Sunday, November 05, 2006

I Knew They Weren't Making Any Money off the Printers

HP Ink Costs More Than Human Blood, Booze - Gizmodo: "Gizmodo reader/potential vampire Shaun just popped this interesting graph in our email this morning, comparing the price of HP ink to other various fluids, some bodily in nature. He calculates that a $30 HP #45 black ink cartridge gives you 42ml, pricing out to $0.71/ml. Meanwhile, blood apparently costs $200 for 500ml from the Red Cross, pricing out to $0.40/ml."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

By weight:

1 ml of ink weighs about 1 gm (slightly over a gram-- I weighed it). There's 29.5 grams in an ounce. So your ink there at $0.71/ml is $21/ounce. Silver was trading Friday at around $12.50/ounce.

Gizmodo doesn't take into account the cost of the print heads, if you buy cartridges without print heads, it's a lot cheaper. We buy our plotter ink in larger tanks (that don't have the more expensive print heads attached), last I priced it this "bulk ink" was around $30 for 69ml, or around $12.85/ounce (or about the same price as silver, or a little more expensive than blood ($11.85/ounce)).

Anonymous said...

Hm... imperial units vs. US customary units strikes again.

1 fluid ounce of water (SG = 1.0) weighs 29.5 grams, but that's 1.04 avdp ounces.

Silver is priced in troy ounces, which weigh 31.1 grams.

So, reassuming some things...
Ink (from my study) has a specific gravity of 1.0 (to my ability to weigh it)

Blood, at 37C, has a specific gravity of 1.05.

So, $0.40/ml is $0.42/gram for blood
My ink price is $0.44/ml or gram
And silver, in grams, is $0.40/gram

Sorry for any confusion =)

Anonymous said...

thanks for...clearing...that up Ben ;)

-deano