What Another Business? Resetting Canon Inkjet Chips

Wow! Finally I get back to you, it has been a tumultous, exciting week for me. As though I don't have enough on my plate with a publishing house, book marketing, book writing, astrology columns, three websites, and my wonderful huge metaphysical client base, I had to add still another business to my list.

But I will share that with you briefly, just in case it will be helpful to you.

I recently went from a Lexmark Color Laser to a Multifunction Canon Inkjet, so I wanted to find a way to get the most for my money replacing ink. In inkjets you can pay through the nose as they say, with costs of replacement of the five colors being nearly 50% of the cost of the whole printer.

Anyway, I discovered that there were a lot of ways you might save, from CISS / CIS, continuous ink systems to re-manufactured cartridges to refill systems.

I was inclined to the CIS since it seemed the most reliable, but after a whole lot of research on the net, I found quite a few people who had leaks, which ruined their printers in the process. Since I know what it is like to have ink toner all over me and the room, I was horrified to think it might happen with real live wet ink (toner can be vacuumed off if you are smart and don't sneeze!) So I ixnayd that idea.

Refilling inkjet carts was also not an option for a messy, four dog household, so I started to research the re-manufactured inkjet cartridge market.

It looks great, replacement of all five of my cartridges comes to about $14 with shipping, that is less than one new Canon ink cartridge. But there was one problem, the chip on the original cartridge needed to be removed and placed on the new one, and after that, the printer would recognize the cart, but because the chip still read empty, the printer would believe it was empty, so you had to do a bunch of overriding to print any page. Way too much of a hassle for someone who prints out 4,000 pages sometimes. So I wondered where to look next.

I did a worldwide search and found a company in Germany with a new chip resetting device developed just for Canon printers with the CGI-8 & PGI-5 carts like mine. Cost was reasonable just around $75 - a little more than a set of oem Canon inks. He also had a chip holder set up, which you could install into your printer and then add the new cart, so you would never have to move the chips again. This added a little more cost - about another $22, but I was jazzed. With this set-up my printer will read the ink levels and tell me when the ink is gone, and I can reset the chip in 5 seconds and be on my way with a new non-Canon ink cart, no mess, no fuss.

So that is what I decided to do. But since this product was not available here in the USA, I asked if they would like someone to sell it here, and now I am in another business. Just got the product yesterday, and have already sold one. But in the meantime I am getting my new website built at InkjetReset.com, so that is where I have been.

Now by Sunday I will be back and finish the article on the 44th Presidential Cycle.

Thanks for bearing with me, if you have a Canon printer and want to get a reset unit, you can visit my ebay store or just email me and I will work with you.

Best to everyone, we all need to save a few pennies with the price of gas shooting through the roof, as I predicted it is aimed for $5 a gallon within 2008, and headed to $7 very shortly in 2009.

Back on Sunday, Michele