Generally, HP ink is a lot more expensive than Epson and Canon ink.
I don't know about that. I just paid about $160 for an Epson R300. Then I went out and bought a full set of ink cartridges for it for $80. That's half the price of the printer. Obviously, these companies are giving the printers away in order to sell ink.
Now I haven't used the Epson much except to print on CDs, but according to the ink gauges that appear on your screen as you print from it, it's going through ink pretty fast on all six cartridges. So, even using it just for CDs and the occasional photo, this is going to be one costly printer.
My HP 1220 Deskjet uses a high-capacity black cartridge and a combo cartridge for color. The colors usually run out pretty much simultaneously, although there are exceptions as when you design a piece with lots and lots of one color in it and print many copies of it. A full set of two cartridges goes for $60-$70 and satisfactory off-brands are available. In my experience the B&W ones work fine. But all these companies play the same game in order to sell more ink: They keep coming up with new models that use redesigned ink cartridges in order to make it costly for third parties to horn in on the ink business.
For all those reasons, printing by inkjet is an expensive proposition and the printers themselves are such a small part of the cost of owning one that it rarely makes sense to price shop among the different brands. In the long run, you end up paying about the same from one brand to another and even from one model to another within the same brand.
HB
