Who else made the mistake of buying a Hewlett-Packard printer recently ?

[eppur_se_muova]

My mom bought an HP Envy 5660 because she wanted to do some higher-quality printing for a book she's writing. It turns out HP now has a very strict enforcement policy on ONLY replacing the ink cartridges with authentic HP cartridges. I tried refilling one myself and it wouldn't print. I bought a couple of rebuilt cartridges online and the first one was OK, but now the 2nd one won't print. I think I had to reinstall the HP driver for the first one; I haven't tried it yet for the 2nd one.

Anyone else know a way around this ? Even when the first cartridge worked, it kept putting up annoying error messages every time anything was printed. It's put HP on my permanent, lifelong shit list ever since.

[applegrove]

1. I know that for ink jet replacement there was communication between

the old cartridge and the printer. So you had to take out the used cartridge and replace it with the refilled ones really quick.. Like within seconds. So don't take your old cartridge out to refill if it worked. You must have extra ones to refill. Then quickly switch them. Guy at the ink replacement kiosk in the mall told me that.

[rickford66]

2. Other printers behave the same way.

Our Epson printer will sometimes print with non-Epson cartridges (refills) with no problem, other times a warning is generated to ask me if I want to continue and sometimes it just wont print. Also, printers are designed to print so many times before they stop. I thought this was a hoax until one of my workmates a couple years ago knew this is true first hand. There are ways to restart the counter if you know the firmware circuitry.

[matt819]

3. I've been buying hp printers for years

The few times that I’ve used discounted ink cartridges were a failure. Print quality was not as good and my impression was that they didn’t last as long.

Yes, it sucks that they have apparently prohibited it. I haven’t tested that recently so can’t be sure it’s applicable to my model.

On the plus side, I don’t seem to buy cartridges very often. They seem to be lasting longer. I’m not on the office so can’t get page output. I’m not printing photo quality, so there’s that. But otherwise normal b&w and color printing in a small office.

What does bother me is what appears to be price fixing. Apart from the odd sales at staples, the typical price differential between staples snd online sources is negligible.

[badhair77]

4. You might want to check the comments on the reviews

on Amazon, Staples, etc. I looked at this printer and passed after reading thru those. I know there were some commenters who successfully worked around the replacements.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Thanks to all, got it working again. Turned out it was my own boneheaded mistake. nt

[CentralMass]

6. So how is the orinter ?

[eppur_se_muova]

7. It's fine. I had to realign the print heads because of my clumsiness, but that was all. nt

[CentralMass]

10. Ok, good.

[customerserviceguy]

8. Sorry

I don't have any solutions for you, but your mom does have my sympathy. Thirty years ago, HP printers were the workhorses of the office I worked for, cranking out page after page of great print. Then, Carly Fiorina ran the company, and she ran it right into the ground. That's pretty much what she's done with everything, like Lucent, her own campaign for US Senate in California, her presidential campaign, and John McCain's campaign.

And yet, she walks away with megamillions. I don't have a problem with successful people making big bucks, but I resent the hell out of people getting rich for totally screwing everything up.

[Turbineguy]

9. I had an HP and put aftermarket cartidges in it.

It quit printing. I bought a new HP printer last November. And I bought extra HP ink cartridges. Because we live in an apartment I got rid of the empty box. Mistake. The new printer quit before the original cartridges were empty. It's still under warranty which is another way of saying you can spend hours looking for solutions on their website.

I took the printer back to Staples for recycling and they refunded me the price of the cartridges. I bought an Epson Inktank. We'll see how that goes.

[teach1st]

11. Sorry to be so late to the party

I'm using an HP Color LaserJet Pro M252dw. I'm not sure if the newest HP Laser printers support this, but this works for me to allow non-HP cartridges without nagging:

Main page > Setup
> System Setup
> Supply Settings
> Cartridge Policy
> Click "Off" and restart printer

[natheo]

12. I switched to epson

Had bad experiences with HP in the past. Now I use Epson. Good print quality and the ink bottles are cheap.

[CountAllVotes]

14. I have an HP Envy 4500

It works really good for the price (>$100).

I always replace the cartridges with HP cartridges however.

I learned a long time ago that using the genuine cartridges works best for me.

Wish you the best of luck w/it otherwise!