C309g Excessive Ink Usage

[DCSanford]

We upgraded from an 8 year old HP printer to a new shiny HP Photosmart Premium C309g.

It has sleek thin ink cartridges #564.  

Our old printer used these fat huge cartridges at $35 each.

The #564's have a larger black cartridge that is about $30.  

I was impressed by the literature at the store that explained how this printer used less ink than the older printers.  

So I bought it.  

And now I'm wondering why my new shiny printer is using ink twice as fast as my old dinosaur.

Can somebody explain to me how to get this printer to be more efficient?  Or should I go get my old printer and give this one to GoodWill?

Thank you.

[Damian43]

I've had this printer for less then a year and have replaced all the ink in it at least four times. I RARELY print photos, and when I do they're only 4x6 and I rarely print text with color. Typically I print FAST DRAFT in black. This thing is HORRID on ink. Even though I like the printer's functionality, I'm already considering dumping it and buying a KODAK which do use less ink.

[jnevill]

We have the same problem. The Photosmart C309 uses ink much faster than the ink cartridge boxes indicate. Instead of ~300 pages, we're lucky if we get 100 pages with only a little color. What is going on?

[hpdavid]

If you're printing only in Black, you should be made aware that the 309G, and possibly other HP's actually use the color inks, an addition to the black, to print black.  {Content Removed} Plus, the little cartridges don't hold much ink.  You can get XP cartridges that supposedly have 3x the ink of the regular cartridges at about 2.5x the cost of the regular ones.