Should You Buy Ink Cartridges In Bulk?

If you're the type of person who likes to save money by buying in bulk -- like cans of soup, or pairs of shoes, or ink cartridges -- you may want to think twice about the ink. If you use your printer in business, or if you tend to print out a lot of photos, then you can buy in bulk secure in the knowledge that you'll use the ink -- and pay well for it.

However, if you only print a few documents a week -- or a month -- then you may want to think twice before you buy a case of cartridges. Why? Because many ink cartridges actually have a chip that will invalidate it after a certain date. According to printer companies, this is because printer ink will start drying out after a certain amount of time on the shelf -- and dried ink can be very bad for your print head.

So if you want to save money by buying in bulk:

• Spend a couple of months figuring out how much ink you use -- and how often you change cartridges.

• Contact your printer company (or the cartridge company) and ask what the shelf life is of the ink you're buying.

• Use this information to figure out whether you would use all the ink before the shelf life runs out.

Usually, ink is good for about a year -- however, that can vary widely, since the type of inks out there varies widely.

By the way, if you want your ink to last, don't take the cartridges out of the packages they come from until you're ready to use them. The reason they are vacuum-packed is to ensure that their shelf-life is as long as possible.