No, but how much effort and aggro does that mean? My history is monochrome printers and toner getting more and more expensive. “They’re getting too many copies per penny? OK we got to raise the price again” Toner is just a big scam. I assume I can still get a black and white one.
I looked up the way to get it to print monochrome and it said “You may have to reset with each printing job” !?
Closer and closer to the bubble popping.
In my experience, toner (for my B&W laser printer) actually isn’t that expensive. I’ve found third-party replacement cartridges to be quite reasonable in price and performance.
Yes yes yes.
I’ve only had 2 or 3 printers in the computer era. The first was a lexmark that lasted 10 years and I never had to change the toner cartridge. It was unreal. It’s been all downhill since then. I never even thought of getting a color printer.
But the help on HP 6600 said you might need to reset to b&w with each job. Not a good enough fix for me.
People who print business docs don’t need color. They must not be buying this product.
What do you want? Perpetual motion?
Just buy some aftermarket ink: https://www.ebay.com/itm/5PK-HP-932XL-933XL-Ink-for-OfficeJet-6600-6700-7610-Black-Cyan-Magenta-Yellow/390866411316?hash=item5b01741f34:g:aGgAAOSwvPRZX--C
Is this ink or toner? Or both?
You’re right. I am very wary of toner sales schemes. It’s the most naked greed showing itself.
Thanks neighbor. I just bought that.
I just want to print with one button, and I hate getting new toner, and would like to avoid “colors” in this. But aftermarket will work until I get this figured out.
I have a Brother printer that will refuse to print black and white (B&W) when any of the color (CMY) cartridges are low, even if I have plenty of black ink.
Not sure on the HP, but on the Brother cartridges, there is a little clear plastic ‘window’ that the printer uses to detect the ink level. So on the Brother cartridges, I usually just stick a little masking tape (or whatever opaque tape I happen to have handy) over the little ‘window’ and put it back into the printer. It tricks the printer into thinking it has color and ink, and it lets me print by black and white page…sticking it to the man!
I had a Canon printer that wouldn’t let me print if the color cartridge was empty, even if I was just printing plain black text. I found an option in the print settings for “print grayscale” and then it would let me print using only the black ink cartridge.
Power to the people!
That sounds like something that if it was me that tried it it wouldn’t work in a million years.
I had another thought - You could refill all the colour cartridges with black ink. The printer has no idea what ink is in there.
I’ve been very happy with a monochrome laser printer. A cartridge lasts forever, and isn’t terribly expensive. Oh, and I think I scans in color.
I never ever ever ever ever print in color. ( thought that song went differently, didncha? 
)
I have an HP Envy 4500. Envy my ass.
This printer demands color by default. Lacking a color cartridge, many applications are not permitted to print at all. Applications like… Microsoft Word. :mad:
So. I’ve tried a few work-arounds and hands down the easiest is to open a document, do my work and then save it as a PDF. See, unlike Word, Acrobat Reader can be set on Black and White printing only. I can then print out as need be.
It takes a few seconds to do the extra step, since I’m not exactly printing The Brothers Karamazov here.
I have a Brother printer, and yes it will stop when a cartridge is too low and refuse to do anything, but aftermarket cartridges are less then $1 each (bought in a pack that contains 2 of each color and 2 black). I don’t do much printing and perhaps change them each out once or twice a year. Not really a big expense. If I printed more often I may look for another solution. Also the printer does run though a maintenance cycle every week or so, most likely more ink is use in that then use, but unlike my former printer the heads are never clogged. Probably a mess of ink inside.
So if you never print in color, why do you own a printer capable of doing so? You can get a monochrome laser printer for under a hundred bucks.
Agree. In that particular use case, a laser printer should be a complete no-brainer - Inkjets are a necessary evil for some people in some applications, but they are evil - a mono laser printer will just sit there waiting to print, and print perfectly on the first page - the same cannot be said of inkjets.
This is my beef about inkjets, and why I’ll never again willingly install (let alone spend money on) an inkjet printer.
I’m an infrequent printer. That means an inkjet wastes most of my ink clearing the printheads, which dry up and clog because I don’t print often enough. And not always successfully, either – I’ve had HP-style combined printhead-and-ink-cartridge jobbies stay unusably clogged after a dozen attempts to clear, and had to toss them – even though they were still nearly full.
Mono lasers are very inexpensive, have great B/W print quality, relatively low price-per-page, extremely high reliability, and are speedy and quiet. Color lasers (I have one, a color all-in-one) are all of that, minus “low price-per-page” when printing color (but still true if printing pure black-and-white). My color laser all-in-one cost less than OP’s inkjet all-in-one, too. Toner cartridges are notably more expensive than ink tanks would be, but I go through them much less frequently and they’re never wasted on “cleaning” and clog-removal.
Agree 100% with everything you (and several others up-thread) have said. The OP is being penny wise and pound foolish playing with a “free” color inkjet he was gifted vs buying the B&W laser that fits his use case.
Ref the snip below I have a quibble:
I’d edit that to read:Toner cartridges are notably more expensive per cartridge *but much cheaper per page *than ink tanks would be. And there’s zero wastage to boot.
A tiny amount of caution is worthwhile when shopping for a budget laser printer - as the market shifts, some manufacturers seem to be configuring their entry level laser products with similar pricing models as became ubiquitous with inkjets - that is: cheap initial cost for the printer, then dependence on tiny, expensive toner cartridges.
Before you buy a laser printer, just check the page life and cost of the consumables - some of them are not so cheap.
My HP All-in-one does color scans, monochrome printing. It was in the sub $200 range, and many reams of paper have been printed on a single toner cartridge, which is replaceable for something on the order of $60.
When I had an inkjet, I was spending hundreds of dollars a year on ink, or making a mess trying to refill (which never worked properly for me).
I manage a large print environment at my work, and we don’t allow inkjet printers to be purchased through IT, partly because of the cost/hassle of ink replacements.
If you’re a business, buy business level gear. Laser for printing on paper, ink if you need high quality photo reproduction. If you print only a little high quality photo, it’s cheaper in the long run (both time and trouble) to pay more to outsource the photo printing than it does to have the “convenient” device onsite.
I don’t know if you have had a brother printer but the wastage happens in lasers too. At a certain toner level the result you get, after hitting print on your 50 page document, is not the printer using all of the toner for your purposes, until it can’t anymore, but giving pages that are tiger striped with blank space, reminding you that it is time to get more toner, and wasting paper, and toner, while it tells you that important message.
Your point is perfectly made though. I had been looking forward to getting this printer some day only because it has a scanner. i never even thought beyond that, because I made the move to lasers in 1990 and never went back. I don’t think about ink printers at all anymore, and just forgot my moms might be one. So i’m with you.