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Epson’s new printers will make ink cartridges a thing of the past

Epson’s new printers will make ink cartridges a thing of the past

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Thank god we're moving closer and closer to a paperless society, because dealing with printers still sucks. The printer destruction scene from Office Space rings just as true today as it did in 1999. Printer drivers, paper jams, running out of ink, it's all the worst (though the advent of wireless printing makes things marginally less horrible). Epson is trying to do its part to make things a little better with its new line of EcoTank printers — despite the ridiculous name, they have the smart idea of coming with huge tanks of ink that should last about two years before they need to be replaced. Epson claims that these printers have about the same capacity of 20 sets of ink cartridges; when the tanks run low, you can top them off with a bottle of ink.

Basically, the EcoTank is the Droid Turbo of printers: can't come up with better ink / battery technology? Just make things bigger. These printers don't come cheap, either — the least expensive EcoTank printer starts at $379. The good news is that replacement ink bottles are reasonably priced at $52 for a set of four different color bottles. I fortunately have reached a point in my life where I print so infrequently that replacing ink cartridges is a pretty minor inconvenience, and I hope the same can be said for you — but if that's not the case, these new printers might save you some ink-related headaches.