Inky Business

December 31, 2003 @ 1:20 pm

I have several Ink Jets of various ages in my office here and I've noticed that the Ink usage light comes on just a little bit too soon on all of these printers.

Today I was printing a batch of invoices and half way through my old Epson stopped with the ink light on. So I go through my usual routine: Open the printer take out the cartridges, wiggle them around a bit and then replant them. The printer then continues on for quite some time before I get another warning at which point I repeat this ordeal. I can usually get by doing this 2-3 times before the cartridge appears to really be empty.

What the heck does this mean? Seems like a major scam to me - ink cartridges are ridiculously expensive and we're getting reamed on ink as it is, without the printer inaccurately telling me that out of ink when I'm actually not.

What do you think? By design or a botch in the printer design?

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re: Inky Business
by Kevin Wright January 01, 2004 @ 10:57 pm

I suspect it is by design. I ignore the light on my HP until the actual output starts looking wrong.

re: Inky Business
by Rick Strahl January 01, 2004 @ 11:10 pm

Well on my printers that stratgy doesn't work - they won't print with the light on...

re: Inky Business
by Kevin Wright January 02, 2004 @ 4:12 am

Now that sounds like a con...

re: Inky Business
by Frank Camp January 04, 2004 @ 12:54 pm

Actually the epson printers are known for keeping track of the amount of copies printed.

The Dutch Consumer organisation made a formal complaint that Epson printers have a fixed number of copies, which forces you to replace the cartridge even though there was still ink left. After Epson 'explained' that the extra ink was used to make sure that the ink 'holes' were open before a page was printed, the organisation dropped their complaint.
I would have preferred a system where I, as the user, would replace the cartrigde, on my opinion of the quality of the output. But the cartridges of the Epson do not have the printing head in them, so you don't have the 'opertunity' to replace them as often as the HP cartridges, which have the printing head built in. So the reason of doing it this way becomes more valid.

BTW, I use a CANON printer because it has seperate cartridges for the colors, so I don't have to replace the complete color cartridge when one of the colors runs out of ink.

re: Inky Business
by Marc Heatherington February 15, 2004 @ 3:26 pm

I opened up a cartridge after my Epson printer said it was empty. AFter covering my hands with ink, I was amazed how much ink was left in that cartridge. What a scam.

re: Inky Business
by Dave August 07, 2004 @ 1:31 am

I have a Canon bjc 2100 using the two seperate cartridges for b/w and color. The codoes on both are BCI-21. I was using these cartidges with great success. Then I logged onto canon's site and downloaded a driver update for said printer. Next thing I know, when I go to print the printer setup wwizard gives me an error window reading "incompatable print cartridge detected. Cancel print job and replace cartridge. However, I can go into other format modes in the properties area of this print driver and the thing prints fine. Just cannot get it to print in normal modes.