Lets face it; words arent cheap, especially when they are being printed from an ink jet printer. If a picture is worth a thousands words, well, time to get out your wallet.

Printer makers may sell their hardware for a pittance, but anyone whos had to refill an ink jet printer knows that the ink is where Epson, Lexmark, and the like make their real money.

An OEM (original equipment manufacturer) black cartridge for a $100 Epson C80 color printer costs $32.99, a third of the price of the actual printer.

Ink for a wide format printer costs $47.50 per liter. If you take the ink that goes into an ink cartridge, its costing over $1,000 per liter.

Theyre giving customers the printers, but theyre charging them a fortune for ink. Sensing opening, dozens of small companies now sell compatible or remanufactured cartridges for consumer ink jet printers at deep discounts over the official cartridges.

In the third party realm, there are three different ways to pump up your printer for pennies. Compatible cartridges are new boxes, often-built in China; the same Chinese manufacturers sold under U.S. brand names.

Remanufactured cartridges are official OEM (original equipment manufacturer) cartridges that are cleaned out, professionally refilled, and put back on sale.

For most HP printers, remanufactured cartridges are the only option because HP cartridges include patented print heads that are illegal for third parties to clone.

Last but not the best, there are refill kits, containing ink and needles for you to refill a cartridge on your own.

OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and third party cartridge manufacturers alike say consumers should stay away from refill kits if they are concerned with quality; professionally remanufactured cartridges are cleaned and sealed in a way you just cant do at home unless you have a lot of garage space.

Throughout printer manufacturers defense, they claim to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into developing inks that work with an individual units print heads, drivers, and paper.

Designed for flexibility, endurance and brightness, inks are complex chemicals, not just water and dye. Some cartridges include precision-made print heads.

Even the plastic ink tanks are specially designed to prevent inks from changing color over time.

This allows the consumer to enjoy the quality of the printouts, without having to be concerned about losing its color behind glass or even in a photo album. The objective here is to save you money in areas such as ink cartridges.

There will always remain the question on whether or not you should use genuine, remanufactured or compatible cartridges for your printer.

In a nutshell, here is the bottom line answer: If you own an Epson or Canon ink jet printer, and arent so concerned about quality, then compatible is your answer and key to saving money.

If quality is a priority, then you may want to consider genuine cartridges. If you own or plan on owning a HP or Lexmark ink jet printer, then you may want to stay away from remanufactured cartridges and spend the extra buck and use genuine cartridges.

This is because third party companies dont seem to have it all together and never will due to HP & Lexmarks strong patent on their print heads.

As a result, most third party companies arent willing to spend the finances in the quality ink that is preserved with chemicals to give the printout images that realistic life look.

The reason why remanufactured cartridges are so cheap is because the majority of HP & Lexmark remanufactured ink is diluted with water and alcohol along with dye based solutions and also fewer chemicals used within the ink.

The outside of third party packaging also keeps the costs low. Name brand companies brand their retail packaging for marketing purposes. The cartridge inside the box costs them pennies.

What do you think of that?