Tony, I think you confused Andy with me


I come bearing a summary of events after actually physically being in presence of the printer:

I connected her computer and mine to the old printer. I also connected both computers to my own portable printer. Her printer would not print black, mine would. Test pages sent directly from the printer its self would not print in black. Clearly the problem was with the printer, and it wasn't in the ink cartridges.

After a call to HP, they decided that the problem was with the ink carriage, which holds the ink cartridges and sends the signals for how much ink is needed and then passes it through. I'm not certain if it holds the print heads either, but I don't think so, I think those are further into the printer.

Anyway, HP eventually said that they didn't have that part anymore because they didn't make that printer anymore. The only thing they could offer was to replace the printer for half off the price of the new one. Of course, that's half off the highest list price they could muster, which was the same they sold it for in a local store, which didn't please my client any.

In the end I set her up with an Epson Workforce 840. It's a pretty darn nice printer, as inkjets go. In a field of universally-poor construction it seems pretty well made, and the software was surprisingly decent. The network scanning process ended up being extremely simple, and with a mere three button presses (directly on the printer) you could have a scanned document on the computer. I was very impressed. If I didn't refuse to buy inkjets, I'd strongly consider this one myself!

Anyway, thanks for all the help guys. It didn't end up being anything we could fix, but I still appreciate the input.