This is a must buy let me explain.

I am a small business owner, I own an IT company, btsolved.com, I have used and serviced many different types of printers, dot matrix, band, Laser, Inkjet, bubble jet, thermal, you name it, I have always hated the business model Inkjet companies use making money on the ink and not the printers. We all know the story, we have an inkjet that has run out of ink and the ink cost 40.00 something dollars or more to replace the black and the color. This is the third or second time we have replaced the cartridges. So instead of buying the ink we purchase a newer printer, and the old one goes to the great printer pile in the sky, not because it is broke, because we refuse to pay that much for ink for an older printer. Then we get the new printer and are very selective on what we print, because the ink is expensive and does not last that long.
Now Kodak comes along and provides us with ink at a cost that seems very reasonable. This will do several things to the printer market if Kodak can pull it off. Printers will have a longer life span on someone’s desk and not be thrown away because the ink almost forces you to buy a new printer after a year or two. People will print more a lot more because they will not mind paying twenty one bucks for a complete set of color and black cartridges that last longer and look better than any printer on the planet, Kodak will also sell more ink because people will print more, I believe it will catch on and they will also sell more printers. If Kodak starts to market these things, I am definitely investing in the company after they start to reap the rewards from their business model.
I have been looking some time for an inkjet to do business brochures, cards, documents, photos, scanning and copying. I am very picky about the final result as it will be presented to other business owners. I looked at all the offerings from HP, Lexmark, Brother, Canon and I was not impressed with the output quality, cost of ink and the general build of the printer. I read an article about Kodak and what they were up to. So I waited and noticed that Best Buy had an exclusive and was selling them. So I drove to Best Buy noticed the one on demo, opened it up looked at everything I had access to, examined the internals all the parts I could see and came to the conclusion that this printer, looks durable, well made and reminded me of a Good ole HP laser Jet 4, big, bulky, heavy, built like a tank and ran for 10 plus years. The only thing I had to copy and print was my driver’s license, so I hit the copy button and out it came on 5*6 photo paper, I looked at it and I got sick to my stomach, the thing looked like the real deal when I compared it side by side, I was more than amazed.
I purchased the 5300 brought it home, installed the software and was up and running. I stayed up till 2 am and made some advertisement tri-fold brochures on glossy double side paper for a meeting I had the next day. When they came out of the printer, I almost fell out of my chair, Crisp clean text, photos with no dots, beautiful color and saturation, the graphics and text was so clean it almost jumped out at you. I went to the meeting put the brochures on the table with business cards attached, and during the meeting people were flipping the brochures over and looking at them not just for the content but the quality.
The software is very user friendly, works with Vista and has a lot of features; so many in fact I decided to call Kodak support to find out what all it could do, the guy I talked to lived in New York. I was pleased to talk to a company that did not outsource everything to a third world country. Have you called Microsoft, HP, Dell support lately, it is terrible, you spend half the call on bad lines talking to someone with a terrible accent and you get transferred to about four different people before you find someone who knows what they are talking about, the phone call takes twice as long because you have to ask them to repeat what they said because their accent is so strong and they try to rush you off the phone. MS charges more per call, so much for the consumer benefiting due to reduced outsourcing cost. Kodak support was a completely different experience, I must have been on the phone for two hours, asking him various questions, and after the call was over, I was not frustrated like when I talk to the other companies who outsource.
All I can say is support Kodak, they are listening to the customer, stepping out into new waters, when they do not have to, they could have used the same business model, they have an awesome product, with cheap consumables, US based support and it is a win – win for the consumer.
THANK YOU from a small business owner with over 20 years in IT support and service.

UPDATE: 3/21/07

I have been using the printer for 7 days now, and have really kept it busy, between business use, kids projects, photos, scanning you name it. The printer has worked without a single problem, no software crashes, no hardware crashes, no jams or feed problems or etc. As soon as the 5500 comes out in May with fax, auto duplexer, feed tray, I will purchase that one too for business use only.

I really like the Kodak picture / document management software, most of the time when you get free software with a printer or camera, it is big, bulky, poorly written and not worth the CD it came on. The Kodak software has allowed me to finally organize all my digital pictures.
So after seven days it is still a must buy.