Canon S900 eating ink !

--
Jim Blacklock

I've just put my first replacement black cartridge into my Canon S900. I've printed no more than a dozen pages of text on draft and the cartridge is already showing only three quarters full. Does the printer really use ink this quickly even on draft or is the printer status report unreliable ?

the printer does a cleaning cycle everytime it is powered up, this rapidly consumes ink, it also does this if you open the cover

i leave my s9000 on all the time and only open the cover to change cartridges, ink usage is much better than when i turned it on/off once or twice a day

i've operated like this for a few months now, no problems

btw the driver reports an 'empty' cartridge when there is sufficient ink for a few more pages

Hi Jim,

I have found that the ink monitor indicator is
not accurate on my S9000.

If it shows a picture of , say 75%, you probably
have more than that - and it gets more inaccurate
(in your favor) as the indicator ink shows less & less.

This is most extreme when it shows the "alert" icon
when the cartridge is almost empty. I have printed
anywhere from 5 - 10 (8.5 x 11) prints when a color
is at this stage.

Also, when the printer states that a cartridge is empty,
pressing the reset button & continue printing may allow
even a few more prints.

Keeping the printer on helps conserve ink because it
reduces the cleaning cycles.

HTH

Lou

dprevlogin said:

the printer does a cleaning cycle everytime it is powered up, this
rapidly consumes ink, it also does this if you open the cover

i leave my s9000 on all the time and only open the cover to change
cartridges, ink usage is much better than when i turned it on/off
once or twice a day

i've operated like this for a few months now, no problems

btw the driver reports an 'empty' cartridge when there is
sufficient ink for a few more pages

Click to expand...

--Wouldn't it do harm to the printer if it is left on 24hrs a day...7days a week? Just want to be sure about what you said that you leave it on all the time.
dong vill

The Canon printers with the individual ink tanks use a unique system. The visual display you see goes down in steps based on printing load. When the ink tank gets low enough for the small prism to be exposed on the bottom of the tank, the low ink warning will come up on the screen. Until you see the low ink warning, there is nothing to worry about because it is just an estimation (just like all manufacturers do). The advantage to the clear tanks though, is you actually can see when you are out of ink.

After the optical sensor gives you the low ink warning, you can still get quite a few prints out of the ink that is left in the sponge. Keep printing until the red X comes up telling you are out. It never runs out in the middle of a page so you don't have to worry about wasting a piece of expensive photo paper.

Lou Tent said:

Hi Jim,

I have found that the ink monitor indicator is
not accurate on my S9000.

If it shows a picture of , say 75%, you probably
have more than that - and it gets more inaccurate
(in your favor) as the indicator ink shows less & less.

This is most extreme when it shows the "alert" icon
when the cartridge is almost empty. I have printed
anywhere from 5 - 10 (8.5 x 11) prints when a color
is at this stage.

Also, when the printer states that a cartridge is empty,
pressing the reset button & continue printing may allow
even a few more prints.

Keeping the printer on helps conserve ink because it
reduces the cleaning cycles.

HTH

Lou

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/wp12001
Life is too short to waste it complaining.

Is your printer plugged in to a surge protector of some sort? A while back I remember reading an article about how to better conserver your printer resources and it stated that you should not plug your printer into a suge protector due to the fact they may leak power which some how consumes ink or something. Maybe its worth a try. If I can find the article at home in one of my old PC mags I will try and pass it a long.

Jim Blacklock said:

--
Jim Blacklock
I've just put my first replacement black cartridge into my Canon
S900. I've printed no more than a dozen pages of text on draft and
the cartridge is already showing only three quarters full. Does the
printer really use ink this quickly even on draft or is the printer
status report unreliable ?

Click to expand...

--
Jeremy J. Haines

in general for electronic systems the highest stress they'll experience is having the power turned on. there are some failure mechanisms relating directly to power-on hours, but the effect of these is very slow for most components, and usually far outweighed by the benefit of few power-ups

the canon like many other printers, is actually 'on' all the time that it is plugged-in to a live power socket, the printer's "on/off" switch is really a "sleep/wake" switch

Dong Vill said:

--Wouldn't it do harm to the printer if it is left on 24hrs a
day...7days a week? Just want to be sure about what you said that
you leave it on all the time.
dong vill

Click to expand...

Is there much difference in how much ink these two use? I understand the 900 has more jets, does that imply more ink?

Jim Blacklock said:

--
Jim Blacklock
I've just put my first replacement black cartridge into my Canon
S900. I've printed no more than a dozen pages of text on draft and
the cartridge is already showing only three quarters full. Does the
printer really use ink this quickly even on draft or is the printer
status report unreliable ?

Click to expand...

Don't think so...the S900 is double the speed because it has twice as many nozzles, but it shouldn't effect ink usage whatsoever.

Robert Grimes said:

Is there much difference in how much ink these two use? I
understand the 900 has more jets, does that imply more ink?

Click to expand...