Page 13 - July 2018
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completely restore good print quality, and the
HP diagnostic software reported that new print
heads were needed.
With most HP printers I’d owned, the print
heads were part of the ink cartridges, so you
got fresh heads with each cartridge replace-
ment. With the HP8500, the ink cartridges were
just ink reservoirs; the heads were separate re-
placeable modules. Despite their supposed
simplicity, the HP940XL ink cartridges it used
still cost around $100 per set (three color car- My wife of course needed to print for her work
tridges and one black). Even though the two activities the next day, and it was too late to get
print head modules cost around $80, I was hap- her a new printer that evening. Fortunately, I
py enough with the performance we had gotten had the new HP7740 printer I had bought for my
out of the printer over the eight years we had own use but had not set up yet. The setup for
used it, and so bought a set. this network printer was far easier than the old
HP8500 was eight years ago. Once the new
printer was powered and connected with an
Replacing the heads was easy to do, and at Ethernet cable to my home network (it could al-
first solved the problem completely. The print so connect via Wi-Fi), the printer software and
quality was once again excellent. A month later, drivers could be installed easily from the HP
however, the printer abruptly stopped working. website. The software automatically searched
It gave an error message that no heads were for the printer on my network and configured
installed, thus it refused to print at all. I tried re- everything. Creating an HP printer account on
moving and reinstalling the heads, with no im- their site allows you to obtain an email address
provement. Only then did I go online to search for the printer. Any emails sent to that address
on this fault and found many other users with are printed (up to 10 MB and up to 10 attach-
the same problem after replacing heads. The ments), making it easy to print remotely or from
only solution reported by these users was to any device that can send emails, including
temporarily reinstall the old print heads until smartphones, tablets and Chromebooks. I in-
they were recognized, and then swap the new stalled the software on her computer as well, so
heads back in. Even this was not often a per- we could both use my new printer.
manent solution; some reported having to per-
form this swap periodically. Since I’d listened to
my wife and thrown the old heads away right Later that week we went printer shopping for my
after installing the new ones, this solution was wife and bought an HP OfficeJet Pro 8715 from
not an option. Because a new printer’s cost was Costco. It had all the features of the HP7740 but
not much more than another set of heads for had only one paper tray for 8.5” x 11” paper. It
this one, it was time to go shopping. was just as easy to set up and, as a bonus, it
uses the same HP952XL ink cartridges as the
7740. I set it up in place of the broken HP8500
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