Ink Level Monitors Exposed
If you send a number of documents to your printer and then can't remember exactly which ones you've sent, get a listing of documents waiting to print: Double-click on the printer icon that appears in the system tray when any job is printing. A list of all pending documents will appear.
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Take advantage of your printer vendor's Web site to find helpful information
and free downloads. For example, Hewlett-Packard sponsors Printsville
(http://www.hp.com/printing_ideas/), which provides downloads of calendars, business cards and promotional items.
Epson has tons of crafting projects that you can download for free.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/PrintLab/PrintLab.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes
Lexmark has hundreds of projects for your printer too.
http://www.lexmark.com/sequentialem/home/0,6361,204816596_237467980_0_en,00.html
These links are very long. Be sure to get the entire link in your browser.
Some email clients will attempt to wrap the lines and they won't work properly.
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At US$22 per quarter-ounce, a Hewlett-Packard color ink-jet cartridge is more expensive, by weight, than imported Russian caviar.
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Chris Enos writes in with another solution for resetting HP cartridges.
"The HP 7960 along with all new model HP printers have a 2 cartridge memory. To show a full cartridge the printer must be introduced two different cartridges before it will read full on the third cartridge. I use a three cartridge system labeled 1, 2, and 3. When filling 1 I put in 2 and when filling 2 I use 3 and when filling 3 I am back to using 1. This assures that the printer will see each cartridge as new and hence give me a full reading for all the ink cartridges I use."
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Correction to last weeks newsletter. I erroneously stated that some Lexmark cartridges needed the tape method to be reset. Actually what I wanted to say
was some Lexmark cartridges need to be installed a few times before the ink levels will reset. The original wording was, "Same goes for Lexmark. You need the tape trick here. Ironically the same problems here as with the HP cartridges. It may not work on the first try." Should read, "Same goes for Lexmark. But you don't need the tape trick here. Ironically the same
problems here as with the HP cartridges. It may not work on the first try.
Sorry, my bad!
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Can't get enough inkjet printer info? One of the most popular digital photography mailing lists is run by Leben Lists. The list is extremely active (you'll be buried in e-mails) and covers the printer itself, cables, network interface, printer drivers, RIPs, printing from applications, file setup, ink cartridges, paper stocks, transfers, image quality, resolution & DPI, file formats, color proofing, Colorsync, Postscript, and calibration. To subscribe, send an email to majordomo@leben.com with the words "subscribe epson-inkjet" in the message. No subject is required. You can remove yourself from the list at any time by sending a similar message with the words "unsubscribe epson-inkjet" in the message body.
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Ink Level Monitors Exposed
by Barry Shultz
I wanted to write a lengthy article about how ink level monitors work but this newsletter is already getting a bit wordy. I like to keep the newsletters
fairly short because I for one hate reading a newsletter with more words than Bill Clintons book (957 pages). :-)
Here's a condensed version.
When you print a page on your inkjet printer, if you have your drivers properly installed, you will see a small screen pop up telling you how full
your cartridges are. How does your printer know this?
Most printers count ink drops. Every line of print is produced by tiny droplets of ink and your very smart printer keeps track of every one of them. It's pretty impressive because it's nothing for
today's inkjet printers to lay down 12,000,000 drops per second.
Canon also uses an optical method. The ink sensor monitors the ink levels through optical detection and dot counting and alerts users when the supply of any color ink is low.
Canon's ink level system is probably the most accurate although you can still trick the printer into printing more from an "empty" ink tank. Just tell the
software that you have installed a new cartridge and you can get more pages out of it.
As I mentioned before in a previous newsletter you can reset the Epson cartridges after they run out and get a whole lot more pages out of them.
Of course you need an Epson universal resetter to do that.
Things can happen to throw off this counter and you may get erroneous readings from your ink level indicator, so don't put a whole lot of trust in
it. It's just a guide.
It goes both ways too. Sometimes your levels will be good but your ink cartridge runs out of ink. It could be that the cartridge was not filled
properly at the factory but it most likely is caused by faulty ink level data.
The data can get corrupt by things like power loss from lightning storms, a virus, hard drive crashes, Spyware, corrupt printer drivers etc, etc.
So when you think you have a tough job just be glad you don't have to keep track of 12,000,000 drops of ink per second all day long!
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Till next time.
Happy printing
Barry Shultz
Atlascopy, Inc.
PO Box 1292
Dover, DE. 19903
http://atlascopy.com
You may freely distribute this article as long as you include the following at the end of the article with the URL hard linked exactly as it is on this web page.
Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy,
Inc. Atlascopy specializes in
affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for
the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm
Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies.
http://atlascopy.com
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