Sick of my printer

I have hated my printer (an HP Photosmart 3210 All-in-One) ever since we got it. For this reason: it uses ink so fast. And the ink is SO EXPENSIVE! I figure I was spending more than $15 a month on ink, sometimes $50. Every time I bought ink, I felt trapped into doing it. Instead I just wanted to throw away the printer.

It is made so that even if you make all black and white prints, a little of each color is used on each print also. So the colors all go empty on a regular basis. And each cartridge costs between $11-$14.

Our old printer would print black and white copies forever even when some colors were empty. Or if we had some blue left, I would just print all my documents in blue to use up that color.

Not so with this dumb printer. If ANY color is empty, it says it can't print until all the cartridges have ink in them.

I went to Staples Tuesday to buy some ink (AGAIN). And I was complaining to the employee, and he told me this wonderful news: He said we could go into the settings on the printer and change it to "print only in black," and then the printer will quit using all that colored ink.

I said, why didn't someone tell me this two years ago? So I came home and told Wayne, and we realized we don't know where the instructions are or the disks or anything. We have no way to reset the settings. So I am bummed.

The employee also told me that the best printer for me would be the Lexmark Pinnacle 901, because the ink is so inexpensive, and they advertise it as a penny per print. That would certainly be nicer than my current $5 per print (I hope I am exaggerating but I don't know.) However I just looked online and the Lexmark costs between $300 and $200 so I don't know when we would be buying one.

Technology makes me crazy.