I had a Canon Bubblejet i450--I used aftermarket ink from a place called CartridgeWorld in Austin, TX. Within 6-8 months, my print head was clogged and not functioning at all! I blame the cheap ink!!! I will never do this again. Anyone else had this problem with their printer/ ink

It depends on the ink you're buying, of course. But this may have happened with Canon ink too. Some printers, epson... I think... have a new print head on each cartridge.

I agree with you that cheap inks are a bad idea. There's a reason they are so cheap. It's because they use very low quality ink in their cartridges. Even though manufacturer's ink is a few dollars more, the quality is much higher. A lot of research and developement goes into original manufacturer's ink, thus providing benefits as water proof photos, fade resistance, and higher dots per inch.Also, cheap, refilled cartridges will void the warranty on your printer. I have an HP printer and I always buy the HP ink. I've never once had a problem with my HP ink cartridges (HP says that their cartridge failure rate is 2%, which means 98% of their cartridges will work just fine). Refilled cartridges are said to be 35 times more likely to fail, ruin your printer, or provide you with unsatisfactory results.I've included a link to some research done on refilled cartridges.

www.hp.com

The first mistake is buying an inkjet printer.We all buy inkjet or bubblejet because of low initial cost. If we use original cartridges at the end of two years warranty period we would spend so much on cartridge which would me than the cost of heavy duty color laser printer. And if we use cheaper ink cartridge or refill ink the printer gets damaged. If we use inkjet we have to accept these draw back.And among inkjets EPSON is most reliable.