How to cure annoying bad printing

Do you ever go to print something and what comes out of the printer is not what you expect? I did this morning and it was annoying, having spent an hour typing ( its my age I still think that you type things on a computer, word processing seems wrong to me) an important letter hit the print button in word and what came out was not very clear. The printer being used was my faithful Epson C86 inkjet printer, which had not been used for a few days, 5 to be precise.

This is an anoying trait of inkjet printers which are left for a week or so, the print head dries up. Ink of what ever kind contains alot of water and hence evaporates and leaves a dry residue on the print head, which in turn is the cause of bad printing.

All printers have a facility in one form or another to enable print head cleaning, on my Epson you click on file in the top left-hand corner of the screen, click on print and the printing box appears on the screen. Click on the "properties" box in the top right hand of this box and a screen appears with numerous tabs along the top of it, you need to click on the one called "Maintainence".

This opens up a screen which gives you access to lots of useful facilities. The one we want in this case is the " Nozzle Check " one. On pressing this button the printer will make whirring noises and the printhead will move from side to side. This is normal just let it do what it wants and at the end of it the printer will throw out a printed pattern that corresponds with the one on the screen in front of you. Read the instructions on the screen and you will have a printer that prints properly. This is also useful to do if your print quality fades a bit or gets patchy.

I normally find that doing this once or twice solves all my print quality problems, HAPPY PRINTING!

I will cover how to clean the print heads on different makes of printer over the next couple of weeks, unless someone contacts me previously in which case I will gladly cover the required model of printer.

Printer Cartridges Different Capacities

A lady phoned me the other day to order some printer cartridges, and was amazed to find out that many printer cartridges are only partially full of ink (or toner in the case of Laser cartridges). Most manufacturers supply 2 versions of each printer cartridge, that is why you can get a difference of up to 50% less ink or toner. One instance being, 42ml of ink in one version of a cartridge 21ml of ink in another version of the same cartridge, and they do not come with a 50% price differential. With other manufacturers it is the same story, the lady I started this story about was amazed to find out that her "Lite User" version of her toner cartridge gave a 40% less page output than the "Heavy User " version, and what really impressed her was that our remanufactured version of the cartridge which was the "Heavy user Version" was about to cost her less than she had been paying for the "Lite User " version from her local supplier.

So now you know, when ordering printer cartridges always ask for the heavy user version if their is one, it gives a much higher print output, saves you money in the long run and means you need to order repalacement cartridges less frequently.

I will be back soon with some more money saving tips/ to tell you about our offer of FREE CHOCOLATE with cartridge orders.

Tips on solving an Epson Printer "problem"

I thought the other day that a lot of people may be interested in having access to the vast pool of knowledge that myself and my staff dispense on a daily basis to my customers. As a nationwide supplier of printing consumables we often get asked by customers about related problems they are having with there printers, and obviously we gladly help out anyone we can as opposed to customers having to call expensive manufacturers help lines at premium rate call tariffs.

A favourite question we get asked is "I have just gone to print something off on my Epson Inkjet printer and it will not print", we then ask the customer how they have done this and have they changed any printer settings or installed new software recently. The answer is usually no I have not changed any settings or installed any thing. Our next question is "What are the lights /buttons on the front of the printer doing?" The common answer is, "they are all flashing at once, even if I switch the printer off at the socket and switch it on again".

We now know what the problem is! There is I believe a method built into an Epson printer that counts the amount of printing you have done, a bit like a car speedo measures the mileage you have done, but unlike a car where when you hit a certain mileage a light or warning will come up at worst and tell you the car needs a service. The Epson printer just stops dead and all the lights flash, if you dig a little deeper into your instruction manual/disc it tells you to call the Epson help line, who then tell you the printer needs a service at your local Epson dealers. I duly took my faithful C82 epson printer to my local Epson service centre; very help full and who charged me £20.00 and gave me back a printer that worked.

This intrigued me so I asked a couple of my computer tech customers if they could shed any light on the matter, and they both confirmed my suspicions. You plug in the correct software and reset the counter. It is nothing to do with your computer, your printer, your brand of inkjet cartridges or your computer. It is simply Epson's way of getting you to their service centre.

So if you come to print with your Epson inkjet printer and it will not, and then proceeds to flash all of its lights at you. You now know what to do, unlike quite a few of my customers including my self, who spent hours reinstalling software, trying new sets of cartridges, both genuine Epson cartridge and the more popular compatible ones. I hope this saves some one some grief and frustration.

We'll be posting further tips as and when they arise, or when time permits.