An ink cartridge is the life-line of a printer. All leading printer manufacturers are well aware of this fact. Therefore, they have reduced the price of the printer and increased the price of cartridges instead. Fortunately, some excellent alternatives to OEM cartridges are now available – Compatible Ink Cartridges and Re-manufactured ink cartridges. These cartridges have slowly grown in popularity because; they are cheaper priced and also produce quality prints.

Also known as generic cartridges, the compatible cartridges are manufactured following the exact specification required for OEM cartridge production. These cartridges are manufactured by third-party vendors and are priced one-half to one-third of the price of OEM cartridges. Re-manufactured cartridges on the other hand are used OEM Cartridges. Once they are out of ink, they are taken back to the factories. There they go through the complete process of disassembling, cleaning, repairing and refilling before getting released in the market again. These recycled cartridges are quite popular among environmentally concerned printer users, as the used cartridges do not end up in landfills and are rather used again and again.

As compatible and re-manufactured cartridges are gaining popularity and dominating the market share, printer manufacturers are trying hard to protect their profits. To do this, some manufacturers have started putting chips into their cartridges, making it difficult to use compatible and re-manufactured cartridges from third-party manufacturers. However, to tackle this problem, these manufacturers offer compatible printer ink cartridges with new replacement chips while a few others offer smart chip re-setter.

Whether one is looking for Canon, Lexmark, Epson or HP Ink Cartridges  it is better to buy them from trusted and reliable ink cartridge suppliers. The advantage of buying from them is that, firstly, they offer the printer ink cartridges at very low-prices and secondly, the ink cartridges are of excellent quality.