Cost of colour cartridges

[rov1100]

Why does my colour cartridge get used up even though I always use the black one?

[coccinelle]

It eventually dries up if not used. If you do a colour copy a couple of times a week it'll be fine. Also why do you put one in if you never use it?

[Old_Geezer]

The rainbow fairies drink at the coloured wells, in the early hours, while you're asleep.

[jno]

I get this too. I'll try coccinelle's suggestion.

[divlong]

Even if all your printing is monochrome, the printer will use the colour cartridge to print grey shades.

[bazwillrun]

on most newer printers there should be an option in the printer utilities to print text using only the black cartridge.

some printers are intelligent and work this out for themselves from the source document.

If you dont set the option black will be made up by using the colour cartridge as well, mixing the colours at 100% to produce black

[rov1100]

It wouldn't be so bad if you could run the printer with just the black cartridge installed but boith have to be present even though you don't want colour outputs. I can understand if the black cartridge was low but in my case not. It must be as divlong says the shades of gray would be evident in a picture printout.