When Should the Printer Ink Cartridge be Changed?
Answer: Not when your printer tells you to change the Ink Cartridges
This is a battle that I have fought for years…
When do you change out a printer’s ink or toner cartridge.
I have always resisted changing a printer’s ink cartridge when the ink is low or toner is low warning appears.
In fact, I always insist that no toner or ink cartridges should be replaced until there are visible signs that the quality of the printing is being affected.
And sometimes you can get a little more use out of cartridges by just shaking them gently.
Now many of my users fight me on this and want to replace these cartridges as soon as the ink or toner low message appears.
They just don’t want to be caught not being able to print.
I understand how the feel, but the amount of money that can be save just doesn’t outweigh the inconvenience factor.
My experience is that once a message appears, a printer can go on for days and normally weeks after a toner or ink low message appears.
It all depends on how much use a printer gets and when the message first appears.
I always made my case to whomever in the company is paying for the ink.
I argued that they can save up to 50 percent of what they normally spend on printer and toner cartridges by waiting until the printer just isn’t printing usable copies to change out the ink.
Now PC World has conducted a study of ink cartridges that shows I have been right all along.
In their study, PC World found that anywhere from 8 to 45 percent of the ink remained in a cartridge after the low ink warning appeared.
The study was conducted on a variety of printers from Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Kodak.
So hold off as long as you can on changing out your ink cartridges and you save a wad of cash.