Certainly if you print thousands of pages it is. If you only print something once a month it's not. But most of the people printing thousands of pages will quickly notice this when they're paying unreasonable sums for gallons of ink sold by the thimble.
Then you have the people at the margin, who would be better off with a laser printer, but only by something like tens of dollars a year. At which point the opportunity cost of the time to evaluate whether they would actually be saving money is on par with the money they would be saving.
Whereas if there was actually more competition, someone would be selling a cheap printer that takes cheap cartridges instead of your options being a cheap printer with expensive cartridges or an expensive printer with cheap cartridges.
No, printing once a month is FAR more expensive for inkjets, because you have to replace the ink cartridges every time you print, because the print heads dry out and get clogged. That doesn't happen with lasers.
If that was the case then it would be another thing people would notice, having to replace the ink cartridge every time they use the printer.
Unless they live in a place with the right level of humidity where once a month is exactly the right interval to print so they don't dry out. Or they print once a week, but still not enough pages to justify a more expensive printer. Or they print once a year, so replacing the ink cartridge every year is still cheaper than buying the more expensive printer.
Or they have no savings and only have access to high interest credit, so the interest on the price difference between the printers actually is more than the cost of buying an ink cartridge every month.
Sometimes people aren't as dumb as you might think.
>Sometimes people aren't as dumb as you might think.
Usually, they are.
>Or they print once a year, so replacing the ink cartridge every year is still cheaper than buying the more expensive printer.
Such as here. Doing this is stupid, because buying a new printer is cheaper than buying a set of cartridges for the same printer.
>Or they have no savings and only have access to high interest credit,
Or here, because they couldn't manage money and earned themselves a bad credit score.
>so the interest on the price difference between the printers actually is more than the cost of buying an ink cartridge every month.
If you have credit that bad, you don't need a printer at all. Plus, you can get a B&W laser for $100; less than the cost of an inkjet + a set of cartridges.
Sorry, but every way I look at it, inkjets are nothing more than a scam designed to prey on people who aren't good at long-term thinking or money management.
Then you have the people at the margin, who would be better off with a laser printer, but only by something like tens of dollars a year. At which point the opportunity cost of the time to evaluate whether they would actually be saving money is on par with the money they would be saving.
Whereas if there was actually more competition, someone would be selling a cheap printer that takes cheap cartridges instead of your options being a cheap printer with expensive cartridges or an expensive printer with cheap cartridges.