When not using the ink jet cartridges, it is best to put them in a very well
sealed plastic bag with a slightly dampened piece of paper towel, or cloth.

As for refilling these, I have had very little quality success, and found
that refilling them was not worth it for me, in relation to the reliability
and performance I had. Also, it is too easy to make a mess when trying to
refill the cartridges. I know of someone that ruined a very nice rug, and
stained a very expensive table top with this procedure.

If you don't need to have a colour printer for every day use, it would be
best to invest in a low cost laser printer, or a high end rebuilt one. There
are rebuilt printers that come with a warranty, and are done by reputable
printer rebuilding places.

A B&W laser printer will cost only a few pennies per page to use, while a
typical ink jet printer can work out to about 50 cents a page just for a non
colour page.

If you need basic colour printing that is of not high end photo quality, a
low cost laser colour printer would be ideal. The toner cartridges can sit
for years, and there is no drying out problem. The drawback is that the
colour laser printers are very expensive to refill. But, for occasional use,
it will last a long time.

Another thing you can do is send out all your colour print jobs. Over here
it is cheaper to do that, than to print the pages at home or in a small
office that does low volumes of print jobs.

Personally I like the HP printers. When the toner cartridge is changed, the
drum is also inside the cartridge. This is a better system, even though the
replacement cartridges are more costly.

In the HP inkjet printers, when a new cartridge is put in, there is a new
set of jets built in to the cartridge. This helps keep the printing quality
up. But, the added quality comes at an expense.

--

JANA
_____

wrote in message
oups.com...
The problem is we don't use our colour printers very often and in the
interim the colour cartridges dry up. The black ones do too in record
time it seems also. This is frustrating and expensive as well. We
bought a refill kit for our specified cartridges, and tried refilling
the blacks first. We drilled the hole on top and refilled them and then
plugged the hole all with only marginal success. I have two black ones
sitting in front of me right now that are refilled but won't print. Is
there a trick to successfully doing this? And is there anything I can
do to try to prolong the life of these stupid things between long
periods of inactivity? Thanks, Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.