writes > I purchased a high end HP Photosmart C8180 last year that uses > 6 ink cartridges and can't believe how quickly it goes throught > ink. I recently found a 3rd party ink system that uses large > bottle of ink with a hose assembly attached to dummy ink > cartridges that will save hundreds of dollars on the ink. > > I'm getting ready to purchase it and was wondering if anyone has > had any experience with this type of ink delivery system. There are a number of vendors of Continuous Ink Supply (CIS) systems. Lyson is a reasonably high end vendor with their Cave Paint inks (allusions of print permanence) and retrofit to a number of printers. Big Epson & Canon use CIS. All Epson & Canon wide format printers aimed at professional markets use much larger cartridges mounted in a fixed bay or bays with hoses feeding the print head. It is just impractical to use cartridges small enough to move back & forth when printing 17" to 60" wide swathes of paper. I expect the HP models do too, I just haven't looked into them. The wide format Epsons use 110ml (~3.7 oz) or 220ml cartridges. (prices from bhphoto.com) Epson 110ml cartridge is $60-70. a 4 oz bottle of Lyson Cave Paint ink is $23; 8 oz is $35. Epson prices are much more reasonable when you get up into the large, professional size units but Lyson is still cheaper. There are also CIS products that use many black tonality inks to convert a "color" printer to do very high quality, smooth gradation black & white prints with absolutely no color tint. Each print head nozzle emits a different shade of very light gray up through pure black. One downside with all CIS systems is you must use the printer consistently & often enough to keep the ink in the feed hoses from drying out. If you only print a few small photos every other week, a CIS may not be economical/viable if you have to disassemble it and clean it everytime you want to use it. Lee Jones -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist