Saturday, October 02, 2010

Printer Perfidy

Thank God for the Internet. It really does help you fight corporate malfeasance (great word) and all forms of product deception that try to make you buy things you don't need. When your printer says you have used up your ink - don't believe it! And when it says you will damage your printer if you keep printing without changing the cartridge - don't believe it! And then, later, even months later, when it insists that you have really used up ALL OF THE INK NOW and the printer seizes up but then tells you, one assumes by law, how many times to press the Resume button to get it going again while threatening THIS IS IT, FINALLY, YOUR LAST WARNING I WILL REALLY BREAK THIS TIME IF YOU DO THIS - don't believe it! And then several weeks or months later again, when your printer really and truly is out of ink, it will stop printing, probably mid-page. Then and only then do you need to replace the cartridge. I found all this information online from many users who insist that their printers are still running fine after ignoring the increasingly hysterical attempts by their printer to make them change the cartridge before it needed to be changed. I can also say this is my experience too. It's now two months since my printer first started warning me that I was out of black ink and two weeks since I fiddled with the Resume button to get it going again after it seized up. Yep, there's still ink in the old boy yet. Truth is - printer companies make their money out of cartridges, not printers, so they will do anything to convince you to change your cartridges as often as possible. The perfidy of the corporate world.

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