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Sat, 31 January 2009 20:28 |
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Veyrdite
Messages: 1462
Registered: August 2006
Location: Australia, Sydney
Karma: 0
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General (1 Star) |
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The printer cost AU$300, each ink cartridge of its array of 5 costs about AU$50. At first the printer itself was fine, until I came across the revenue-making coding that HP put into its firmware.
Unless you go through two windows and one tab to find the drop-down menu to select the usage of the black-ink cartridge only (compared to High-quality (labelled using all cartridges))every time you print something it will use every cartridge to produce black-and white prints.
However even while you choose to use only the black-cartridge, each cartridge is still drained to "clean itself", labelled as a feature by HP.
If you by any-chance decide to refill a cartridge, it also catches you out by checking the serial number of the cartridge and the last known percentage full. If it has magically filled up, it is rejected.
And then there is the maintenance that takes 5+ minutes to complete (not-stobbable) every time I turn the thing on.
I grew tolerant of this, until the point where it would stop printing even in black-and white unless all cartridges are more than 10% full (according to the printer empty) and the scanner started dieing, mixing the colours around (white = purple, blue = purple, red = blue).
In hope of by-passing the can't-print-b&o-without-colour-cartridges problem, I mucked around with the MFg commands of the printer, and all I could could do was make it crash, or play pong (seriously).
I came across a site which told me how to reset all setting on the printer (holding ok, cancel, black and colour buttons while turning off). After performing this, I was asked my country of residence, and a confirmation that I do really live where I said I lived 
The same problem occurred, but I had an idea.
After resetting the printer again, this time I chose the USA as my country of residence after remembering reading the court case about cartridge expiry-dates held in the US.
Believe it or not, I can now print in black-and white without colour cartridges and my scanner magically works again.
Unfortunately, I think I messed around with the MFG commands too-much, as the date is stuck at 00-00-00 and the time is stuck at 00:00.00p, but I don't care. Now I print most things with my trusty Kyocera mita FS-1010 toner printer.
Has anyone here had similar experiences?
WOL: Veyrdite Previously: Dthdealer ( a long time ago )
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