What the hell happened to my black ink cartridge?

[basketkase543]

I have an hp deskjet printer with a black ink cartridge that isn't even half empty yet. A few days ago I was printing a document and suddenly the printer started printing veeeerrrrry.....sloooooowly. When the print job finished, I got an error message saying that something was wrong with my black ink cartridge and that it needs to be replaced. What the hell happened to it? It's not even empty yet! The damn cartridges are expensie and I'd hate to have to pay for a whole new one without really understanding what happened to my curent one.

Anybody have any ideas?

[wbc1228]

I'm guessing there is a chip in the ink cartridges that expires after "X" number of pages being printed or "X" days of usage (that is one of the reason why some of these ink cartridges cost so much). I guess the original intention was to prevent people from refilling the ink cartilage, but it screws everyone over. There are a bunch of google articles on this topic (random link below). Good think I have a canon ip3000 and it doesn't have any fancy feature like that.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050222/1220232.shtml

[vihit]

What's the exact model of the printer? How are you basing it as being only half empty? Sometimes the software will miscalculate how much ink is left in the cartridge. One thing you can do is pull out the cartridge and see if the printhead is dirty/clogged in any way.

[DT778]

I just bought some cheap ink on ebay to replace the HP 56 and 57 ink. Put it in today and its working fine. so um, get cheap ink on ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=002&item=120027566744&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

[geffklusner]

Don't judge a cartridge (http://freephotopaper.com/ink_store.htm) just by its price; the number of pages it can print is just as important. That figure will change depending on how much ink you use on a page; the industry-standard is 5% coverage per page for each color. Some companies make yield information available on the Web along with other printer specifications; others will provide it if you ask.

[HotShotX]

One group performed a study that basicially said just about every ink cartridge failed or stop working long before it ran out of ink (around 25-50% remaining), simply because the multicolor cartridges ran out of a single color (like blue), before running out of red or yellow, and needed the whole cartridge to be replaced.

A better option is to get a printer that uses multiple, single color cartridges, so that when yellow runs out, you onlt replace yellow, and not waste red or blue ink.

Aside from that, a lot of cartridges in general would report that they were out of ink when they were not, so it's a faulty system either way.

~HotShotX

[DreamSymphony]

Get a Brother MFC model printer and enjoy $2 black ink carts (shipped) :-)

http://cgi.ebay.com/10-Pk-BLACK-LC41-INK-for-BROTHER-MFC-420cn-3240c-5840cn_W0QQitemZ160192160164QQihZ006QQcategoryZ512 89QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem