professional imaging. So if you are a keen amatuer photographer Canon would be a good choice, but of course you have to pay good money to get the quality, so it is not a cheap option.

HP Printers

OK back to business. Hewlett Packard (HP) are a quality make of printer with a wide range of models to suit most requirements. Many of the printers have the print head built into the ink cartridge. The genuine ink cartridges are widely available and quite expensive. The remanufactured cartridges are readily available and are generally good value compared to the genuine cartridges. The remanufactured cartridges are fairly reliable, they are not as cheap or as reliable as the brand new replacements that are available for other types of printer. As the remanufactured cartridges depend on recycled cartridges there is usually a lag of up to a year from the time a new model of cartridge is launched to sufficient empty cartridges being available to make the remanufactured cartridges readily available. Not all new printers use new model cartridges so check before you buy! HP does not list the ml on the packaging, instead they say how many pages the cartridge will do. For example HP22 says 165 pages, which is 5ml of ink in each colour. The 165 pages is at 5% coverage which is not a lot and I think is very misleading.
HP also has a good range of laser printers, you can easily get genuine and remanufactured toners as well as parts if the printer breaks. All in all HP makes good printers but they can be expensive to run.

Good Luck Danny

A self indulgent post to say good luck to Danny, he has set off on the adventure of a life time today. He is going to work in New Zealand for a year. He will be racing with a bit of showjumping as well. We are all rather jealous of the fact that he is jetting off to their summer! We are all missing you terribly, have the best time and make the most of the sunshine!

Epson Printers

Epson are the most popular brand of printer for the domestic market and offer a wide range of attractively priced printers to suit most requirements. Most of the new printers take one range of cartridges. These mostly take four cartridges one black and one each of cyan, magenta and yellow. Brand new cheap alternative cartridges are available across the range with savings of up to 90% being achievable over genuine cartridges. The new cartridges have microchips on them which can cause recognition problems, do not buy the cheapest you can find, do not change all of your cartridges at once always change them one at a time, we are up to version 7 on the microchip on the most popular cartridges (Epson brings out a new version of microchip to keep in front of the alternative manufacturers) so purchase your cartridges from a trustworthy source or you might end up with the right cartridge but the wrong chip - useless!

Epson printers have fixed print heads that clog up over time causing banding (lines from left to right on your printout) and complete blocking. The only remedy is to do regular print head cleaning from new, don't wait until you have a problem. Using the compatible ink will shorten the life of your printer but by the time it happens you should have saved enough money to replace it several times over.

The modern Epson printers do not measure how much ink is in the cartridge they do a page count and estimate. The result is that even if you use genuine ink when the cartridge says it is empty there will still be ink in it, so you will be throwing it away. Once the counter has reached its maximum it will not print no matter what you do. This is more of an issue with compatible cartridges as they normally have considerably more ink in them than the genuine cartridges. The chip is tweaked so more pages are printed than with the genuine cartridge but ink will still be thrown away. Another alternative is to use cartridges which have a resetting chip there are a lot of cartridges around advertised as double capacity and they do have a double the ink compared to the genuine cartridge but again all you do is throw it away as the printer counts the pages not the ink in the cartridge. Epson are good printers until they go wrong, they can be expensive to fix once the print head is blocked, it's just the waste of ink when it is so expensive to buy in the first place that irritates me. I wouldn't go and buy something and only expect to use three quarters of it but thats what Epson want us to do.

A disclaimer!

Before I go into all the details about the different make of printer I want to make completely clear that these are my own opinions.