Sorry I can't comment on the 720 but your posting certainly struck a chord with me as I am having very similar experience with the A920 (Lexmark?) All In One printer which I also got with my system. I am very pleased with the system (Dimension 4700) and, operationally, the printer is fine. Like you though, I have done very little printing but the cartidges are depleting rapidly. Ordered up 1x colour (T0530) and 1x black (T0529) replacements and was quite surprised how expensive (about 50 GB pounds). However, when the replacements arrived today I was truly "gobsmacked!" and can not believe the price for what appears to be a thimble full of ink. It reminds me of an old Goon Show comment viz. "Neddy, give me your wallet and say after me 'Help Yourself!' Really though, it isn't a laughing matter and I certainly can't see me attempting to write the Doomsday Book Rev II on my A920 printer. For the record, I have been a HP Printer user for many years and didn't have many bad experiences even with consumables.

 

Well to tell you the truth, I am not sure what a trial cartridge is as when I got my new A920 AIO last Chistmas (2003), it came with free ink cartridges which lasted me more than 1 1/2 month.  Get into the habit of refilling your own cartridge.  You can buy the kits at various web sites for a lot cheapter than avaliable than Dell.

Regards to your problem,

soSo

Message Edited by kaseyi on 01-05-2005 03:47 PM

Again I agree with your comments about lack of specs. (on cartridge capacity) and similar shared experience. My old PC and HP have been passed on to my grandchildren for them to tinker with. It is frustrating as in my case Dell has done all the right things up to now but it seems that (what appears to be) corporate greed is taking over. It just seems to me that I could perhaps obtain Unicorn's urine in larger quantities and less expensively than the ink for my A920 printer. There again I'm not sure how well it would print so maybe it's not such a good idea after all! lol. Will have to wait and see how the ink situation works out.

Cliff

The trial cartridges are just that. However I use the lexmark medium density cartridges 17 and 27, depending on how much printing i am doing at the time i get about 1000+ sheets from them. And yes it with a dell 720 printer, same cartraidges but for  18 to 20 dollars versus 50 dollars from dell.

Hope that helps. Have not had any problems using the lexmark ink (17 and 27) or (16 and 26 High Density) with the dell 720. Plus it saves me money over what dell charges for thier branded ink (same thing if you research it) they will try to tell you different tho.