Credit to everyone who is trying to recycle their ink cartridges, but I still have concerns about these printers and their consumables. Ink jet printers are just plain hard on the budget and the environment, and the cartridges can't be refilled indefinitely, many only once and very few more than two or three times. Many applications don't really need an ink jet, I see lots of these printers being used in places where a laser or dot matrix would be much better suited to the job. Often people buy them because the initial printer cost is very low, frequently because it's heavily subsided by the expensive cartridges, sometimes the printer is sold for less than a full set of cartridges. However, when you consider the price of ink and special paper, it's multiple times cheaper to take your digital photographs or images to a shop and have them use their state of the art printer worth thousands to print them for you. No need to clutter up your house with another printer, no need to change cartridges or anything. Best of all it's not more work, you can either go out to the store to buy cartridges or you can go to the store to have your pictures printed. The only major difference is price and quality, both of which are better. Some places do it mail order or over the internet now, so you could have your prints sent to you. Of course some people do need a colour printer at home or in their office, there are genuine needs, but then it's fair to point out that the price of colour laser printers has dropped a lot now, and they're much better suited to high volume applications, but also don't dry up if not used for a while. They also work out much cheaper in the long term. Anyone who can justify their need for a high quality colour printer, for example a high volume of prints being made, can probably justify the initial expense of a colour laser as it will save them so much money in the long term.

I use my HP laserjet 6L laser printer and the pot stakes I get from Gempler's. I can print a sheet at a time, and they do hold up well in the sun. I have used these now for two years and you can still read the tags on the few plants I didn't sell in that amount of time. I just go into word and format the labels and then print them, but gempler's will send you instructions with the stakes. You can order a sample pack to see if you can deal with it, and it doesn't cost much. The only drawback is that the stakes are thin and flimsy. They are good to put in new plants as you're potting them up but you can't go back and tag established plants very easy with them because they don't stick into the soil well after the plants are rooted in. Here is a link that might be useful: gempler pot stakes, laser

Well, it wasn't necessarily the cartridge. After many repeated paper jams, the thing died. STINKERS, I'm only half way thru the job. Now I have to pay to get the rest printed somewhere and then buy a new printer. DH ran out and luckily got the the ink store right before they were locking the door! So a new ink, no printer. What luck :( Thank goodness we have a little independant print shop right around the corner. I can run over tomorrow AM and print it out myself. Still, the entire venture has eaten all the profits of the job. GGG

IMHO Ancient Page is the best, it is permanent,(but water clean up), archival (acid free) dye based, comes in tons of colors. Available from Color Box. It comes in large and small stamp pads, also in the "pads" made to be used in the rolla-graph stamper wheels. I used to work in a stamping store and this is what we recommended for scrapbooking.