I had the same problem with the color cartridges - use em once every few
months, and they are dead. As for the black and white, I always have success
filling them several times. Initially (i.e. the 1st few pages) the print
quality is bad, or doesn't work that well. However, I just print a few test
pages and they're ok after that. It also seems to help if you leave them
overnite before printing.


wrote in message
oups.com...
The problem is we don't use our color printers very often and in the
interim the color 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.