In comp.periphs.printers, on Sun, 9 Aug 2015 11:28:37 +0100, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , Tony Hwang
writes:
micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Wed, 22 Jul 2015 15:18:18 -0400, Paul
wrote:
[]
The cyan cartridge didn't even have the window that showed the ink in
all the oem cartridges. The window isnt' there and the room in back
of the window is not there. It's like one house has a porch and the
other house has no porch at all.

Hard to believe, in an era of chipped cartridges,
someone is still doing this. Using LEDs to sense ink.

I don't see why: seems to me a perfectly sensible way of doing it, and
IMO _far_ preferable to the chip method. The chip method is often
inaccurate, and must add to the cost of the cartridges - as well as
giving the manufacturers an at least theoretical, in countries where
DMCA is valid, monopoly, so they can charge what they like.
[]
Here back to school special on Brother MFC-J475DW for 59.00.
Brother is very finicky about inks. They do too many cleaning cycles
wasting ink. You can empty ink cartridges without printing a single
page. Power off when not in use.

The manual says it cleans the heads periodically even when it's off.

Would have to unplug it. Their idea is that someone doesn't have to
remember to print something every two months. He can go for a year
without printing anything and the heads won't be clogged, though the
cartridges may be empty!

Good advice for virtually all makes, as they all do it. Though print
something occasionally - whether once a week or once a month or other
period different people have different ideas of (probably varies with
model, temperature, and humidity) to stop things drying up and thus
blocking.