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Amazing how ignorant people are to what is actually in an inkjet cartridge. It is not the cost of the ink. The cartridges have precision MEMS components to dispense the micro scale drops of ink. As with anything mechanical, they have limited cycling, can clog with impurities in the ink, etc.

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It's amazing how the cost of these MEMS components hasn't fallen at all over the last 20 years whereas the price of other MEMS components (eg. gyroscopes, accelerometers, microphones) have.

Does it matter? If once it runs out of ink, you have to throw away all those precision MEMS micro-ink-dispensing components, and buy them all over again, the the cost of "ink" is the cost of the cartridge.

It's like if I owned a car that, every time I wanted to refill the gas tank, I had to also replace the gas tank assembly, for $1,000. Then the cost of me getting "gas" is $1,020, while you pay just $20.

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