You always take a chance with third party ink, on the one hand you can save an absolute fortune, on the other, you can lose out on quality, and in some cases (particularily with printers that have the print head built into the printer, like epsons, you can risk damaging the printer so much it becomes unusable.)
Life span of the prints, colour matching, smell, drying time, quality etc are all usually different, but if you are just knocking out lots of prints, and are not after perfection, or archival then third party ink will save you loads of money. If you are willing to take the risk (I ruined a epson with third party ink), HP printers seem better this way, as the print head is in the cartridge, so if it clogs you just get a new cartridge not a new printer.
http://www.lasermemory.com
August 2004