[ralph4370]

I have the HP OfficeJet6000 Wireless and I don't use it very much because it takes forever for it to activate to print a page. I have a Lexmark X2670 that prints immediately. So I use it. Today, I tried using the HP and it showed out of ink for everything but the black. (I installed an extra capacity black a week or two ago.) I very seldom do anything in color. I bought it in July 2010. I loaded new ink cartridges and it works. But it still takes forever for it print anything. Does the ink dry out if it just sits with very little use? The ink is not cheap.

[LincolnSpector]

ralph4370, on 31 May 2011 - 02:51 PM, said:

I have the HP OfficeJet6000 Wireless and I don't use it very much because it takes forever for it to activate to print a page. I have a Lexmark X2670 that prints immediately. So I use it. Today, I tried using the HP and it showed out of ink for everything but the black. (I installed an extra capacity black a week or two ago.) I very seldom do anything in color. I bought it in July 2010. I loaded new ink cartridges and it works. But it still takes forever for it print anything. Does the ink dry out if it just sits with very little use? The ink is not cheap.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ink dries out over time. And I would be very surprised if there was anything you could about it except buy more ink. Inkjet printers are designed primarily to make you buy more ink. From the manufacturers' point of view, that is the reason for their existence.

In fact, if you don't use color very often, I suggest investing in a laser printer. The toner cartridges are even more expensive than ink cartridges, but they last a very long time--thousands of pages. Then you only have to use the inkjet when you need color.


Lincoln

[smax013]

LincolnSpector, on 01 June 2011 - 08:20 AM, said:

ralph4370, on 31 May 2011 - 02:51 PM, said:

I have the HP OfficeJet6000 Wireless and I don't use it very much because it takes forever for it to activate to print a page. I have a Lexmark X2670 that prints immediately. So I use it. Today, I tried using the HP and it showed out of ink for everything but the black. (I installed an extra capacity black a week or two ago.) I very seldom do anything in color. I bought it in July 2010. I loaded new ink cartridges and it works. But it still takes forever for it print anything. Does the ink dry out if it just sits with very little use? The ink is not cheap.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ink dries out over time. And I would be very surprised if there was anything you could about it except buy more ink. Inkjet printers are designed primarily to make you buy more ink. From the manufacturers' point of view, that is the reason for their existence.

In fact, if you don't use color very often, I suggest investing in a laser printer. The toner cartridges are even more expensive than ink cartridges, but they last a very long time--thousands of pages. Then you only have to use the inkjet when you need color.


Lincoln

While I generally agree with this suggestion (my primary printer is a now old LaserJet 6MP), I will note that it does potentially worsen the problem. After all, if you are using the laser printer for most stuff, then there will be even LONGER periods of time between printing something on the inkjet and thus a higher chance of the ink drying up and clogging the inkjet.

As to some things to try...

The first thing to try will depend on the printer. If the inkjet has integrated print heads with the ink cartridge, you can try taking out the cartridges and rubbing the print head surface with rubbing alcohol. If the problem is the print head getting jammed with dried ink, then this might clear away that dried ink. I have done this in the past with one of my original inkjets MANY, MANY years ago. It was REALLY prone to dried ink clogging the print heads.

The other thing to try is to get up some "quick print" document that you either manually or automatically print once a week or so. This might keep the ink from drying out. At one time, I had experimented with creating a batch file that would dump a file to the LPT1 port. Of course, this was back when computers still had parallel ports. While I have not done anything like that recently, I have to imagine that there is some way to "expedite" some simple document to print so that it can be either one step manual process or even an automatic process.

[Szczecinianin]

To prevent quick drying up I print a test page (colours!) about once a week with my inkjet and record the fact. Perhaps you should do the same. I understand you print mostly text, but laser printers are quite BIG and heavy, more like a piece of furniture, and you don't expect that at home. It works better in a regular office, where expensive toners are, so to say, on the house. Besides, in my opinion, inkjets are more universal than LPs as they print text and pictures well enough.

[smax013]

Szczecinianin, on 12 June 2011 - 02:07 AM, said:

To prevent quick drying up I print a test page (colours!) about once a week with my inkjet and record the fact. Perhaps you should do the same. I understand you print mostly text, but laser printers are quite BIG and heavy, more like a piece of furniture, and you don't expect that at home. It works better in a regular office, where expensive toners are, so to say, on the house. Besides, in my opinion, inkjets are more universal than LPs as they print text and pictures well enough.

There are lots of personal laser printers that are not much bigger than most inkjets.

As to toner cartridge costs, yes, they generally cost more than a single ink cartridge, but they generally can print a LOT more pages than a single ink cartridge. Generally speaking, it is cheaper per page to use a B&W laser printer to print B&W pages than it is a to use an inkjet.

Now, I will be the first to agree that if someone wants to be able to print both color and B&W with ONE device, then an inkjet is the way to go. If, however, you are mainly printing B&W (like 90%+ of time), then you might be better off getting a laser printer for the B&W and a good photo printer for the photos and occasional color pages. While you might pay more upfront for this option, in the long run it likely will be cheaper.

As a case in point, I can go years between changing my laser printer's toner cartridge and I print quite a bit. So, while it cost me about $100 to replace the cartridge these days, I know that I spend WAY less than I would for $15 to $25 B&W ink cartridges every couple of months (most likely). I then have the inkjet for when I want a color print, which for me is very rare.

[LiveBrianD]

My family uses a color laser printer with networking for all the computers and it works well enough. The only thing is that the dang thing takes about 2-3 minutes to warm up if I just turned it on, and by then I could've printed with an inkjet. Once it's warmed up though, it's perfectly fine and much faster. It does produce little lines sometimes on images though, but I mainly use it for text. However, we don't print things on photo paper, which I think an inkjet can do. I don't think a laser can do that.

[WinfieldZenith]

This printer is normally useful for small offices. This post has awesome information. Thanks for sharing!

[WinfieldZenith]

This HP office jet wireless printer is really a big achievement in printing field. In wireless printer cable is not require. It can perform multiple functions.