I had a HP inkjet fax with several hundred MB of driver bloatware.
It refused to print B/W fax and complained colour cartridge was empty.
It has a separate B/W cartridge that was full. Sounds like their firmware
and software was written by sales people.

I have a Kodak printer in which the "print head" is a separate assemply from
the ink carts.

I note that there is a "chip" in each cartridge that, I ASSume, has a serial
number.

I just printed out a test page in which the cartriges 20 digit serial number
is printed.

The software also knows have many cartiidges of each type it has used and
the number of drops of ink (of each color) for this set of ink cartridges
AND for the print heads.

Part of that "bloatware" seems to be to get you to spring for a new
cartridge when the software "decides" it should be low on ink rather than
waiting for the user to decide. That seems to be a wave of the future.
(Lexmart cartridges for newer printers also seem to be "smart."

Re-cyclers can re-fill the cartridges since you are unlikely to get your
old cartridge back.

But if you just put more ink into your own cartridge, the software (which
tracks serial numbers) will still refuse to use it.

Were I not so lazy I would run experiments in which I would, for example,
switch "id chips" between a black cartridge and a color cartridge. Or
re-install the driver software to see whether the memory of the old
cartridges has been extinguished.





M