Tony - I understand what you're saying, I was just saying the color printouts look just fine to indicate that the color cartridges don't have the same issue as far as I can tell. On the color printouts I made I looked and couldn't tell if the black was having issues.

Trevor - this is an HP, but it's a fairly old one where it doesn't appear that the heads are integrated into the cartridges. Sorry, I can't remember the model.

Thanks for the help folks. They're going to live with the current operation for now, as plain black text looks just fine. It's just when there's a field of black that it's noticeable.