Don’t ask me how this rather expensive little critter passed into my ownership – I think that I gobbled it up at a raffle a few months ago.
So far, it served me well and produced decent photo prints…until it suddenly treated me to the message below tonight:
The insane thing about this message is that the cartridge is still half full. Lexmark’s printers count down the number of printed pages rather than actually analyze the amount of ink left in the cartridge – which means that they usually remain half full when finally thrown away.
While this may be enough to pi$$ off ecology freaks, the thing which tipped yours truly over was the formulation of the message – it reminded me of a past, very funny incident involving pineapples…
Dear L-boys: congratulations. You have just made sure that I won’t buy another Lexmark product…for a long time. I may still buy an ink cartridge or two: but when that critter breaks down, I’ll go for Brother, HP or Epson…
Any printer annoyances to share?
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Lexmark’s are pretty mediocre printers anyway. My personal favorites are HP and Canon.
It wasn’t long ago that we were involved in a class action suit against Epson for similar reasons. It was found that Epson ink jet printers were saying there was no ink left when in reality there was (with our Epson R380 printer it halts printing entirely when 1 of 6 cartridges generates this message). Needless to say Epson lost the suit and we had some free ink from the Epson online store (not nearly enough to compensate considering the cost of ink).
Same with HP. I have an Office-Jet that refuses to print a B/W-Page when the color-cartridge is empty
It’s the same thing with nearly all printers: the cash cow is not the printer itself, but the ink. Just take a look at the price of a new printer and the price for a set of replacement cartridges…
Tam,
quite snotty policy of Lexmark, this is unbelievable.
But did you try any workaround?
Like replacing the cartridge and reinserting the old one?
Or maybe doing a factory reset to reset the page counter?
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/reference/guides/reset/lexmark
Or unplug it for a day or two so it can loose the settings?
I had the same issues with my Lexmark printer.
Also, my HP PhotoSmart would only print about 12 photos before claiming to be out of ink. And the cartridges we so poorly made that air leaked into them, drying up the ink in about two weeks’ time.
I will now only buy laser printers, and I always look for the one with the lowest cartridge price, not the lowest printer price.
HP printers will not be such a problem
Hi Folks,
I think/fear that there is a chip in the cartridge which manages the count-down process.
Anyways, I am rid of another 20 Euros now for a new cartridge…lovely…
All the best
Tam Hanna
I Googled about the possibility of a chip in the cartridge, and found that there is a fuse inside the cartridge according to
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080110135819AAHKaQh
My suggestion is to dissect the old cartridge, and find the contacts the fuse is connected to and jump them on the new one.