Photosmart Premium C309 ink drain

[Grimmory]

My mother bought me the C309 for my birthday in December to have in my dorm room so I would no longer have to pay for printing. I was rarely in my room the entire semester, and did very little printing, perhaps 20 pages maximum. However when I was printing papers during finals, I was surprised to see a low ink warning for all cartridges as I was printing. I brushed it off as an error at the time, but as I just pulled my printer out again to print pictures, the quality was horrible, with all the signs of low ink. As it was highly doubtful my room mate was printing massive amounts of paperwork while I was out, what happened? Did the cartridges dry out or what?

[007OHMSS]

Just to confirm how many pages have been printed, print out a 'Printer Status Report' in the tools menu (under setup)....the section on the resulting page labeled 'Print Usage Information' tells total pages printed.

[elrodvoss]

Well 1st, did you get new Ink carts?  If you are using the ones that come with the machine, you will only get about 25-50 pages cause the ink is only 25% full.

"Almost" every printer on the market will give you "starter" carts.  There are a few HP like the 8500 series that give you a full set.

If you were working off those starter carts, then between the low ink levels, the initial prime, and the long delay in usage, 20 pages seems about right.

In regards to the long delay, when you turn your machine on and it going through its "preparing printer" stage, its cleaning the dried up in from the printhead, thus using more ink.

[Bob_Headrick]

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elrodvoss wrote:

Well 1st, did you get new Ink carts?  If you are using the ones that come with the machine, you will only get about 25-50 pages cause the ink is only 25% full.

"Almost" every printer on the market will give you "starter" carts.  There are a few HP like the 8500 series that give you a full set.

If you were working off those starter carts, then between the low ink levels, the initial prime, and the long delay in usage, 20 pages seems about right.

In regards to the long delay, when you turn your machine on and it going through its "preparing printer" stage, its cleaning the dried up in from the printhead, thus using more ink.

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There are not "starter" cartridges for the C309, there are two sizes of retail cartridges, the "regular" (included with the printer) and XL cartridges.  The first set of cartridges will be depleted more rapidly because some ink in the first set is used to prime the ink delivery system.  I just replaced the first black cartridge in my C309a today after 163 pages, the color cartrdiges still show about 50% full.  Note that the printer will give a warning that the ink is getting low, you do not need to change the cartridge at this point, it is just a warning that you should have another cartridge on hand for when the ink does run out.