Your printer is lying to you
Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:38PM EDT
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Out of ink? Already? When Farhad Manjoo's Brother printer abruptly stopped zipping out prints, he began to wonder if the printer wasn't simply lying that it was out of toner in order to trick him into buying more before he needed it. The prints hadn't been fading at all, but the printer simply refused to go on without a new cartridge.
No fool, Manjoo turned to the web for a solution: He saved his 60 bucks and instead found a simple fix. By covering up a sensor on the side of the toner cartridge with a piece of electrical tape he tricked the printer into thinking the cartridge was full. Well, not so much trick as convince: Manjoo says his printer's been going strong ever since, eight months and hundred of pages down the road, pumping out perfect pages.
Printers of both the laser and inkjet variety are notorious not just for requiring expensive replacement cartridges but for trying to get you to replace them well before you need to. It's epidemic in the industry, to the point where class action lawsuits have filed against Epson and Hewlett-Packard over the trickery.
In his story for Slate, Manjoo helpfully digests most of the conventional and unconventional wisdom for getting extra life out of a toner or inkjet cartridge, from vigorously shaking your laser toner to de-clump it to digging into the menus to find options for overriding "cartridge check" features. Because there are so many printer models out there, Manjoo ultimately recommends a web search for specific advice, but FixYourOwnPrinter is a good place to start.
Saving a tree may be good, but saving a whole bunch of oil and keeping a cartridge full of chemicals out of the landfill: Even better.
LINK: Take That, Stupid Printer!
See also: Cheap printer ink: Easy savings or bad investment?
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Comments on Your printer is lying to you
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2 Posted by alan_r_cam on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:49PM EDT Report Abuse
It almost makes me pine for the good old days, when I'd re-ink the ribbon for my Epson dot-matrix printer. Almost, but not quite.
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3 Posted by cnull on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:27PM EDT Report Abuse
@alan_r_cam - wow, that brings back some memories. I had completely forgotten about re-inking ribbons... yow.
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4 Posted by coolkyle4@snet.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:29PM EDT Report Abuse
mine doesnt do that, and its a hp 2110xi, it normally fades out, and it will still print, but i have to buy a new cartridge if i want clear prints.
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5 Posted by alexgannis on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:50PM EDT Report Abuse
Plus some people never use their printer as much which after six month without changing your ink cartridge could damages your prints header from old ink.
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1 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse
Hmmm, most of the HP, Canon and Okidata products I have / use play it pretty close to the vest when it comes to ink and when it runs out. We usually run them until they dont print anymore - but its normally no more than a day or so after we get the warning that it's low. When it says it's out we can usually print a few more pages in an emergency, but that's it.