To avoid changing the color cartridges? I just inherited this HP officejet 6600. I’m not going to be buying color cartridges in this life anyway.
Are you opposed to refilling the cartridges you refuse to replace?
Do no printing.
I mean, you can do a continuous ink system if that’s what you’re after, but I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking about.
Toss it, get a new one.
It’s $470 on Amazon.
Those things go through ink like Bob and Doug McKenzie go through beer. You’re gonna be buying ink. You can get second-hand refilled cartridges from Amazon or go to Walgreens and get them refilled for less than $15, but if you use the printer, you’re going to need ink sooner or later.
I don’t think Beck meant he had to get the exact same model.
I didn’t. I like the idea of refilling them, though.
I said it before in a different post, but you can use one of those flavor injector needles and cheap clothing dye (Magenta green blue, Cyan or blood orange and Yellow) to refill some of them. You can get this stuff at the dollar store or you can get a nice kit for like six bucks on ebay that works fantastic, comes with huge containers too and a set of needles. I haven’t bought an ink cartridge in close to 3 years now. Still have plenty left from my ebay kit. From the amount I’ve printed, I have saved hundreds of dollars doing this and on a cheap canon pixma printer.
Aftermarket continuous ink systems always seem to me like the sort of thing that might go wrong, and with quite spectacular mess when it does.
As a halfway house solution, there are also third-party refillable cartridges available for nearly all printer models - they are typically transparent and have removable rubber bungs for refilling with cheap bulk ink.
In the long run, inkjets are just a pain - brilliant bit of technology, but just not very well suited to any particular use.
I’m pretty sure the OP is referring to HP’s irritating policy of not allowing you to print in black and white if any of the color cartridges are empty.
The ‘hack’ is to pony up for some color cartridges, set all your documents to print in black only, and never run any printer diagnostics. The color cartridges should last a pretty long time that way. But the more basic answer is that is the wrong printer to own if you don’t intend to print in color.
On this topic, I have an old (5 years old!) HP printer/scanner/copier that I like to use for scanning things. Unfortunately it is out of ink. So when I scan, I can only use the Microsoft program that came with my computer, not the HP program, which is annoying because (1) I can’t name the file or say where it goes and (2) it won’t put multiple pages into one file like the HP program would do. (I also have a veritable, truly antique scanner, circa 2002, but it is sssslllloooowww.)
I have looked online for ways to convince this fucking inanimate object that it doesn’t need ink, since IT’S NOT PRINTING ANYTHING, but to no avail. There are some tips, including one YouTube video using the exact printer, but unfortunately the maker of that video has a very heavy accent and I can’t understand what he’s saying, and the screens he shows are not screens that I actually get to, so…bummer.
Why can’t it figure out that if it can print from one program, it can print from the better program? I know HP would really like me to buy more ink. But I’m not gonna.
$75 will buy you a brand new laser printer. Cost per page printed is tiny by comparison.
This and This.
The printer may defeat you with this - many models print ‘process black’ where they use all 4 colours to produce black - so the colour tanks are being consumed even if you think you are printing pure mono.
Yes, as far as I know HP inkjets don’t do that though. At least using their drivers, they have a setting to only use the black cartridge. However they do use some color ink occasionally for diagnostics on start up that the user can’t disable. But that is only every several months or so depending on the circumstances.
Ironically when the black cartridge gets empty the driver will offer to mix color ink instead of black, making an already expensive print ridiculously expensive. But if even one color cartridge is empty or just too low for the driver’s comfort, it refuses to let you print at all, even in straight black.
For the credulous, HP claims this is because the printer needs to be able to do those diagnostics to function properly. But it is obvious it’s a scheme that goes all the way up to the engineering of the printers and drivers to require users to buy as much ink as possible.
Those.
Deez, dem, an’ doze. 
I imagine they’ll have done the necessary engineering to make the diagnostics essential, but you’re right - the end goal is to sell you more ink.