The source for data and graph would be interesting.

I'm sure that HP ink will be alway at the top of the stage !!! :D

man that is messed up! ink costs more than penicillin??? just not right

Interesting information..

These aren't relative prices.

Are all these except oil retail prices? Shouldn't the oil price be retail gasoline to be a proper comparison?

Calcium Hydroxylapatite, a fancy name for calcium phosphate found in bones and teeth. This material can be synthesized commercially. In this procedure, microspheres of this synthetic material suspended in polysaccharide is injected in the facial soft tissue. The calcium hydroxylapatite is resorbed by the body and replaced by fibrous tissue which adds volume and acts as a filler. This procedure is used to treat frown lines, crows’ feet, smile lines and to enhance the fullness of lips. This material is estimated to cost between $600 to $1,600 per milliliter. The commercial name of this product is Radiance

and yet its the crude oil tat causes inflation!!

We cannot even get to the level of HP ink even if we mix Human Blood with extreme amounts of VODKA! :D

Pepto Bismol, $0.96 per ounce = $0.033 per mL.

Ok, lets skip the obvious intentions and instead curry the most outlandish counterarguments possible. As a FORMER inkjet user, I CLEARLY understood the point of this graph: Print 40-80 pages, spend $45 on a new inkjet cartridge (HP closed the refill market). That is why I bought a monochrome laser printer. Yeah, toner is 3 times the price of the inkjet cartridge, but I get 10-20 times the amount of printed pages. Cost effectiveness.

ink is in higher demand and harder to manufacture than any of these.

Wow, that's crazy!

UGLY

Can we please see the sources for this?

I'm confused. I thought the ink price included fancy electronic circuitry in the cartridge. So the cost is not just the ink.

I love when people are dumb enough to defend the price of ink cartridges. Ha!

I don't know if these are the sources used to make this graph, but I found very similar results. I just googled these prices and picked the top sites.

HP Ink #45: http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/C6650FN%2523140?landing=supplies&category=&family_name=
$63.99/84mL which equals $0.76/mL

Blood: Apparently Red Cross classifies ~500mL of blood as being worth $200, so that comes out to $0.40.

Penicillin: http://www.amazon.com/Long-Lasting-Penicillin-250ml/dp/B00061MQGY. $18.49/250mL which equals about $.07/mL

Vodka (I just picked Grey Goose): http://www.wallywine.com/p-15179-grey-goose-vodka-750ml.aspx. $34.99/750mL is about 4.6 cents/mL.

Red Bull: http://www.amazon.com/Red-Bull-Energy-Drink-8-4-Ounce/dp/B000MTST70. 24 8.4oz cans for $51.15. 201.6 fl oz is about 5962mL and with the math, it comes out to .85 cents/mL.

Water (Aquafina): http://www.cvcoffee.com/pd_aquafina.cfm. $17.99/480oz. Or, 14195 mL resulting in .126cents or $.00126/mL.

Crude Oil: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas29-2009dec29,0,5101206.story. I just used $80/barrel and according to http://www.unitconversion.org/volume/milliliters-to-barrels-oil-conversion.html, 1 barrel is 158987mL. This results in $.000503/mL of crude oil.

In conclusion, two and a half cartridges for a barrel of crude?

Fun, but meaningless as it's an apples and oranges (and lemons and grapes ...) comparison. What is the relative price of black ink between the different manufacturers? Compare HP to Cannon to Lexmark, etc. to get a meaningful chart.

The cost of ink is waaaaay to high seeing that most of it is manufactured at a very low cost. The main costs really comes from the cartridges but even those are fairly low.

Inkjets should really be half of what they are currently selling for.

how about including the cost of other inks like pen and art ink?

cant believe ink is the most expensive

This was originally posted on Gizmodo back in 2006. You might want to give them due credit... http://gizmodo.com/212444/hp-ink-costs-more-than-human-blood-booze

DUDES,
HP inc is created from many substances that when taken apart would be cheaper then oil.
All the items cheaper then the inc are that way since they are basic liquids and not a finished product with many combined liquids in 1.

How much is dizel? And please do not forget that blood is subsidized.

Interesting.

Here's a question (and this may in part explain the higher cost of ink), how much oil is used in the production methods of all the other liquids? Crude oil is the only liquid that is a "resource", all the others are products. When you take into account the chemical sources, the processing, the power consumed during that process, the cost of transport of the raw materials and finished products, the packaging, the resources and power used to produce the equipment used in the processing, you will probably find that the HP ink (including the plastic and curcuitry in the cartridge) is the most intensive and costly to produce. Also, the processes involved probably consume more mLs of oil than mLs of ink that are produced. In other words, in the absence of proper measurements, logic would suggest that the ink would be the least efficient to produce (consuming the most resources in it's production) and therefore we should expect it to be the highest cost per mL.

Therefore, a small increase in the cost of crude oil will see a much bigger increase in the cost of the ink, because of all the oil consumed in every stage of the production and distribution process.

And there in lies the inflationary power of oil. It is used in the production of practically everything in modern life; either directly or indirectly.

The only reason HP puts electronics in its ink carts is to make refilling and cloning them difficult to impossible.

nice point sheldon, gizmodo is a great site.

@everyone asking for sources....if you cant seriously figure this out your self, then you should leave the difficult decisions, like which shoes goes on which foot, to others. You dont need a source. Stop being lazy and look it up. If a HP cartridge costs $17 then it'll be about $0.70 per ml. If a barrell of Oil costs around $80 right now...thats $.0005 per ml.

obviously people asking this cant dare think that oil company isn't the only company out there trying to make money. They realize if they learn that the oil companies have a far smaller profit margin...than say bottle water companies, they'd be seen for the douches they really are.

You want real data to back up my claims....

Exxon's profit margin for 2008 is 9.47%
Coca-Cola's for 2008 is double at 18.18%

here's the sources:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:XOM
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:KO

I am going to start printing in blood...(start printing in red instead of black)

HP ink are very expensive in Taiwan. We seldomly hear HP's innovation, comparing with Apple, but HP is so big to be beated by no one. Pay it or go away! This is why their share-hoders own stock.

HP ink Cost > Bllood ............ Cant believe ...

Missed Somavert 30mg, sold by Pfizer, 16,8$ / ml

The only thing funnier than the graph are the pedants-from-hell commenting here.

Ah - but human blood isn't subject to the rigorous methods of production used in HP ink(!) For the privilege of having my red claret looked over by trained scientists, I'd happily pay double.

@ EJW

"(...)people asking this cant dare think that oil company isn't the only company out there trying to make money. They realize if they learn that the oil companies have a far smaller profit margin...than say bottle water companies, they'd be seen for the douches they really are."

Is it?! Do oil companies have a far smaller profit margin?! No. Wrong! You completely missed the point! The thing is that oil companies buy very cheap oil and sell it (as gas) at very high prices!! So, the profit margin is huge. The price of oil (gas) to the regular consumer should be shown.

Pleazzzzse give credit to the original article (2006 http://gizmodo.com/212444/hp-ink-costs-more-than-human-blood-booze). If you're not the author the source maters, even if you can easily confirm the data!

There's something missing from that graph; availability.

Hey all, HP employee here. This graph is interesting, but as MikeMinMD said, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. Our customers choose HP because of the quality and reliability of our products – a reputation we’ve earned with more than 20 years of developing highly technical printing innovations, in our hardware and in our ink.

Each time you hit print, microscopic droplets of ink are jetted by a superheated vapor bubble through hundreds of nozzles, about one-third the width of a human hair, at roughly 31 miles per hour and up to 36,000 times each second…per nozzle. Ink is also complex – it has to be chemically compatible with every part of the printer, cartridge and paper, and It can take up to 1,000 prototypes over three to five years to perfect a new ink formulation.

When you think about what you are getting out of each cartridge – photos of your family that will last generations or marketing materials that may land that next client – simply put, HP ink is worth it.

Here's the source for this graph. A math teacher named Dan Meyer: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=5633

Wow, that's crazy!

@Clarence - Gizmodo is the source, as indicated in other comments. Meyers post is newer than this one, jeez.

to the guy who said it was preposterous that penicillin was so cheap, perhaps you need to understand the mechanism by which penicillin is obtained in order to understand why in fact it is so inexpensive. why shouldn't medicines be cheap? especially the ones that basically make themselves.

OMG that HP ink cartridge is expensive!

@Thom_SoCal_HP

We should add to the chart how much hp payed you per word to write that drivel.

Not just HP inks are expensive but ALL original inks from different manufacturers are way over-prices .

The ink business perhaps brings more for HP then their printers. I always go for refills inspite of the relatively poor quality

Therefore, a small increase in the cost of crude oil will see a much bigger increase in the cost of the ink, because of all the oil consumed in every stage of the production and distribution process.

And there in lies the inflationary power of oil. It is used in the production of practically everything in modern life; either directly or indirectly.

Hey all, HP employee here. This graph is interesting, but as MikeMinMD said, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.
HP ink are very expensive in Taiwan. We seldomly hear HP's innovation, comparing with Apple, but HP is so big to be beated by no one. Pay it or go away! This is why their share-hoders own stock.

This graph is very interesting. Thank you for your share.
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Ever since I have been deeply interested on this kind of affairs, I just wanted to thank you for sharing with all us this such a piece of masterpiece of work. In short, I think you are damn good at this.

Thom_SoCal_HP, such a canned response.. but I hope you don't really buy that baloney. The technology is paid for by the price of the hardware, not the ink. Do you think Intel charges you more for each flop your CPU performs? Completely bollocks!

Human blood, you know, the stuff that actually sustains life is worth far more yet HP, Canon, Brother, etc don't believe so. One should realize that since it's World AIDS Day and healthy human blood should be the most expensive commodity.

Either way, HP printers were the best at some point; they lost that title over a decade ago when technology moved forward.

>> Peter Lavelle: Ah - but human blood isn't subject to the rigorous methods of production used in HP ink(!)

I hope you weren't being sarcastic.

It costs the blood industry in the US and the industries in more civilized countries like Germany, the UK, France, most of the EU and Canada much more (tens of millions more) to test blood donors for diseases such as Hepatitis variants and HIV than it does for HP to develop ink!

The place for spirited political dialogue. Folks of all political stripes welcome.

Wahaha, yes, my blood aint worth ink

Is that chart made with MS Office?

It seems like, or is it Access?

HP ink LOL XD

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website about recycling to save the environment. Manufacturers want you to return empty cartridges to them - why? They do not want end users to re-use these. What do they do with empty cartridges - Refill them - No - their idea of "recycling" is to send them to a third world Country to be split up into metal and plastic. Where are their Green Credentials?
What is the real carbon footprint involved in this?

Jim is right this website is about cycling, where ARE the green credentials?

Hey all, HP employee here. This graph is interesting, but as MikeMinMD said, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.
HP ink are very expensive in Taiwan. We seldomly hear HP's innovation, comparing with Apple, but HP is so big to be beated by no one. Pay it or go away! This is why their share-hoders own stock.

These aren't relative prices.

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