Deskjet Review

I am thinking to buy a printer (hp deskjet ink advantage k209g). When i see the printer specifications, i see that it supports hp tricolour cartridge. It has three colours. How do i print pages which are having colours other than that in the cartridge ? Please help me soon.

HP was known for good printers. Lately they’re know for expensive printers and even more expensive ink. HP is the only company which:
1) puts an expiration date in the chip of the cartridge. You can insert a new sealed cartridge and have the printer reject it because it is expired
2) changes the size of the cartridges to make them smaller but keeps the same model number. You buy a cartridge at the store which is the same model your printer came with only to discover the cartridge wont fit because it is the other version.
I won’t even go into details on their terrible tech support, run by Indians with thick accents who read off a script and can solve nothing.
There are a lot of HP fans who bought their printers years ago when they were still good. It will take a while before people realize how much worse the company has become.

As for having all three colors on one cartridge, this is also a bad idea. Assume the cartridge can hold 20 ml of ink. Now it has to hold 3 colors so you are lucky if you get 6 ml of each. Then if any one of them runs out, the whole cartridge has to be replaced. What a waste. With individual color cartridges you get 20 ml of each color and you only replace the one which is out.

Epson wins for best price/feature comparison, best warranty and lowest cost of ink. You can’t beat their warranty. If anything goes wrong, they will fedex a replacement and pick up the old one at their expense. You can get ink for under 50 cents a cartridge at www.ccs-digital.com. You pay under 2.50 for reusable cartridges and then get $2 back for the empties. Or you can buy refillables (which is what Im using now) and refill yourself for pennies. Take a look at the workforce 3520 and 3540. They have received rave reviews from people who bought them.

I have a HP Deskjet F2180 and recently replaced my ink cartridges (HP Tri-colour 22 and HP Black 21) but now It’s started printing my pictures bright purple. I’ve tried cleaning the cartridges and I’ve done a self-test/diagnostic page but nothing has showed up – the colours were fine. Any help with this would be brilliant.

What exactly are you doing to print your pictures bright purple? You say you’ve "cleaned the cartridges" and done a diagnostic, but the diagnostic actually shows up a normal piece of paper and your colour test is completely normal?

A bit more help on this one would’ve been good which is probably why no one answered it but I’ll give it a shot anyways. The only way you’re getting purple is from red and blue, so here’s what you try.

Make a new page in Photoshop or whatever program you happen to be using at the time. You’re going to do a couple of things to it.

– Make 8 squares on the page. In your colour selector, make one 100% Cyan, one 100% Magenta, one 100% Yellow, one 100% black.

– Make the other 4 squares 50% magenta, 50% cyan, one 25% cyan 25% magenta, one 75% magenta 75% cyan, and one 100% magenta and 50% cyan.

I’m willing to bet your magenta ink is the issue. Print off that page. If you’re saying that your test page prints out fine, what you should see on this page you’ve created should be the problem – Somewhere on the page. Your printer can’t print Cyan as anything other than Cyan, Yellow other than yellow, Black other than black and Magenta as Magenta. Then, since you’re getting a purple, the separations I mentioned should show you where the error is.

Without knowing the problem, I’d be willing to bet it’s your magenta ink. You might have to manually adjust magenta out of your pictures to balance them out, or replace the cartridge entirely.

Hope that helped.

I have a HP Deskjet F2180 and recently replaced my ink cartridges (HP Tri-colour 22 and HP Black 21) but now It’s started printing my pictures bright purple. I’ve tried cleaning the cartridges and I’ve done a self-test/diagnostic page but nothing has showed up – the colours were fine. Any help with this would be brilliant.

Instead of wasting your ink, you can simply use a Q-tip with some water on it and wipe the head clean. That being said, you also have to locate the print head. Different manufacturers place the print head in different locations. Some like Epson put the head inside the printer and others the print head is part of the cartridge itself. There are some who would recommend alcohol, but that could damage your printer in the long run. A third option is to buy a print head cleaning kit, but again, that’s spending money directly.

I have a HP Deskjet F2180 and recently replaced my ink cartridges (HP Tri-colour 22 and HP Black 21) but now It’s started printing my pictures bright purple. I’ve tried cleaning the cartridges and I’ve done a self-test/diagnostic page but nothing has showed up – the colours were fine. Any help with this would be brilliant.

Instead of wasting your ink, you can simply use a Q-tip with some water on it and wipe the head clean. That being said, you also have to locate the print head. Different manufacturers place the print head in different locations. Some like Epson put the head inside the printer and others the print head is part of the cartridge itself. There are some who would recommend alcohol, but that could damage your printer in the long run. A third option is to buy a print head cleaning kit, but again, that’s spending money directly.