Good side of expensive ink...

So everything has at least two sides. One funny thing about the Japanese market (which I think is the only one where HP is not #1 in printers) is that the Japanese market leaders have focused on cheap ink cartridges. The main way to do that is by separating the print head from the cartridge. I recently lost a very expensive printer because the 'cheap ink' ruined the print head, and replacing the print head is seriously expensive. Actually, it may not have been the ink. Quite possible it was simply due to the fact that I print relatively rarely, and the best efforts of the printer to clean the head were ultimately futile.

Part of the extra price for HP cartridges is because their printer designs include the print head with the ink--but that insures that a dead print head is not the same as a dead printer. The down side of that decision is that it does give them more leverage over the cartridges, and no company is going to resist trying to turn leverage into higher prices.