Life on the Computer Farm: Those Printers

First we had the HP.
  Actually we still have, i believe, the same HP.  It's clunky and boring, while being too complicated to understand; replacing the ink cartridge is worth a week's groceries, it only does b&w, but it gets the job done.
  i've seen what looks like the same model in banks.

  Then we got a Dell.  It was worth more than we paid for it - free, for all MyGuy thought of it as junk.  It scanned.   It faxed.  It did COLOR.  i could use lots of different weights & sizes of papers & cardstocks, as long as they were no more than 11" wide.  You had to manually turn the pages over to print on the back, but that wasn't too hard.



  For my birthday last year, MyGuy got me the Epson.  It is a Really Super Fantastic Printer, though, as usual, he didn't listen to all i wanted.  (but how often will i really need to print or even scan a 12x12?)  It scans.  It faxes.  It does COLOR.  It  even prints ON CDs.  i don't even know all it does yet, it's so complicated.

  Right now it's annoying me.
  That boring HP printer will keep printing to the cartridge's last breath.  We get some pretty interesting, pale, stripey pages, but if we can put up with what we get, the HP printer will keep printing everything we ask it to.
  Not so the Really Super Fantastic Epson.
  It has six ink cartridges.  Cyan, Yellow, Lt. Cyan, Black, Magenta, Lt. Magenta.
  At the moment, the Magenta is nearly full; the Lt. Magenta and Yellow are at half.  Cyan, Lt. Cyan, and Black look very low to me, but i think i could print more with them.
  Epson has made an executive decision that the print quality would not be good enough, therefore i may not print anything.
  Not only that, i may not SCAN anything, until i replace the Cyan, Lt. Cyan, and Black cartridges.  Nor may i receive faxes, even if i do not wish to print the fax but rather store it in my computer.
  Presumably i could send faxes, if i the document was already in the computer.  But i've never wanted to fax a document like that, only paper ones.  Which would need to be scanned.

  Did i say this printer is annoying me?  That's an understatement.