Do-it-yourself kits for refilling inkjet cartridges are touted as the cheapest way to keep your printer going. However, most of the ones we tried involve syringes or squeeze bottles--and almost invariably spilled ink--making for a messy, time-consuming process.

We found one kit that looks promising: The Automatic Ink Refill System from Dataproducts. With this $20 kit, you refill cartridges from a tank, so there's less likelihood of leaks and splatters than with needles and squirt bottles. Overall, it was a neat, clean procedure with minimal mess, that took us about 10 minutes per cartridge using HP black and tri-color cartridges. It claims up to 5 refills, though the cartridge printhead will likely fail before that point.

We had less success with two more-typical refill kits: the Jet Tec Inkjet ($12 for black kit, $15 for color) and the Nu-kote Ink Jet Cartridge Refill Kit ($25 for kit containing both black and color ink). The Jet Tec uses a syringe; the Nu-kote, a plastic bottle. The Jet Tec claims you'll get up to six refills. Nu-kote claims several refills for the HP black cartridge, and you may get a little more than one refill with the tri-color. (Again, printheads may not last for multiple refills.)

Despite our best efforts, both made a mess. If you use this type of product, wear gloves, cover your clothes, and protect the carpet and furniture. Note that manufacturers recommend you refill cartridges soon after the ink runs out so that the spongy material inside doesn't dry out.

Do-it-yourself kits, in our estimation, haven't been worth considering, but the Dataproducts was close enough to fuss-free that we tested its output for color photo quality and cost. The best news was its 25-cent cost per 4x6 and 65-cent cost per 8x10, which represent significant savings over the HP. Its photo quality, judged good, matched the OEM HP black 96/tri-color 97 combination, but was a notch below the OEM when the 99 photo-ink cartridge was used in place of the black 96.