Printer manufactures strongly recommend using only genuine inks they've created expressly for that printer so that you can get the best results and avoid damaging your hardware. The problem: Printer makers also charge an arm and a leg for these consumables. Sure, they practically give away the printers, but replacing the ink cartridges one time, in the case of a six-color inkjet can cost as much as buying a whole new printer. Take the . This inkjet multifunction device cost $100 when we reviewed it a year-and-a-half ago. (And if you search for the , it's even less expensive.) But replacing the NX400's inks with genuine Epson inks will run you $58.

It used to be that stores like Staples and OfficeMax carried generic inks that cost much less than the manufacturer's own brand, but that is no longer the case. Thanks to and , these office supply superstores carry only the name-brand, expensive inks.

If you're still looking for deals on ink, you can find them; you just have to look elsewhere--namely the Internet. I spoke to one online ink seller, , at last month's . Silo offers a complete set of refillable cartridges with 320-page yield per color for just $25. That's about 8 cents per page. For $15 per color, Silo will sell you a 100ml bottle of ink that promises up to 4,000 prints, or 1.5 cents per page. That's much less than the 17 cents per page that Epson charges based on its estimated yields of 240 sheets for an $18 black cartridge and $40 for a set of 420 yield cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges purchased at Staples.

To get an idea of how Silo's inks compared in terms of print quality and page yield, I bought a set of Silo cartridges from the company's Website and a new set of Epson's Durabrite Ultra brand inks for the NX400 from Staples. I then set out to print a lot of pages to see how output using Silo's ink measured up to the ink recommended by the printer maker.