Inkjet hardware has always been priced very attractively. In fact, retailers often give away inkjet printers for free as part of a hardware or software bundle, hoping to make money back on sales of replacement ink cartridges. While the printer itself is cheap, the ink that fuels its output is disproportionately expensive. Eastman Kodak Company today entered the consumer inkjet industry with a new product line and hopes to change all that.

 “After today, the inkjet market will never be the same,” said Antonio M. Perez, chairman and chief executive officer, Eastman Kodak Company. “We are changing the rules in this industry to ensure that consumers can affordably print what they want, when they want, easily and at the high level of Kodak quality they’ve come to expect.”

According to company statements, the new Kodak Easyshare All-in-One Printers will use pigment-based inks that will save consumers up to 50 percent on everything they print.

 “For years, the high price of inkjet cartridges has kept consumers from freely using their printers,” said Perez. “With affordable premium inks, families can now create crisp documents and KODAK lab-quality photos at home.”

Kodak’s pigment-based ink, priced at $9.99 for a cartridge of black ink and $14.99 for a five-ink color cartridge, is said to print the same number of pages at half the cost of other consumer inkjet printers. Printers supporting the new ink technology will retail between $149.99 and $299.99 starting in March at Best Buy.

Those who prefer printing photos at home would also want to know that the new ink is projected to create prints that will stay true for 100 years—a considerable bump up from the average life span of today’s prints at 15 years.

“Our new system gives consumers the freedom to print documents and photos frequently, easily and affordably with exceptional quality that lasts a lifetime under typical home display conditions,” Perez said.