I used to have a great printer – an HP LaserJet 2200dn. It was a workgroup-class laser printer with a duplex unit and it happily printed many pages for me until one day it started banding. I changed the toner cartridge but that didn’t help – it seemed that the printer needed more specialised attention than I could provide so, as they had enjoyed the benefits at no cost for the last few years, I asked the company that I work for to either a) fix it or b) replace it. The company chose option b and, supplied me with an HP OfficeJet 6310 all-in-one device that doesn’t print on both sides of the paper, often picks up multiple sheets when printing large documents and drinks ink at an alarming rate.

You may have realised by now that I’m no fan of inkjets but I do at least use the HP339 high yield black cartridges (this printer can use 336, 337 or 339) so I don’t have to change cartridges quite so often (and I keep on printing until it runs out, rather than changing the cartridge when low ink warning first appears). Applying that model to the tri-color cartridge, I decided to try the 344, which appears to be the same as a 342/343, except with more ink inside… but the printer was having none of it:

Cartridge Error: Cartridge on left is not intended for this printer

I swapped it for a 343 (which looks the same, costs slightly less, but only has 7ml of ink instead of 14ml) and was greeted with:

Genuine HP Tri-Color print cartridge installed.

Rip-off merchants! It seems that HP, in addition to having different numbers for similar cartridges in different markets, is preventing the use of high-yield cartridges in certain devices. Interestingly, if I had an OfficeJet 6210 instead of a 6310, it could use either the 343 or the 344. I know I could use third-party inks but that would void the warranty and, after all, this is the company’s printer – not mine (so it’s not my choice to make).

It really annoys me that, in the throwaway society we live in today, the printer doesn’t cost much more than the consumables. The real answer of course is to print fewer pages… but with more and more companies opting for the “green” benefits of electronic billing (it’s not green – the tax authorities still want paper documents and sometimes its just easier to read documents on paper – it just shifts the printing burden from the supplier’s bulk-printing facilities to the reciever’s crappy inkjet) things are only going to get worse.