http://esmithy.net/2010/01/04/new-depths-of-printer-evil/ Stuff Hammered Out by Eric Smith Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:15:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://esmithy.net/2010/01/04/new-depths-of-printer-evil/comment-page-1/#comment-17275 Dad Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:30:42 +0000 http://esmithy.net/?p=335#comment-17275 I'm with you on this one. They are plain evil. I arrived in Kona this time to find that as usual the #78 color cartridge on my hp officejet v40xi had dried out even though I know there was a lot of ink left in it. After several attempts to clean the nozzles I gave up and decided I would have it refilled using Costco's new service. Sure enough they refilled it for $10 but when I installed it the printer would often not print complete pages. It would print part of the page and then give me an error message and stop printing. The error message was very helpful: "This page failed to print". Somehow I already knew that. Sometimes after such a failure if I just tried immediately to print again it would work perfectly. Also if I turned the printer off and then back on just before I tried to print it would work. After going through a lot of paper and ink I began to wonder if hp had inserted an anti Costco feature in the printer and that it had recognized I had refilled the cartridge at Costco and was playing with me. So, I went out and bought a new genuine hp #78 cartridge at their ridiculous price and sure enough it made absolutely no difference. In the process of all this I could not help but notice that I could buy a new all-in-one machine from hp for only a little more than the cost of a new #78 cartridge. I didn't do it but I thought how nutty this whole thing is. Anyway, for the time being I can print on Evie's printer through the network although I don't see that as being a permanent solution. I’m with you on this one. They are plain evil. I arrived in Kona this time to find that as usual the #78 color cartridge on my hp officejet v40xi had dried out even though I know there was a lot of ink left in it. After several attempts to clean the nozzles I gave up and decided I would have it refilled using Costco’s new service. Sure enough they refilled it for $10 but when I installed it the printer would often not print complete pages. It would print part of the page and then give me an error message and stop printing. The error message was very helpful: “This page failed to print”. Somehow I already knew that. Sometimes after such a failure if I just tried immediately to print again it would work perfectly. Also if I turned the printer off and then back on just before I tried to print it would work. After going through a lot of paper and ink I began to wonder if hp had inserted an anti Costco feature in the printer and that it had recognized I had refilled the cartridge at Costco and was playing with me. So, I went out and bought a new genuine hp #78 cartridge at their ridiculous price and sure enough it made absolutely no difference. In the process of all this I could not help but notice that I could buy a new all-in-one machine from hp for only a little more than the cost of a new #78 cartridge. I didn’t do it but I thought how nutty this whole thing is. Anyway, for the time being I can print on Evie’s printer through the network although I don’t see that as being a permanent solution.

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