HP Photosmart, one ink cartridge gone!

Gigabot

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I have a HP Photosmart Printer and one of the ink cartridge colors is gone! My printer is refusing to print in any other color because the Majenta Ink cartridge is finished. I just want to print in Black! Is there a hack to get my printer to still print even though one of my ink cartridge is finished?
 
Okay, so I just ended up purchasing the Magenta Ink from the HP.com website. It cost me $10.49 because of tax, but they ship next day for free and they accept PayPal. AWESOME!!! :)
 
All the Epson, HP, Canon and Brother printers I have owned won't print anything if any ink is out. It's a scam to drive ink sales, which is where they make all their money. The Brother I owned was a multi-function and would not do anything at all (scan, fax, etc) with any ink cartridge empty.

The latest insult is that printers now use "continuous cleaning" which means they pump your expensive ink out into a giant sponge in the base of the printer everytime you start up. The Brother was the worst for this. It pumped my color cartridges dry in 6 months and I never printed a color page! HP has the heads in the cartridges and may not play the "continuous cleaning game". My wife's HP cartridges seem to be lasting forever.
 
I'm about to spend $48 total on a new Black Ink cartridge, Yellow Ink Cartridge, Cyan Ink Cartridge. Am I wasting money or should I have gotten a different printer instead of a Photosmart?
 
For what it is worth I consider Brother crap, Canon a little better and am transitioning my Epson printers back to HP as the old ones die becasue i'm tired of the wasted ink and clogging heads.

HP puts the print head in the ink cartridges. Epson, Canon, Lexmark and Brother put them in the printer so if they clog and won't clear you have to spend $100+ to get a new head. Photo printers are even worse since they have 5-7 cartridges instead of 4.

-Check the cost of cartridges AND the number of pages per cartridge before you buy.
--Check if you can buy after market or reconditioned cartridges for your printer to keep cost down.
--Epson keeps changing their smart chips to drive out the after market ink guys and every printer seems to use a different cartridge driving up costs.

See what you can do on remanufactured HP cartridges. They are a little cheaper and I've seen them sold locally (Walmart, Office Depot).
 
Thanks for the advice LeeJend! I'll be sticking with HP, I have the HP Photosmart C7280. I'll try to see if I can get remanufactured HP cartridges next time.
 
I have a canon I-860 maybe 3 years old and I can print black only if I want at any time. No matter if the color cartages are empty or not, I’ve done it many time when the kids ran the color out doing school work.

What I did was went into the printer preferences… Right click the printer… select Printer Preferences and on the Main tab tick the box at Grayscale Printing click Apply and OK. Now on my printer and the 3 I had before it this was all I had to do to print black only every time.

Yours may be worded differently but look for “Grayscale printing”

May not work on yours but worth a look.
 
Do you do alot of black and white printing? If so I would recommend a laser printer.
 
I have a canon I-860 maybe 3 years old and I can print black only if I want at any time. No matter if the color cartages are empty or not, I’ve done it many time when the kids ran the color out doing school work.

What I did was went into the printer preferences… Right click the printer… select Printer Preferences and on the Main tab tick the box at Grayscale Printing click Apply and OK. Now on my printer and the 3 I had before it this was all I had to do to print black only every time.

Yours may be worded differently but look for “Grayscale printing”

May not work on yours but worth a look.
Even if I choose grayscale printing it won't work because it's my printer that's refusing to print. It won't print if even one ink cartridge is empty.

Do you do alot of black and white printing? If so I would recommend a laser printer.
Yes I mainly do black and white printing but sometimes I need to print in color. I'll definitely be getting a laserjet printer sometime in the future since it will save me a lot of money on the ink!
 
The thing that think is a scam is when the ink cartridge cost more than the printer !!
 
The thing that think is a scam is when the ink cartridge cost more than the printer !!
Exactly the reason I switched to laser years back - toner actually lasts a lot longer too (in most cases, varying on use)
 
I've purchased a HP C7280 recently. Only using it for scanning at the moment and am able to do so without having any ink installed. :)
 

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