gkuep1945 Loc: Dowling Park, Florida

Almost all printers have some tubing between the cartridge and print head. Running this dry will make your next photo come out bad unless you waste lots of other ink colors to bleed the lines. It's up to you as to how much ink to waste, changing when told or clearing the lines after running dry.

gregm Loc: Near Sacramento, CA

Not sure if you damage the head, but you run the risk of letting the ink dry in the print head and that clogs the system. This has happened to me twice now, my wife forgot to tell me the black/blue ink had stopped printing. Unfortunately, both times I was unable to recover the printer. No matter how hard I tried to clean. luckily these were cheaper printers that had served me well for a few years each. I'll be much more attentive when I finally get my Cannon Pixima 10/100.

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

xptom,

It depends on the manufacturer of the printer and if you are using OEM cartridges. If the answer is no all bets are off. If the answer is yes to OEM for the printer manufacturer, then the answer is printer dependent.

Some printer will stop printing when their cartridge reaches a specific level inside the cartridge. Some will allow you to continue printing several pages, some will allow you to switch from color to B&W if a color cartridge runs out, and some will allow you to switch from Black cartridge to all color for a B&W document.

The danger to changing to an alternate cartridge when another runs low on ink is that the cartridge that runs low feeds a print head and that head may become hot and dry out what ever ink remains around the print nozzle. The dried ink may well clog the nozzle when you insert a fresh cartridge.

Check with knowledgeable sources on the print cartridge reserve when the warning light comes on; your printer support website is a good place to start.

It may well be that the warning light is nothing more than a warning to purchase fresh cartridges soon, and not a 'cease and desist' order from the printer. You could purchase a new set of cartridges and wait until one page printed with off colors to replace the cartridges.

Consider which is more expensive; one sheet of photo paper, a printer repair service for defective print nozzles, or several sets of print ink cartridges with 10 pages of ink remaining after the warning light blinks.

My Canon MX 622 specifically states I can continue to print, but have spare ink cartridges available when print quality turns sour.

Michael G

plaza Loc: london uk

yes i had this happen and no matter what i did could not get ink flowing again had to replace printer

Michael Hartley Loc: Deer Capital of Georgia

I personally, would rather waste a couple bucks worth of ink, than to run the print head/feeder tube dry, then have to purge the line, and head. This is commercial printers I'm referring to, not desktops.

NormPR

I don't have two printers to be cheap, print my own for the quality. I would not like to be half way through a 13" x 19" print and run out of ink because I disregarded the low ink warning, it's not worth it for a few bucks. If you don't like the price of ink have your prints done at Wal-Mart.

One Jughead Loc: Greene County, OH

The ink jet printer heads need to have the ink flowing through them to keep them from overheating. Printing in draft mode doesn't have enough ink going through the printhead to keep it cool. Running an ink cartridge until it is completely out means the printhead wasn't cooled down and consequently overheats. Doesn't take very many times of running ink cartridges until dry to completely ruin the printhead.

After market inks and refill kits are available from some very good sources at a tremendous savings without any noticable change in print quality. Just check out the ratings of the secondary market suppliers before you invest.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

That's they way my Epson works. I have yet to find a reset button. I just keep printing until it stops.

Idiot (I mean "me") )proof. Just the way I like it.

VernzPix

I would highly recommend replacing the ink cartridges when warned to do so. By bypassing the swarnings, poor color printing will be assured, damage to nozzles is possible, wasting costly photo paper and inks is immanent. My Epson printer will not print the photo if the ink runs out and does warn me before the ink runs out. Residual ink from the nozzle will dry up and eventually clog up. Lack of a color could alter the photo as a combination of colors make the hues and tones.

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

I agree with part of what you wrote, and you are correct in the printers refusing to print when an ink cartridge runs dry. Thar is a failure on the part of the printer manufacturer, some printers will refuse to print if a blue cartridge runs dry, even if you want to print in gray-scale (monochrome).

What I am suggesting is not to ignore the warning, but purchase replacement ink cartridges, but do not replace them until the ink runs out. To replace the ink cartridges at the first warning is to waste the remaining ink in all the cartridges. You could get another 50 prints from the warning.

Michael G

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Yeah, the printer manufacturers also tell you that if you don't use their OEM ink, the world will end. I have found this not to be true with three different brand printers. It's great if you can afford the OEM, but the costs are usurious.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Well, your own statement kind of says differently. I've had the same Epson printer for 8 years now... always use OEM ink. Now, if you've been through 3 different brand printers (not sure how long for each) with non-OEM cartridges, maybe it does make a difference.

Not trying to start an argument. I do know that at my day job, we switched back to OEM for HP, and our inkets are lasting forever, where before we were replacing them about every year or two???