do i have to buy color ink cartridges? HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus Windows XP

[antsinpants]

I have been a HP customer for 20 years and have often recommended your products to colleagues, friends and family.  This ink cartidge debacle is a disgrace.  On principle I will NOT be buying a colour cartridge to 'unlock' my printer so that I can continue to print.  Like many others here I needed a hardcopy of something urgently (a simple text-only Word document) only to discover that Hewlett Packard would be holding my printer to ransom until I purchased a cyan ink.

I would sooner bin this printer than submit to this kind of treatment.  You've lost me as a customer and needless to say any future recommendations to friends and family about your products.

[DavidP622]

Are all of you really naive enough to think that HP is the only company that requires this? Canon, Epson, Lexmark, Kodak, Brother, etc all require all inks to be filled in order to print. As someone already mentioned, it is indeed a safety mechanism for the printer. Unfortunately, most of you (like consumers in general) are too shortsighted to grasp why you have to pay for ink in order to use their printer. The linking to a black and white printer page is there because allegedly you only print in black and white. If that's all you use, why are you so upset about being pointed towards a product that would better suit your needs? If you have a problem buying color ink, then perhaps next time don't buy a color printer.

I am NOT an HP employee, I just have common sense.

[SilviaSound]

DavidP, this is offensive, as it attacks those of us who have a valid gripe with the company's policy and does so while ignoring the most basic premise of the argument. We do not like being prevented from printing in black and white while there is a low or empty color cartridge. There is no one here saying that they wish to print without ink, as you are suggesting. Also, few are speaking in naiveté. For example, this printer's predecessor in my house was a Canon MP530, a grand printer with far better scanning software, better capability for printing on various media, and most importantly, permitted me to print in Black and White for the majority of its lifetime, without the need for full color cartridges to be installed (they were on a shelf for the two or three times a year that I did need color). There have been generations of printers that did not use the technology that HP chose to use in the Office Pro 8600, and the only explanation for such a thing is corporate profit.

I went to the HP because it supposedly had better ink efficiency in Black and White (turns out this was a fluke in the testing process). Any advantage that might have been there is completely wasted by having to continually restock color cartridges with the black, even when color is rarely (not never, but rarely) used.

If you have common sense, you would not expect to have to refill a color cartridge to print with black, simple. This is not a naive minority, but the common experience shared by nearly all in this thread. It is also the common among us that we will not be purchasing HP again. HP will likely ignore our complaint (as it is more profitable in the short term), but a business that makes a habit of ignoring its customers is not worth purchasing from, and will eventually fail.

[DavidP622]

My point is that HP is not the only company that does this. My store sells Canon, HP, Brother, and Epson inkjet printers in store, and they all require all the cartridges in order to print. The only model I know of that offers an exception to this is the Envy 4500, which offers a single cartridge mode, able to print with only the black ink cartridge. Who makes this printer? HP does of course. For all of you crying corporate greed and not listening to their customers, why don't you ask Epson/Canon/Brother for a printer with single cartridge mode.

[Norwal]

DavidP, as SilviaS stated you are missing the point all together.  Perhaps this is due to your involvement with the industry and mean this with no disrespect. I and many others bought this printer based on the fact that we have had excellent results with our previous HP printers.  I for one had an PSC 2410 All in One and it was great.  We used it for over 10 yrs and gave it to my mother-in-law upon our purchase of the 8600 last month.   We did the bulk of our printing in B&W for things like the kids homework, airline boarding passes and things of that nature.  Occasionally we printed in colour when required; pictures, projects and the annual family Christmas letter.  Never ever did we have to have a full colour cartridge in this printer in order to print the kids homework with our 2410.  The fact that other manufactures are using the same "protection" technique is irrelevant to the fact that we are all stunned at this new "feature" and this in no way makes us naive.  Based on this experience with my previous printer; how was I to know HP could or would no longer design a printer that could pint B&W without a full colour cartridge?  What we are trying to tell HP in this tread is that this Market Place Segment (home users) don't want this “design feature” and will look elsewhere to get what we need. Perhaps as you have indicated the industry is moving in this direction, but all it takes is one company to listen to this niche and the shift in market share will begin. 

[DavidP622]

Norwal and Silvia, I definitely do not mean any disrespect. Let me take a moment and start over. I know that the stated problem was that there is no way to print in black and white only without taking a color cartridge. HP's answer was that it requires all 4 cartridges. I don't pretend to know the reason for this (money making, printer steganography, printhead protection, whatever) but I do know that it is commonplace now. My whole point was for everyone mad at HP about it, this seems to run as an industry standard right now, requiring black AND color cartridges in order to print. Going solely on what I have in my store, I tested 9 Epson printers, 4 Canon printers, 5 Brother printers, and 17 HP printers. Out of all of these printers, only 3 of the 17 HPs (the Envy 4500, the Envy 5530, and the Envy 120) offer a single cartridge mode, running with just the black when you want it, and allowing you to take the color cartridge in and out at will. I only wish to show that it is not an HP-specific issue, but that the industry as a whole is doing this for whatever reason. Out of all of these companies, HP is the only one who takes the time and money to train retail sales associates on their products. They specifically mentioned the fact that they have heard this exact customer complaint, and were working on the newer printers to accomodate this. The Officejet Pro 8600 in this exact article is now approaching 2 years old, and perhaps the replacement model for it will offer a black only mode. The 3 Envy printers have all been released within the last 6 months, but I will mention that the only printers I have newer than them (some of the Brother and the Canon printers) still don't offer this function. Working in retail, I will be the first to tell you that, no matter what store/company you shop with, you can't accept the fact that whoever is working there knows everything about everything. I strongly urge you to thorougly research a product before you buy it, and perhaps avoid all of this unnecessary unhappiness with a purchase.

[Billmanjjdhfhr]

DavidP.  Given your open admission to being directly involved in the retail end, and having had HP offer you this guidance you really must realize that you are in a much different position than most of HP's customers.  Some are technically illiterate, others are very skilled technically -- as I'm sure you have seen all varieties working retail.   

There will be a time when you are in the position of the people here w/out the inside benefit of being constantly around some particular product and finding some nasty surprise that you were definitely not expecting and at a very inopportune moment.  When that time comes, I hope you remember this exact conversation, as that is when a light will come on for you, and only then you will really understand this viewpoint.

While it may be true that newer office type printers share this technology (I can't say one way or the other), I challenge you to locate anything related to this on the product packaging.  It's not there.  I looked.  Maybe it's on the packaging on current stock but it certainly mentioned nothing related to this when I purchased mine.  Did I spend time scouring internet forums prior to buying the printer -- no.  I did spend enough time to see that the 8600 was rated highly by some general retailer sites, but I did not spend time going through user forums.  After all it's a printer and there are many other things demanding my attention.  Seemed like a decent purchase at the price and with the built in scanner, etc I expected it should suit my needs for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, if you don't think the companies are gouging with the ink prices, use your honor student skills and think about it closer.  Compare the price of an ounce of ink (based on what you really get in the cartridge), to the price of other commodities and tell me this is not a racket.

If the ink were not more expensive than gold per oz (may or may not still be the case -- but the point is still valid), many people here wouldn't care if the cartridges need replaced -- other than the initial surprise when the whole printer shuts down unexpectedly of course.