So one fine day, I click on "print" to get hardcopy of a spread sheet. The D4260 whirs and thrashes and out comes a nearly blank sheet of page. One a single number prints, everything else is blank. I futz around with Excel's format menu, thinking the maybe the text color had been changed to white-on-white or something. Finally I change the text color to blue, and lo and behold, it prints.
Ah, the black ink cartridge must have run out. So, next trip to Wally Mart, I buy an new one. Only the new one doesn't match the number on the old one exactly. It's close and I think it ought to work, so I pay $19 for it.
Once back home I am happy to find the new cartridge clips right into the printer, so far so good. I haven't totally wasted $19 on a cartridge that won't fit. Then I think I might print a test page, just to make sure the new black ink cartridge works.
Used to be, you clicked on Start, Settings, Printer and Faxes, and obtained a list of all the printers and pseudo printers on your machine. And, there was a check box to print a test page for each device.
Not any longer. You have to right click on the printer, select "Printer Preferences" and then "Features" and then "Printer Services" and then "Device Services" to get to a menu offering to print a test page. It takes a while to find my way this deep into the bowels of HP's user friendliness. I hit "Test Page". The printer whirres and thrashes and I get a test page that is all in color. No black.
This has gotta mean that the new black cartridge ain't working. Does it not? I remove the cartridge to make sure I have removed the factory shipping seal over the ink holes. No joy, the seal has been removed and there is even a little wet ink to blacken my finger.
I decide not to trust the HP test page and open up Word for Windows and print a short document. That works. Hurrah.
Sometimes I get nostalgic for the good old Centronics 101 dot matrix printers.
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