My brother has used the syringe method on old cartridges and it does work, but can be very messy. It won't work, I think, on the new type of cartridges with a chip in them, like the C62 (which I also have). However, if you shop around, or look in the magazines, you can usually find much cheaper cartridges than the originals (without giving the old ones). Jettec do Epson C62 for less than half the Epson price. Unfortunately, I think HP is one of the harder printers to find cheap replacements for.