I guess that title could mean a lot of things. In this case I mean screwed as in screwed over and printer as in laser printer. I apologize to everyone having an affair with someone at Kinko’s if I have offended or scared you. Don’t worry, your secret is still safe. What I mean is I figured out a setting on my printer that just saved me about $250.
I have a HP Color Laser Jet 2605dn printer. I generally like it; it does a great job on printing, is fast and prints on both sides of the page. It works with my PCs and the Mac very well. It also came with full toner cartridges when I bought it about 2 years ago. This is something that is rare, but very nice. I did find one feature, which I didn’t even know existed, that I don’t like. This is the feature that tells you when your toner is gone.
Each cartridge has a chip in it that keeps track of the toner level. The idea is that when the toner is low the printer can alert you, and tell you to buy more. When it thinks that the toner is gone, the printer won’t print anymore. All of that makes sense, except that level indicator is not accurate. It’s not even close to accurate. Apparently it assumes that every page uses color. So, you can ‘run out’ of color toner even if you only print in black and white!
I realized this as my wife wanted to print something in black and white and the printer would not work. I then did a little looking and found this …
At the control panel: Press the right arrow twice (System Setup). Next press the Select Key (check mark). Then, press the right arrow twice (Print Quality), then Select. Next, press the right arrow (Replace Supplies), then Select (Stop at Out). Press the right arrow (Override Out), press Select.
I followed those instructions and then printed a test page. Perfect color! I understand that this will eventually run out, but I wonder how many people just run to the store and spend the $250 on new toner when they don’t really need to. I’m glad I found this setting, and I would encourage you to check your printers to see if there is something similar.
This is not out of toner at all
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