What you've described is the reason I will never buy another Epson printer: You use up all the ink cartridges just trying to get the nozzles to unclog. I know yours wasn't an Epson, but I guess the Lexmarks have the same problem.

I haven't had the nozzles on my Canon clog yet, and I'm told the Hewlett-Packard ones integrate the nozzle with the ink cartridge so that it gets replaced with each ink replacement (but also making the cartridges painfully expensive).