New 612C Deskjet prints smears ?

[michaelh20]

If I get a new inkjet printer (HP 612c-- it's a cheepee) and it smears the black ink, esp, on the left side (almost perfect on the right side), is it (1) like the website and manual says, junk/etc that needs to be cleaned off of the stuff inside the printer, even though it's new or (2) A borked Black ink cartridge, which they sent me in my printer box, which also curiously was *missing* the color cartridge...

Do I have to clean this thing? Or do I replace & whine?

 

[Ulysses]

Sounds like maybe someone already bought and returned that thing - but maybe I'm just too paranoid today, given that it's rained all day today when I planned to picnic outside.

I used to have one of those printers myself, but got an HP 812C about a year ago. It was so much better in print quality, ease of use, etc. that I was surprised to find HP still selling the old 612's.

If you can I would return that unit and try to get a different model of HP Deskjet - HP improved the print technology significantly with the 800 series, including eliminating the smears . The 812C is not readily available any more, but you can get an 842, which is a little better - it's $150 at CDW, and discounts from the HP MSRP are rare.

 

[Comp625]

Looks like you bought a used or returned one. It would explain the could-be-bad black cartridge and the missing color cartridge.

I had a brand new 694C and now the black cartridge smears horizontal lines on each letter when printing text. I cleaned it once using a cotton swab and stickin it into this little padding on the right side of the printer. It's where the printer cartridges reside and underneath it, theres like a little pad that holds ink incase the cartridges leak. You gotta clean that pad out.

Also, my 694c came with software that automatically cleaned out the cartridges for me. It also aligned the printer cartridges and had another feature that allowed me to match the color of my printer to the color of my screen.