printer for my windows 7 computer

[draclvr]

I read a lot about when they happened with HP - it was pretty awful. Luckily I never ran into it, but then I never buy the cheaper replacement cartidges. Since I don't use it a lot, I always buy the HP brand. I had bad luck with the cheaper cartridges leaking more than once and never used them again.

[middletoe]

I read a lot about when they happened with HP - it was pretty awful. Luckily I never ran into it, but then I never buy the cheaper replacement cartidges.

I bought the exact make and model printer ink as was recommended by HP in the manual that came with the printer. The cartridges cost $33 or $34 for a little bit of a thing. I did not use any other type of ink cartridge with that printer at any time.
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Since I don't use it a lot, I always buy the HP brand.

And that wouldn't make any difference. The cartridge would "time out" whether you'd used the printer a lot or not at all. The only thing you could depend on was the risk of having to buy a new cartridge every time you needed to do some printing. You could either find out your printer thought it was "empty" before going out and buying another cartridge. Or you could just assume the cartridge would be empty and buy ink before going home. In either case, you'd have to be sure to keep the receipt for your ink cartridge, just in case the "new" one was also out of date. There was no way to tell whether the expensive HP cartridge you bought -- the one HP themselves recommended for your particular printer -- was going to be "out of date" or not, which may be why the office supply store I bought from was selling out-of-date cartridges. Even the people working in the shop couldn't tell what the "out of date" date was.

So you might as well throw out the cartridge after using it, since you'd never know if it would continue working between printings. Your freshly bought cartridge might last a week, a day, or might already be expired. Hold onto your receipt and assume the cartridges are "per use" rather than "until the ink runs out." So now instead of a printer that cost around $50 with cartridges that cost about $33 every time they need replacing, you have a printer that's around $50 with cartridges that cost you $33 each time you use the printer.

[JKEerie]

I had a couple HP printers. The last one I owned, I turned on one day and the cartridge started moving across the printer and banging against the side...over and over again...like it was possessed. Then it started smoking! Needless to say, I quickly unplugged it and trashed it. I think I replaced that one with the Epson, which has been functioning quite well over the years. I finally decided to try the non-Epson cartridges which are a lot cheaper. The brand I got had solid reviews at Amazon. So far, they've been easily recognized by my printer and have worked quite well.

[draclvr]

Smoking, eh! Wow! No wonder you threw it in the trash!

I guess I've lived a charmed life with my hp printer and cartridges over the last 5 years!

[JKEerie]

I had an HP Deskjet that worked quite well. The cartridges were expensive and I just decided to replace it with the possessed HP. I hung onto the Deskjet until recently when I turned it into electronics recycling.

[LadyKestrel]

That out-of-date mess with HP is wacky. I use an Epson with color cartridges with my older iMac, and my printer/scanner has color tanks. The software allows me to see my ink levels in real time, and I've never had a problem with either.