Printer makers back cartridge test standard

There may soon be a way to determine how many printed pages you really get out of an inkjet printer cartridge.

A group of leading printer manufacturers, including Kodak, Canon and Hewlett-Packard, said last Wednesday it's backing a recent standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Standard ISO/IEC 24711:2006, which still needs industry adoption, establishes how ink and toner cartridges for inkjet printers and All-in-One printers must be tested.

The standard cites how many cartridges must be tested to determine an average lifetime (nine of them), what constitutes a standard test document (five pages printed with default printer settings) and the kind of machine on which the cartridge must be tested.

Analysts agree that there has been a longstanding need for this kind of standardization in the industry, but they're not sure it will make much difference to consumers.

"It'll make a difference to those consumers who actually look at that info, but I think the vast majority of consumers don't look at that," said John Shane, director of communications supplies consulting service at InfoTrends. "For that small percentage who does, this will be a good way to help them compare."

Currently, each manufacturer applies its own standards for determining cartridge life, according to Bob Palmer, InfoTrend's director of printer research. This makes it hard for consumers to comparison shop adequately when deciding on a printer or printer cartridge.

"They do it themselves and say 'We based it on 15 percent coverage,' but one vendor's definition could be a page that's all red or all text, and another can use photographic content," Palmer said. "So the way they did it before was providing their own spec. (The new ISO recommendation) says they may submit them to the standards committee, (the committee) will give them a rating, and then they can put this rating on the product."

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