I get less than 500 stamp images out of a cartridge using a Pitney Bowes Postage Meter. Thats about $0.10 per image. Postage for a letter is only $0.42 so it costs me 25% of the postage to maili our pieces. Way too expensive looking for other alternatives.
We use the cartridges in our Pitney Bowes postal machine. The Staples brand red ink seems to last a long time and it prints cleanly. Staples postal machine ink is much less expensive than the pitney bowes brand. It is easy to replace the cartrige. We have not had any troubles with streaking. Even after the postal machine tells us we are almost out of ink or the ink is low we still get another week or two out of the cartrige. We will continue purchasing the staples ink for our postal machine.