The Officejet H470wbt printer has most of the necessary ports, like PictBridge USB, standard USB, and a SD/miniSD/MMC slot, but lacks the older model’s Compact Flash port. The H470wbt uses two cheap ink cartridges, one for black ink and another tri-color cartridge. HP offers one compatible black inkjet cartridge that will reportedly produce 500 prints for $19.99, averaging 3.9 cents per page. The color cartridge comes in regular (330 prints) and high capacity (600 prints) for $24.99 and $34.99, averaging 7.5 cents or 5.8 cents per page, respectively. These costs are well within the average price and yield for desktop inkjet printers. Still, we wish that HP had an ink-saving feature like the Canon Pixma iP90v that gives you three options for printing either straight black, save black mode, or composite black.

Within the driver settings, HP offers a feature called RLT, {Real Life Technologies} that supposedly helps printed images look more like real life. We found this option to be useful in portraits, but the general quality of our images were poorly rendered, even with HP’s Premium Plus paper and high-quality ink sets.

The entire front panel of HL-4040CN’s printer contains four cheap toner cartridges, lined up in a horizontal row. The four cartridges include three colors and one black cartridge. Black cartridge is good for about 2,500 prints and each of the three color cartridges will last for about 1,500 prints. Brother also offers high-capacity versions cartridges at a very cheap price: the black one print about 5,000 pages ($93) and the color ones print about 4,000 pages in just $130 each. Using the high-capacity cheap cartridges, per-page costs work out to about 1.9 cents for a black-only page and 11.7 cents for a full-color page–inexpensive for black prints and about average for color prints. The recommended monthly duty cycle (that is, the suggested monthly print volume) is 35,000 pages, making it better suited for busy workgroups or small offices than for home users. The printer’s driver also has a Toner Save mode, which helps reduce your print costs by using less toner; obviously, the print quality will take a hit.

Brother HL-4040CN cheap cartridge is the fastest with color text and graphics. The HL-4040CN gave a more consistently good performance with print quality. Black text obtained from the cartridge is dark, sharp, and clean. The mono graphics print showed excellent handling of the grayscale, smooth blocks of black color, and excellent handling of photo elements.

HP Photosmart C6380′s contain five separate cheap ink cartridges: one large black cartridge for photos, and the standard black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Each standard cartridge costs $10 to replace, but HP also offers XL economy priced versions as well, which we’ll use for our cost-per-page analysis. Each XL colored ink (black, cyan, magenta, and yellow) costs $18 apiece for 750 color pages and the XL photo black cartridge costs $35 for 800 pages.. With those costs, a page of color from HP Photosmart C6380 cheap cartridge will cost just 2.4 cents and a page of photo black will cost just 4.3 cents. Those prices are in line with today’s average cost per page for an all-in-one printer.

Isn’t the worst we’ve seen, it’s not up to task with other all-in-ones we’ve tested from HP. The text prints are generally very good with a bit of stair stepping in smaller fonts, but graphics and photos were marred with a dull blue cast across the spectrum and visible without magnification. In addition, significant graininess in large color blocks including portraits and shading can also be seen. The print quality of the C6380 is satisfactorily, and it’s definitely fine for casual home users who want to print out snapshots.

The Canon ImageClass MF4270 is a basic and inexpensive mono multifunction machine intended for individuals or small offices. Unlike the sleeker Samsung SCX-4500, this $299 Canon multifunction features office-friendly features including an automatic document feeder, networking, and a duplexer. It lacks some of the more advanced features, however, such as fax forwarding and onboard scanning found on more expensive mulitfunctions such as the Lexmark X342n and the Dell 1815dn that some busy offices may require. If you need a multifunction for only basic print, scan, and fax needs, you’ll come to appreciate the affordable Canon ImageClass MF4270′s speedy task speeds and consistent output quality.

The Canon ImageClass MF4270 is quite compact for a multifunction laser. It stands 15.4 inches wide, 17.4 inches deep, and 17.9 inches tall, and weighs 27.6 pounds.

The ImageClass MF4270′s feature set is fairly standard for office-oriented multifunctions. The machine comes network-ready with an Ethernet port on the back, so it can be easily mounted on a home or office network for printing from various PCs. The ADF is great for batch scanning, copying, and faxing. And the autoduplexer makes it easy to make double-sided prints and copies, thereby saving paper. It has a toner-save mode that reduces the amount of toner used for printing. Obviously, the output quality declines, but this mode is great for prints that will be used internally, as it conserves both toner and money. Similarly, the Imageclass MF4270 has a power-save mode: the printer goes into a low-energy standby mode when it hasn’t been used for a certain period of time (you can adjust the amount of time that triggers the power-save mode).

The Canon ImageClass MF4270 uses Canon 104 black laser toner cartridge, which costs about $80 each.

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The Canon ImageClass MF4270’s task quality was decent across the board, performing more evenly than some of its competition, but it wasn’t the bestr. The black prints were nicely dark and consistent, but we noticed jagged edges where we expect to see clean, sharp lines. The grayscale graphics print showed a lot of cross-hatching and the photo elements can afford to be sharper. The grayscale scan revealed a good amount of compression in the dark end of the grayscale, making the scan a bit murky, but we liked the sharp details and the great pattern reproduction. The color scan was the best of the lot, with great color reproduction and sharp details. Although it wasn’t the best at anything (except for color scanning), we liked its consistently good performance.

The Brother MFC-9440CN is an excellent color laser multifunction printer for small offices and work groups. Its fast speeds, great print/scan quality, and large feature set are commendable. It’s not without its shortcomings, but they are minor. Compared with similarly priced multifunctions we’ve reviewed, such as the Lexmark X502n and the Xerox Phaser 6115MFP, Brother MFC-9440CN performs better for standard office use because it carries out all of its functions well. If you prefer asuper-high-quality prints, you may consider the HP Color Laserjet CM1017, but its slow print speeds won’t stand up to everyday office use. For everyone else looking for a multifunction that offers the features and performance that meet the wide-ranging needs of a busy office, we recommend the Brother MFC-9440CN.

The Brother MFC-9440CN isn’t the fastest laser multifunction , but it’s the most consistently fast across all tasks, It produced black text at a rate of 16 pages per minute (ppm), behind the Lexmark X502n’s 19.71ppm, but when printing grayscale graphics, it bested the Lexmark with a score of 15.21ppm. The Brother machine was the fastest with color printing, by far, when compared with similarly priced units, more than doubling some of the scores. It produced color text at a rate of 13.8ppm and color graphics at a rate of 15.53ppm.
Happily, the MFC-9440CN doesn’t sacrifice quality for speed. The black text prints were basically perfect, which is what you should expect of a $700 laser multifunction. The text is sharp and clean, and easily legible down to 2.5 points. Color text showed good color blending and well-rendered characters, but some of the text looked as if it was shrouded in a bit of haze. The color graphics print showed sharp details and nice saturation, but the colors were overly ruddy.

The Brother MFC-9440CN uses TN115BK black laser cartridge, and TN115C, TN115M and TN115Y color laser cartridge, and goes for about $130 each.

Overall, the Brother MFC-9440CN’s print speeds and quality to be great, more than good enough for standard office use.

The Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet CP2025n is a pricey color laser printer built with the small business owner or work group in mind. At $450, the CP2025n can connect to multiple computers of a wired network and the printer produces high-quality prints, and we recommend the HP CP2025n for offices that need a dependable color laser printer.

The printer contain the four cheap toner cartridges (one black, three color) lined up in a horizontal row that use a single push-to-release tab for installation. HP provides a full set of cheap laser print cartridges in the box. A cheap black cartridge with a 3,500-page life span costs $123, while the color version is $121 for 2,800 pages. Strangely, there’s no mention of high-capacity cartridges available, so the cost-per-page equation factors out to 3.5 cents per black page and 4.3 cents for a full-color page–about average for today’s standard black prints and rather inexpensive for color prints. Finally, the CP2025n’s monthly duty cycle (maximum number of pages per month) is reported at 40,000 pages.

The HP cheap toner cartridge is quick to print color text and color graphics at 8.31 and 13.56 pages per minute respectively. Applied to real life, businesses printing a large portion of color documents will be satisfied with the print speed of the CP2025n.

The cheap black toner cartridge produces slightly more visually appealing text in smaller fonts than the cheap color toner, but remains true to the quality we expect from a professional laser. We’re particularly impressed with the graphical representations in our test subjects, which came out smooth and sharp.
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Thermal ink-jet ink and ink cartridge using the ink Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority benefit of Japanese Applications Nos. 2005-284647, filed on Sep. 29, 2005, and 2005-342686, filed Nov. 28, 2005, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

An ink cartridge stores ink to be supplied to an inkjet recording device (inkjet printer). The ink cartridge is provided with an ink storage chamber that stores ink and an ink supply port that supplies ink from the ink storage chamber to the inkjet printer. The ink supply port may also function as an insertion port for an ink extraction tube. When the ink cartridge is not mounted to the inkjet printer, the ink supply port is closed by a valve so that ink will not leak from the ink cartridge.

Mounting the ink cartridge to the inkjet printer is performed by pressing the ink cartridge toward the inkjet printer. In the inkjet printer, a hollow ink extraction tube is protrudingly arranged. When the ink cartridge is mounted to the inkjet printer, the ink extraction tube engages the valve that closes the ink supply port of the ink cartridge, and the ink supply port is opened. By opening the ink supply port, the ink storage chamber and the ink extraction tube are permitted to communicate with each other, and ink is supplied to the inkjet printer via the ink extraction tube.

The new Epson Stylus Photo 1400 can spray out ink drops as small as 1.5 Pico liters. The 1400 uses six separate cheap ink cartridges: cyan, magenta, yellow, black, light cyan, and light magenta. So 1400 won’t make you waste the rest of your unused color ink just because the light magenta ran out again.

Scrap bookers, who often use 12×12-inch paper, will probably welcome the Stylus Photo 1400, since it lists for $150 less than the Stylus Photo R1800, which is the next step up in Epson’s 13-inch line. Sleek silver-and-black styling keeps the Stylus Photo 1400 from becoming an eyesore in your home office. Epson does include the ability to print onto CDs and DVDs, both full size and their smaller 8cm cousins used in camcorders. The driver for Epson is same as included on its other Stylus Photo printers, though it doesn’t include the fancy black-and-white driver that comes with the R2400.

The Epson Stylus Photo 1400 cheap cartridge offers 5,760×1, 440dpi, with a minimum ink droplet size of 1.5 Pico liters. As usual, Epson offers a wide array of photo papers for use with the 1400, and even has some strange options, such as its Iron-on Cool Peel Transfer paper and Photo Quality Self Adhesive Sheets.

Each of the six cheap ink cartridges will set you back about $20. Colors are generally accurate, and the printer did a fine job of preserving detail in both very bright and very dark areas of our images. Of course, the brightness of the whites and the depth of black will vary based on the paper you choose.

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An ink cartridge includes a thermal ink-jet head provided with a heat generating portion that generates thermal energy for ejecting the ink from an ejection opening, in which: the heat generating portion has, on its surface in contact with the ink, a protective layer containing at least one selected from the group consisting of a silicon oxide, a silicon nitride, and a silicon carbide; and the ink contains a substance that dissolves the protective layer and a compound represented by (R.sub.2).sub.nA–. . . –N(R.sub.1)C(O)R.sub.3(R.sub.4)–(A) where A represents alkylene or alkenylene which forms a ring with a nitrogen atom, a carbonyl group and R.sub.3, R.sub.1 and R.sub.4 each represent hydrogen atom, hydroxyl, alkyl, alkenyl, acyl, carbamoyl, carboxyl or sulfonyl, R.sub.2 represents a group bonded to an arbitrary carbon atom of A and represents hydrogen atom, hydroxyl, alkyl, alkenyl, acyl, carbamoyl, carboxyl or sulfonyl, n represents 0 to 4, and R.sub.3 represents carbon or nitrogen atom, and a content X (% by mass) of the compound satisfies 1.ltoreq.X.ltoreq.30.

The HP DeskJet D2660 single-function inkjet fast printer and print descent quality text. The whole printer only weighs 6 pounds, which makes it easy to move around a room.

HP DeskJet D2660 contains two separate ink tank cheap cartridges: one for standard black ink and another for HP’s tri-color tank. Using HP’s XL page yield and cartridge costs, black ink page alone cost 5.8 cents and a page of color cost 9.3 cents. That said, if you do plan on printing a large volume on a single function, we recommend the HP Officejet 6000. It’s double the price of the D2660, but the cheaper cost per page (2.7 cents per black, 2.1 cents per color) will definitely save you more money over time. We aren’t surprised to see that the D2660′s dual-cartridge ink can’t really handle more than simple text and light graphics documents. Black-and-white text output looks fairly pleasing, but the imperfections are obvious to the naked eye: thin lines result in slight bleeding, and blurred characters and cloudy white speckles tarnish the thicker letters, but for all the criticism we can provide, most people tend to care less about text quality as long as it’s at least decent.

We don’t recommend you print too many full-color photos on the D2660. The colors in our sample 3-inch-by-5-inch photos are all grossly under saturated at a low contrast, with choppy gradients and grainy lines running throughout the image. In addition, the skin in the portrait samples falls flat with overly cold, pink tones. If you’re looking to print a lot of photos from your digital camera, look elsewhere for a more true-to-image solution.

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An ink cartridge includes a cartridge case enclosing an ink chamber; a path extending from the ink chamber to an exterior of the ink cartridge; a valve member provided in the path, the valve member having a first state in which communication between the ink chamber and the exterior of the ink cartridge along the path is permitted and a second state in which communication between the ink chamber and the exterior of the ink cartridge along the path is prevented; and an extraction receiving member comprising an insertion port that forms a portion of the path, the extraction receiving member being capable of receiving a hollow ink extraction member of an inkjet recording device when the ink cartridge is installed in the inkjet recording device.

The Officejet 6000 is HP’s latest offering in the single-function inkjet printer category. The HP Officejet 6000 uses HP’s 920 series cheap ink cartridges. The top of the printer pops open with a latch on the side, revealing a compact bay for individual black, cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges. In addition to the standard cartridges, HP also sells extra-large models that we use for the highest potential cost-savings in the following cost per page analysis. According to the HP Web store, the XL black cartridge costs $32 and lasts for 1,200 pages, and the three-color cartridges cost $15 each for 700 pages. By our calculations, you’ll pay 2.7 cents for a page of black and 2.1 cents per page of color. HP cheap ink cartridge is capable of producing 3.54 pages of color graphic document per minute.

The quality of the print obtained from HP Officejet 6000 cheap cartridge is of good quality. Full color graphics document printed on HP’s Premium Presentation Paper came out bright and clear. The extreme clarity of facial colors and construction are perfect. It can be said that HP 6000 cheap ink cartridge can produce near “laser-quality” text. Photos printed out with HP 6000 cheap cartridge are accurate and pleasing. We should note that this printer is definitely office-oriented, so don’t expect the highest quality prints (some of the photo elements were washed out, for example), but you won’t be disappointed if you plan to use it more for text, with the occasional snapshot printout.

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CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority benefit of Japanese Applications Nos. 2005-284651, filed on Sep. 29, 2005, and 2005-342686, filed Nov. 28, 2005, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

An ink cartridge stores ink to be supplied to an inkjet recording device (inkjet printer). The ink cartridge is provided with an ink storage chamber that stores ink and an ink supply port that supplies ink from the ink storage chamber to the inkjet printer. The ink supply port may also function as an insertion port for an ink extraction tube. When the ink cartridge is not mounted to the inkjet printer, the ink supply port is closed by a valve so that ink will not leak from the ink cartridge.

Mounting the ink cartridge to the inkjet printer is performed by pressing the ink cartridge toward the inkjet printer. In the inkjet printer, a hollow ink extraction tube is protrudingly arranged. When the ink cartridge is mounted to the inkjet printer, the ink extraction tube engages the valve that closes the ink supply port of the ink cartridge, and the ink supply port is opened. By opening the ink supply port, the ink storage chamber and the ink extraction tube are permitted to communicate with each other, and ink is supplied to the inkjet printer via the ink extraction tube.

The Samsung CLP-315W is a full color laser printer with built-in wireless connectivity that makes it easy to link several computers to the printer over a network. The compact CLP-315 series is one of the smallest in its class and the individual cheap toner cartridges save money by giving you the option of replacing each one separately.

The CLP-315W uses three color and one black cheap toner cartridge. These cheap cartridges are lightweight and easy to remove and replace using the color-coded tabs. Each cheap cartridge only comes in one capacity of 1,000 pages. These cartridges can by cheaply purchased for about $40. Since the black and color cartridges cost the same, we can estimate that each page will cost about 4 cents to print. Samsung is also limited by the number of pages it can print per month. The CLP-315W’s duty cycle number is about 20,000 pages.

Relative to other similarly priced color laser printers, the CLP-315W is significantly slower than the pack in both black and white and especially color prints. It scored 13.15 pages per minute for plain black speed, slightly faster than the Dell 1320c. The CLP-315W also takes the longest to spit out any kind of color document, scoring a measly 3.64 pages per minute for color graphics and 4.07 pages per minute for color text. The rest of the units in the comparison lineup finished printing in less than half the time in both categories.

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An ink cartridge, comprising: a cartridge case enclosing an ink chamber; a path extending from the ink chamber to an exterior of the ink cartridge; a valve member provided in the path, the valve member having a first state in which communication between the ink chamber and the exterior of the ink cartridge along the path is permitted and a second state in which communication between the ink chamber and the exterior of the ink cartridge along the path is prevented; and an extraction receiving member comprising an insertion port that forms a portion of the path, the extraction receiving member being capable of receiving a hollow ink extraction member of an inkjet recording device when the ink cartridge is installed in the inkjet recording device; wherein: the insertion port decreases in diameter from an exterior-side surface to a seal portion located between the exterior-side surface and an ink chamber-side surface, the insertion port having a diameter less than a diameter of the ink extraction member at the seal portion; when the extraction receiving member receives the ink extraction member, the valve member is moved from the second state to the first state; the ink chamber-side surface of the extraction receiving member comprises at least one protrusion that contacts an exterior-side surface of the valve member; and the at least one protrusion protrudes from a pedestal surface located between the protrusion and the sealing portion, the pedestal surface being substantially perpendicular to a direction in which the ink extraction member is inserted into the extraction receiving member.

2. The ink cartridge according to claim 1, wherein the protrusion extends along the ink-chamber side surface of the extraction receiving member so as to surround the insertion port.

3. The ink cartridge according to claim 1, wherein at least one portion of the insertion port has step-like shape between the exterior-side surface of the extraction receiving member and the seal portion, such that the at least one portion of the insertion port decreases incrementally in diameter from the exterior-side surface to the seal portion.