Kodak has just released the Kodak ink  #30 and #30xl inkjet cartridges for their newest inkjet printer – the Kodak ESP 310 All-in-one.  The cartridges look suspiciously similar to the previous Kodak inks, the Kodak #10 and 10xl. So whats behind the “new” release?Well, lets take a step back and look at Kodaks entry into the inkjet market about 1 year ago.   Kodak jumped in to the multibillion dollar printer ink business by advertising that they will be different.  Cheap ink cartridges, but “fairly priced” (aka expensive relative to the competition’s) printers. They aggressively advertised how cheap their inks were, at $9.99 for black and $14.99 for a color ink cartridge.  It is true that their ink cartridges were cheaper than the competition, but not by as much as they were claiming.  HP fought back at their advertising and forced Kodak to change how they were advertising.Fast forward to today.  Kodak launches their new printer, the ESP 310, and the price? Just under $100.  Kodak is expected to release other printers as well for these ink cartridges, like the ESP C110 and C315 . Their first set of printers which ranged from $150 to $300, so it sounds like they are moving back to the traditional ink model – sell the printer cheap, and make it up on the ink.  So how expensive are the ink cartridges?  The Kodak 30 is around $10 black and $18 color, and the 30xl are around $20 black and $35 color.  But the real measure of cost is the CPP or cost per page.  Unfortunately, there is no easy way to compare Kodak with the competition because Kodak is conveniently using a different way to measure page yield that no other inkjet printer manufacturer uses! They are using the ISO/IEC 19752 standard method, which is confusing and does not allow one to compare apples to apples so to speak (i wonder why the phrase apples to apples came to be? why not “ink to ink”?).  Anyway, maybe HP has a point to object to how Kodak calculates its ink yields for use in its aggressive marketing about its cheap ink cartridges and cheap printer ink.Oh and one other thing for Kodak ink refills users – the Kodak 30 color cartridge uses 5 colors as compared to the Kodak 10 black which uses 6 colors (the omitted color is the photo black ink).  Another difference between the Kodak 10 and Kodak 30 ink cartridges is that the chips are different.  So if you want to refill your Kodak 30, you will need a new replacement chip specific for the Kodak 30, and a refill kit with inks that will work on the Kodak printers.  Uni-Kit has released a refill kit for the Kodak 10 and the refills for Kodak 30 are on their way (same ink, different chip).