Back at the apartment my printer has been out of commission for nigh on six month because it ran out of color ink. In its infinite wisdom, the printer decided that this means it shouldn’t be printing in black and white either. Farhad Manjoo has a good piece in Slate about how to fight back against the worsening trend of printers pretending they’re out of ink:
Eventually I came upon a note on FixYourOwnPrinter.com posted by a fellow calling himself OppressedPrinterUser. This guy had also suspected that his Brother was lying to him, and he’d discovered a way to force it to fess up. Brother’s toner cartridges have a sensor built into them; OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he’d installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work...
In the long run, though, the printer companies’ strong line against cartridge makers seems destined to fail. Buying ink and toner is an enormous drag. Having to do it often, and at terribly steep prices, breeds resentment—made all the worse by my printer’s lying ways. Some companies are realizing this. When Kodak introduced a new line of printers last year, it emphasized its low ink costs. Kodak claims that its cartridges last twice as long as those of other printers and sell for just $10 to $15 each, a fraction of the price of other companies’ ink. When my Brother finally runs dry, perhaps I won’t replace the toner—I’ll replace the printer.
Sounds good to me, I’ll check out that Kodak line. Read the whole piece for more tips.
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