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Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Light Magenta

My HP Photosmart printer has been pretty reliable over the years, but refilling the ink cartridges is more maddening than it needs to be.



Notice in the picture above that there are 6 colors of ink. These are the names that HP selected for these colors (I am not making this up):

  1. 02 Black
  2. 02 Cyan
  3. 02 Light Cyan
  4. 02 Magenta
  5. 02 Light Magenta
  6. 02 Yellow
So out of the millions of color names, they had to repeat the names Cyan and Magenta. Why? I guess to make it as confusing as possible for the consumer.

The inks all run out at vastly different rates, so when my printouts start to look horrible I look at the ink levels to see which ones I need to replace. After several minutes of study today, I determined that the two cartridges that I need to refill are "Magenta" (not light Magenta!) and "Cyan". Of course, in my spare ink drawer I have 4 Light Magenta cartridges. I know this only because they have a microscopic LM on them. And of course I have zero Magenta cartridges, since the Magenta seems to be the one that always runs out. This reminds me of the Neopolitan ice cream container that always has only Strawberry when I look inside. So now I have to order three Magenta cartridges and wait another week before I can print something legible again.

Also, notice how all of the cartridges have the 02 number designation. Thanks HP - that is wonderfully helpful also!

Why the hell can't they give unique names to these print cartridges?

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