Not in my experience. I have a Deskjet F380 all-in-one which I keep around for black-and-white document printing (although I will occasionally print a non-photo color document on it) and it will not allow me to print B&W if the color inks are empty.
you can’t count on any one brand. i think brands have done multiple behaviors with it getting worse in recent years.
Check the printer settings. My previous and current HP actually do use color ink when printing pure black and white. I have to go to one of the more buried settings to tell the driver to use pure black and white.
I’ve tried forcing black-ink-only in the driver. No luck.
Is it only the business model that makes the cartridges so expensive? Or is there another factor in the cost of making these evil things cost so much? Is it the ink itself? What is it?
I agree with this. My big problem with ink jet printers is I don’t print enough. The cartridges would clog up not run out. The color printers are getting cheap also.
I have 3 printers.
I have my laser printer for text printing.
I have a little HP photo printer that makes excellent 5x7s.
And I have a multi-purpose scanner/printer thingy that we only use for scanning.
I’ve done the math. Even factoring in a gallon of gas for a round trip, it’s cheaper to go to walgreens/Kinkos on the rare occasions I need something different than to maintain a full page color printer.
Yes, this is the solution. Often by default printers will print black white images using all four colors of CMYK, when in fact you only need the K (which is black). So your “black” is really a dark mix of all the colors.
Under printer options there should be a setting allowing you to use only the black ink. Finding the setting may be a pain in the ass. With my Epson, I think it’s under printer settings under “output” or “color managment” or “call the wizards to make a sacrifice to the ink gods.” All I know is that once I found it, I saved the particular setting as a pre-set, so I can now choose B&W proof and my color ink cartridges will now last months or years.
So your printer lets you print black-and-white if the color ink levels are out? Just for fun, I tried removing my HP F380’s color ink cartridge and printing using the “Grayscale Only” option in the print driver. I get the error “The color print cartridge is not installed.” I’ve had the issue before where I was out of color ink (color cartridge installed) and the printer would not let me print a black-and-white Word file with the grayscale only option selected. The error was something along the lines of “the color print cartridge is out of ink.”
My Espon Style R1800 bahaves the same way. The instant ANY ink cartridge registers out of ink (and there’s eight to choose from), it will not print. Even if the gloss optimizer is gone and you deselect gloss optimization, it will not print until you install a fresh cartridge. If a color cartridge is out and you select grayscale only (Color: Black in the Epson driver), it won’t take. So the solution may very well not work for a lot of people if their color inks (or one of them) are already out.
Or do as I do, set b&w as the default, then only choose color on the rare occasions when you need it. I hardly ever have to replace my color cartridge. Why deplete both for ordinary b&w printing? I also set my default print on a setting that is between draft quality and normal quality. I can’t see a difference in ordinary documents on my old HP inkjet printer.
I recently downloaded the font Spranq eco sans which is supposed to use 20% less ink by way of putting little tiny holes in the letters which aren’t apparent to the eye at normal letter sizes. It’s kind of ugly, but for some uses, it’s fine. http://www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_en.html Although I rarely print anything that I don’t need to look good, I could see making my kids use it.
That’s odd. Since I print so very little in color, I never worry about having a color cartridge (or currently, cartridges). Both HP’s were pro series, though, and so I wonder if that’s just another advantage. Although… I’m still on the starter ink on the current HP, so I’ve not tried it with a missing cartridge or even being out of ink.
Actually dot matrix is still around because it can print multi part forms which inkjets and lasers cannot because of the lack of surface impact.
I have a Brother MFC printer. Separate CMYK tanks, and when one runs out the others keep running. The only downside is that no one will refill them, but the off-brands are pretty cheap replacement.
My particular model is older, but they still have models that work that way.
I just went into the driver settings and under Print Advisor, selected Fast-print All-black Text. It appears that it all it did was check the grayscale box and change the print quality to Custom. I saved the profile and it’s now current.
I hope that does the trick! But I kind of think it’ll stop printing when the color’s out anyway. Mine’s a Canon MP530.
I have a HP deskjet D1341, which was one of their cheapest models a couple of years ago (and not the greatest printer overall) but it doesn’t try to pull that crap. I’d be furious! If the color (or b/w) cartridge is low, I get a warning screen. Click “OK” and printing proceeds.