Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

A recent Chinese article indicates that Epson has applied to USITC (United States International Trade Commission) for a "Banning Order" on the Chinese ink cartridge providers who failed to respond to the ITC investigation 337. If the order is approved, most of the ink cartridges manufactured from China are going to be banned from the US market.

Section 337 prohibits any unfair method of competition or unfair act in the importation of articles if the effect or threat of such importation is to destroy or to significantly damage a U.S. industry, prevent the establishment of an industry, or restrain or monopolize trade in the United States. Specifically, section 337 prohibits importation of articles that infringe a valid and enforceable United States patent, registered copyright, or registered trademark, as well as articles that are produced by means of a process covered by a valid and enforceable United States patent.

According to the article, there are over 90% of the ink cartridges produced in China being exported to the foreign countries. 50% of the ink cartridges come to US. The banning order will wipe out 30% of the ink cartridges come from China and cause a 30% price drop in the Chinese ink cartridge market. The article predicts there will be over 100 Chinese ink cartridge manufacturers filing bankruptcy by the end of the year 2006. So, be prepared to say bye bye to the cheap ink cartridges you find on ebay next month.

I purchased a HP color inkjet printer over a year ago. It is one of the all-in-one models. I barely used it for printing, mainly for scanning and ocassionaly for photo copying. Yesterday, I turned it on and tried to print something, it gave me an error message: "Error: Right cartridge incorrect." After a few reboot of the printer, the message doesn't go away, and it blocks all printing and photo-copying tasks. I then called HP support line and they were going to charge me $30 for the support call but I told them I can spend extra $20 to buy another printer, and the support staff paused for a few second and suggested me TO DO SO! Anyway, I then tried to clean the printer from inside out, Air-brushed every inch of the machine, cotton cleaned (with alcohol) the cartridge connecting heads and electronic clips. But nothing helped. I then turned to the Internet...

Surprisingly, many others have had the same experience as me and they have come to some shocking conclusion after hours of research and discussion with the printer manufacturers:

Many newer HP Printers internally keep track of your cartridges by a serial number embedded into the cartridge. When it's low, the printer remembers. This is entirely done within the printer itself, and not the printer software. Some printers EXPIRE the cartridges after 18 months according to the installation date even it is not empty.

I find this is outrageous, it's like buy a pen and it won't let you use it after 1 month even the ink is still half full?! If this is true, there should some serious polices to prevent the manufacturers from doing so. An alternative solution I have found so far is:

Most HP printers will only keep 2 cartridges in memory, so if you have 2 extra cartridges, (even empty ones) you could cycle them through to reset the printers memory, and reset the ink level to full. Basically, even though you've refilled your cartridge, the printers has the cartridge's serial number stored in memory. This will reset it.

I will give this a try, but it still needs me to go out and purchase a brand new HP #56 black cartridge while the original one is not empty yet... If you have any experiences like this, please share it with me.