Practicality and ingenuity

MANILA, Philippines - Even with the increasing trend of paperless documents both at home and in the office, nothing compares to have in one’s hands a printout which is readily accessible especially if the computer is down and Internet access is not possible.

Whether it’s a manuscript to be used for a show, office dockets for presentation in a meeting, school projects and test papers, printouts are here to stay.

 Also, gone are the days when printing documents and pictures would be so costly and impractical. 

Refillable inks and continuous ink supply systems are now more practical, and original inks that come with a specific brand of printer can be so pricey one would think twice before printing that document.  

“Before, it was very costly before to print using computer printers.  The price of both color and black ink cartridges would almost equal that of the price of your brand new printer,” said Nelson Dizon, head of marketing of Ink All-You-Can.

“Now, thanks to CISS, you can have multiple copies of documents and have high quality photographs right before your eyes, perfect for students who will surely be preparing pages and pages of school papers and projects and companies who rely on tons of documents to get their business done,” Dizon said.

The technology behind the Continuous Ink Supply System (CISS) was introduced in the Philippines in October 2005.

The movers behind Ink All-You-Can saw a potential and a reason to help their kababayans become more productive while spending less.  “Soon enough, our people were able to learn the technology developed early that year and we brought it here.  We were the first company to provide CISS in the Philippines,” added Dizon.

 At the time CISS was introduced in 2005, there was some hesitation on the part of the buying public. 

“It took some time for users to gradually warm up to the idea, since ink cartridge refilling stations were very new then and were in direct competition with our business.  Some of the customers were also turned off by the idea of using ink refills and attaching a large cartridge beside their printers,” he recalled. 

Since then, the reception toward the new printing technology became warmer, especially for big users like schools, companies and Internet and computer shops, and even to personal users.

 In fact, many of these companies who used to rely on original ink and even refilled ink cartridges spent an average of P20,000 a month.  After employing CISS on their operations, their costs went down to only P3,000 monthly, saving up to P17,000 or the equivalent of seven new printers, according to Dizon.

 â€œThe advantage of using CISS is that one cartridge is equivalent to 40 cartridges or 400 ml, or 100 ml for each of the four colors – cyan, magenta, yellow and black.  Compared to buying ink refill cartridges by piece, you can save up to 96 percent in printing costs,” Dizon explained.  “It practically brought down printing costs from P2 per page to only 10 cents,” he added.