Buy the 210XL instead, March 18, 2009

Thank goodness the Third Party sellers are coming out with cheaper ink cartridges. I doubt they are OEM, but would be pleasantly surprised if they are.Anyway I just installed a new PG-210 black ink cart. after the original one ran dry in about a month of owning my new MP-240 printer. Not a lot of printed pages but it's history. Today I printed up some tax forms w/the replacement cart. and it's already 1/3 down. The Color cart. is about 1/2 down. Such is life I guess.Per Canon tech support, the Black XL sizes give you almost 100% more pages for about 40% more price, but decidedly less for Color XL:>Below is the ink yield information for the PIXMA MP240 cartridges:PG-210: 220 pages*1, CL-211: 244 pages *1PG-210: 2760 pages*2, CL-211: 97 pages *2PG-210XL: 401 pages*1, CL-211XL: 349 pages *1PG-210XL: 5205 pages*2, CL-211XL: 144 pages *2*1 Declared yield value in accordance with ISO/IEC 24711...

I feel that the cartridge went dry much too quickly, especially when you consider how much these things cost. But that is the deal, buy the printer for a reasonable price and get shafted on the cartridges. I guess this is why so many people simply buy cartridge ink refill kits and just refill the old cartridge. I think Canon would be wiser to make their own product more reasonably priced. I am sure they do market research and figure at what point they lose market share on refill kits. Having said all this, I am happy with the printer itself.I am updating this review. I have now gone through one more of these cartridges. Someone said you are supposed to get about 220 pages out of it. I only print for school and have in my notebook all the pages I have ever printed out for the last cartridge save, at most, 5 pages. They don't come anywhere near this number. I would say it is about 120-150 pages tops. Above I said I was happy with the printer. However, I am no longer happy...

The 210XL gives you 66% more ink (15ml vs 9ml). It also doesn't cost much more. The only reason the regular 210 cartridge exists is so they can give you less than a full tank of ink when you buy the printer. Don't fall for it, buy the bigger 210XL.