how long should my ink in my printer last if ....

[purbeast0]

I have a canon i860 ... just now I saw the black "ink low' warning come up. I have printed about 5 DVD Covers at 300 dpi since I saw the 'yellow ink low' warning come up.

I am just wondering about how many more pages I could print before noticing that the ink cartridges are low, noting that i have printed 5 since the yellow once is low and 1 since the black is low (but i didnt print a dvd cover at 300 dpi when the black ink was low, i printed out an order confirmation on normal paper).

 

[NutBucket]

Try it and let us know. This is definitely a YMMV issue.

 

[LSUfan]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
I have a canon i860 ... just now I saw the black "ink low' warning come up. I have printed about 5 DVD Covers at 300 dpi since I saw the 'yellow ink low' warning come up.

I am just wondering about how many more pages I could print before noticing that the ink cartridges are low, noting that i have printed 5 since the yellow once is low and 1 since the black is low (but i didnt print a dvd cover at 300 dpi when the black ink was low, i printed out an order confirmation on normal paper).

This is just confusing.

 

[isekii]

that's what I hate about the canon printers. They use these tiny ink carts, telling people it's cost effective, when they're really not.
The ink dries up or it evaporates.

I've owned a Canon Bubblejet 620 or something, when they first came out with individual ink cart system. It was the biggest garbage they ever produced.
I will never purchase another canon printer again.

 

[nanyangview]

and when u turn a canon printer on, it sucks a small amount of ink to clean its print head. So if u turn the printer on MANY times like 100X you empty the entire cart w/o printing a sheet

 

[purbeast0]

i just keep my printer on all the time. i have powered it down maybe 3 times. i have only had it for about a month.

 

[Macro2]

RE:"I've owned a Canon Bubblejet 620 or something, when they first came out with individual ink cart system. It was the biggest garbage they ever produced. I will never purchase another canon printer again."

That's your loss, Canon i series printers that use BCI-3 and 6 cartriges are the best out there. They have come a long way. Generic cartridges work wel and are pennies on the dollar compared to HP, Lexmark etc.
------------------------------------
As for how long you can print after the cartridge is empty is a tenuous question at best because we don't know you page coverage etc.
I've gone 5 pages easy maybe more but it's time to order some carts.

 

[alkemyst]

Canon and there smaller ink carts are one of the best ink system designs on the planet. multi-color carts have the problem of wasting usually all but one of the inks....the ink that ran out. The whole cart must be trashed to replace a single color.

Not only that, but the clear containers use a light beam to determine ink left, not some chip that gets based on number of uses. Canon printers are very accurate in determining 'real' amount of ink left. This of course is in regard to the new versions that can do this. I had a older Canon BJ10EX that had no ink monitoring.

As far as how many printings you can do there is no way to determine (it would be based on % of black coverage for the black cart)....you are down to the wire though.

I have the the i960, I had the Epson 860 and 880.

Å

 

[purbeast0]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
Canon and there smaller ink carts are one of the best ink system designs on the planet. multi-color carts have the problem of wasting usually all but one of the inks....the ink that ran out. The whole cart must be trashed to replace a single color.

Not only that, but the clear containers use a light beam to determine ink left, not some chip that gets based on number of uses. Canon printers are very accurate in determining 'real' amount of ink left. This of course is in regard to the new versions that can do this. I had a older Canon BJ10EX that had no ink monitoring.

As far as how many printings you can do there is no way to determine (it would be based on % of black coverage for the black cart)....you are down to the wire though.

I have the the i960, I had the Epson 860 and 880.

Å

Thanks for the information. The previous post also made me feel good about the generic ink I ordered.

I ordered some cartridges from inksell.com which were $7 per color. I read some decent reviews about them.

Also, you were saying you can monitor the ink to a very accurate level. How do you do that? The only ink level i have seen, as far as in the monitor, is one saying the ink is full, then one saying it's running low and has a picture of the cartridge with about 1/4 left in it. Is there a way to find out the exact amount of ink in the cartridge?

 

[alkemyst]

if you have the i860/i960/i900 you need to install the printer software (at least the status monitor)....

With the status monitor each time you print a window will come up showing you the ink tanks and the levels.

Å