HP deskjet F4480. Not a bad little printer. New a year or two ago. I was pretty happy with it; I rarely printed color, but color was nice to have for the occasional photo printout. I was still on the original ink cartridges that came with the machine.
And then one day it decided the color cartridge was a knock-off and refused to print with a foreign cartridge (which is in fact an HP cartridge) installed. There are help instructions about wiping the contacts and silly things like that, but as you would of course expect, the contacts were not gruddy with fingermarks – why would they be?
So I remove the color cartridge, and print B&W, which is mostly how I use the printer anyway. But whenever I next need to buy a new printer, I guarantee it won’t be HP. First, they don’t even disclose, up front, before buying it, that it won’t accept foreign cartridges. But when it refuses to accept even an HP cartridge, it is completely unacceptable.
Tags: F4480, HP printer
May 1, 2011 at 3:38 pm |
Unfortunately all brands have problems. The most problematic for me have been Epsons, Lexmark and Brother. The best have been Cannon. I have loved the cannon printers i have had. HP laser jet printers tend to be good. If you have an HP you might need drivers that HP doesn’t provide. You might find this useful.
http://chimac.net/2010/12/01/deskjet-5650-compatibility-for-10-6-snow-leopard/
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May 1, 2011 at 4:08 pm |
HP printers do indeed tend to be good. But if HP insists on only HP cartridges, and then refuses to recognize an HP cartridge, that’s a show-stopper. Sorry.
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May 1, 2011 at 4:10 pm |
I agree that is a critical error. Which one are you thinking of getting?
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May 1, 2011 at 4:23 pm |
For now, the HP does what I need: B&W printout of (mostly) boarding passes :~) so I haven’t looked around for alternatives. But when the day comes, I’ll consider your recommendation for Canon.
Dave
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May 17, 2011 at 6:33 am |
This is probably why HP just announced that it’s facing a “challenging” year ahead.
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