I have had a new Canon inkjet printer for a few months now, and just discovered a scam, or at least a serious misdirection. The printer puts a dialog box up on my monitor whenever its sensors detect an empty ink cartridge. The text identifies the empty cartridge and gives directions for replacing it. It also says to press OK to continue. Every time I removed a tank, sure enough, it looked empty on the reservoir side. However, I was always curious about the about the other side, which appears to be filled with some kind of foam or other or wicking material.
Until recently, I changed the cartridge as directed. Yesterday, out of curiosity, I pressed OK without changing the cartridge. So far, I have printed forty pages with no degradation in print quality. This discovery will give me huge savings in the cost of ink. Has anyone else discovered this? I am also interested if any of you can observe the same type of situation with other brands of printers.