Man Sues Over Printer Ink Price Fixing

Ranjit Bedi from Boston is suing HP and Staples claiming they are colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. He is claiming HP paid Staples $100 million to stop selling generic replacement ink cartridges. Printer ink cartridges are not cheap, especially inkjet and HP is one of the most expensive brands, costing about $8000 per gallon for their supposedly better quality ink.
I don't know how this guy is going to legally prove antitrust, you could simply go to the next store and buy generic cartridges. I do know that inkjet printing is an outright waste of money.
You buy a printer for about $30 and the first ink cartridge you buy costs more than the printer, many requiring 2 or 3 cartridges to operate. A laser printer is far more cost effective, you can find them for under $100 and you will be able to print thousands of pages before replacing the toner cartridge. Color printing? Let's look at the cheapest color laser printer I can find, the Samsung CLP300 which you can buy at Staples for $250. The color toner cartridges for this printer have a 1000 page yield. I get maybe 35 good pages on an HP color inkjet cartridge before having to replace it for about $35. You would spend $1000 on color inkjet cartridges (not counting the black ones) by the time you used up the three $55 color toner cartridges on the Samsung color laser printer.
Inkjet cartridges will clog and dry up if enough time passes between print jobs, while laser toner generally does not. Laser printers are also faster and higher quality than inkjet.
Inkjet printing-what a rip-off.

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