HP 74XL Black & HP 75XL Tricolor Inkjet Cartridges

The 74XL & 75XL combo pack is the way to go! (2008-09-21)
Dear HP consumer, today is your lucky day! Chances are that if you're reading these words, you have a Hewlett-Packard printer that takes 74 and 75 cartridges. I've gone through dozens of these cartridges and they've always worked very well. They're supposed to use something called Vivera technology, but I don't notice a difference in quality when compared with the pre-Vivera cartridges used by my previous HP printer. The key here is to get the XL cartridges instead of the regular versions. Many people are surprised to find out that their regular cartridges are only half full. What's the real difference? Using HP specs, the regular 74 prints around 200 pages and the 74XL prints 750 pages. The 75 prints 170 pages while the 75XL prints 520 pages. Naturally these are estimates since many pages have a combination of color and black ink, but it's a useful estimate that shows that the XLs are a better value. Keep in mind that while the XLs have well over double the ink, they don't cost twice as much. If that wasn't enough, the combo pack should save a few more dollars. When one cartridge starts to get low in my printer, the other is never far behind, so XL combo packs are the way to go. Depending on the store, prices seem to vary greatly with printer cartridges. Thinking that I was getting a deal, I had always purchased my combo packs through Costco for $65.77. They stopped carrying the combo pack and I found it here at good ol' Amazon for only $46.99. That's quite a savings!

Buy a new printer? (2008-07-17)
The hp d4260 goes for about $39.99 now... maybe you should just buy a new printer?