Has HP degraded its support of the Photosmart 8750?

[norfl]

I use an HP Photosmart 8750 to print both color and black&white photographs.  Per a variety of sources including HP (for example, http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/news/articles/story_3703.html) the best collection of ink cartridges for this purpose is 97, 101, and 102, yielding a "9-ink" system.  Cartridges 101 and 102 no longer seem to be available through HP.  A substitute scheme using cartridges currently advertised at http://store.hp.com is 96, 97, and 99.  Per HP, this yeilds an "8-ink system" that produces results inferior to the 9-ink system.  Have you found this to be the case?  Also, the Internet contains scattered comments that the 96 cartridge is not suitable for use with glossy photo paper because its ink smears.  True?

In summary:

1.  Are ink cartridges 101 and 102 permenantly discontinued?

2.  Is the quality of photos printed with the 8-ink system inferior to the 9-ink system (including black&white prints)?

3.  Do prints with cartridge 96 smear?

4.  If the answer to (2) or (3) above is "yes", will HP please consider reversing its decision to downgrade its support of the HP Photosmart 8750 printer?

I hope you don't find this post a mere duplication of others.  Other posts seem to ask most of these questions, but not directly answer them.

[Bob_Headrick]

The HP 101 and HP 102 cartridges were discontinued, likely due to miniscule demand.  You may still find old stock available from third parties.  I still have two each of the 101 and 102 that I have not opened for my Photosmart 8750, I just never used them.  I see the HP 102 offered from two sellers on Amazon and one HP 101 available on Amazon.

The HP 96 cartridges has pigmented ink, it is not compatible with glossy photo paper and is not used when glossy media is selected.  When selecting photo media the printer will automatically adjust its print modes to not use the 96 pigmented ink.

Six ink printing (on photo paper with the 96,97,99 cartridges installed) gives pretty excellent prints. There are some prints that the 101 and/or 102 cartridges may give better results, such as in grayscale photos (Ansel Adams prints?) or certain prints with bright blue images.  For most folks, show them a print from the six ink system and they would consider it excellent.  They may have a slight preference for prints from the 99,101,102 system in side by side comparisons.

[norfl]

Excellent information, Mr. Headrick.  Thank you.  I did not realize that the printer does not use the 96 cartridge at all under certain conditions.  Most of my "work" involves black & white photographs printed on HP Premium Plus Photo Paper (e.g., CR668A).  Any comparisons to Ansel Adams are welcome.  I use GIMP on a Ubuntu Linux system.  In the "Print" menus I choose as "Paper type:" "Photo paper".  Does that selection trigger the printer to shut off use of the 96?  I have gotten beautiful black & white photos with 97, 101, and 102, but my 102 has run out, and I've replaced it with a 96, so the current configuration is 96, 97, and 101.  If the printer is not getting its black ink from the 96, it must be trying to mix colors from the other two cartridges, thereby yielding the muddy results I am seeing.  The 101 has three colors, none of which is black.  A substitute for the 101, the 99, does have black as one of its three colors.  Is this where the black comes from for black & white photos on Premium Plus Photo Paper in the absence of a 102 cartridge?  So I should switch to a 96, 97 and 99 set of cartridges?  If so, this is incredibly useful information!

[Bob_Headrick · Accepted solution]

I cannot say for sure what the Linux driver will do.  The Apple and Windows driver would turn off the black 96 cartridge.  For printing B&W prints the 101 cartridge would not be helpful.  Using the 99 cartridge would give better black areas in photo's.  The lighter gray areas would be likely made from the light cyan, light magenta inks from the 99 cartridge in addition to the yellow from the 97 cartridge.  

The HP 100 photo gray cartridge is a smaller version of the 102  (15ml of ink in the HP 100 vs 23ml in the HP 102) and would work in your Photosmart 8750.  It may still be available from HP, it is still listed on the HP SureSupply site although "out of stock".  If not from HP, it may be possible to find at some other suppliers.  (I checked Staples and OfficeMax, both were out of stock.)

The Photosmart 8750 is beyond the official support life and most of the documents have been removed from the HP site.  I did find the user manual on the HP site here (recommend saving it before it goes away) and it does list the optimum cartridge configurations on page 13:

 

[norfl]

I've installed a 99 cartridge in my Photosmart 8750, and I can confirm that Mr. Headrick is correct:  A set of cartridges consisting of the 96, 97, and 99 cartridges produces results almost as good as the dear, departed 97, 101, 102 set, for both black & white and color photos.  Many, many thanks to Mr. Headrick for this information.