I finally have to admit to myself that my HP 812 deskjet has died. One of the OS X updates killed the drivers along time ago (a long...time ago) and it's never been the same since.

So I'm looking for some printer recommendations. I am considering a B&W laser, though I only print not even a page/day. Price range under $300. Color not needed. Just something reliable. I need drivers that support OS 10.4.11

Has Brother been more reliable than HP on the Mac in recent years ?

I have owned a MFC-210c desktop printer from Brother since 2005 and haven't had any problems.

I've had a Canon Pixma IP500 since Oct 2005 and it, like the battery bunny, just keeps on working.

As a general rule, if I was looking for a new printer I'd check a couple of things like:

How large are the ink tanks? The real profit in a printer is in the "consumables" and I understand that some tanks are now quite small. (More ink replacements, more profit)

Does the printer go through a cleaning cycle every time it's turned on? I understand this is not necessary but the process does consume ink.

Et cetera.

I'm sure others can provide other printer perils and pitfalls.

If you're looking for a B&W laser printer under $100, try a Lexmark E120n. I've been majorly happy with mine for the past few years.

There are drivers for every version of Mac OS (and they're available via either Lexmark or Apple).

FWIW, here are Macworld reviews of 7 monochrome laser printers under $300. In addition to purchase price, it pays to take the price of consumables (toner etc.) into account.

I have been quite happy with both B/W and Color laser Multi-Function Machines from Brother. They use standard CUPS drivers and provide TWAIN support for the scanning function. My latest is an MFC-9320CW (Color/Wireless) and it has worked flawlessly with my Macs as well as my iPhone and iPad. (Note it takes a free iPhone/iPad app to Print or Scan.)

I have also been quite pleased with a Canon IP4500 printer that I network wirelessly through an Airport Express. It too has been very reliable and like Brother, Canon keeps the drivers up to date. I have gotten the Canon to work with the iDevices using a third party app but it requires the help of one of the Macs to do its thing whereas the Brother App only requires both the printer and iDevice to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

I don't want an all-in-one or a printer so big it needs to be on the floor. My printer needs are modest.

I read reviews of some Brother models (like the 2270DW and 2240 sold by OfficeMax) on Amazon and am pretty discouraged. Noise, printers dying, short starter toner life. Some hostile reviews. But then some think it's the greatest and it will have won a PC mag award. What to do.

FWIW:

I have a HEWLETT PACKARD (HP-AIO 1410) printer which works for printing, scanning and copying (PSC) when hooked up directly by cable to the computer's USB port.

However, while the printing feature will work wirelessly using Time Capsule, the SCANNER is not supported for wireless use (and no word from HP that it will ever provide such an update for this model of printer).

So . . . if you are planning to buy ANY printer for wireless connections, check with the retailer to be sure that ALL of the features of the printer can be used wirelessly.

I did some messing around with my old HP, deleting some junk with Printer Setup Repair, some uninstalling, and then installed the latest version of Gutenprint. Consequently, I don't have the same problem I had before which forced me to turn off/on the printer between jobs.

So I'm going to keep the printer now and see how it goes…

Great, congratulations!

Btw, the effective footprint of many of today's low-end AIOs is pretty much comparable to your regular printer-only device. Personally, I love the availability of copying, scanning and faxing capability, even though I didn't think I'd need it all that often. Once I had it, though, I found that my copying and scanning of documents into PDFs for archival (and search) purposes gradually increased...

I was wrong. Now no draft mode, some other formatting errors with Gutenprint.

Oh, it's all a mess. I just have never gotten this printer to work well with OS 10.4

Time really moves fast. I used that HP until I was sure it was dead. I certainly got my money's worth.

I replaced it years ago with an Epson Workforce All in One color ink jet, which turned to be handier than I thought and it doesn't take up much space. Surprisingly, the wireless connected fine. The driver works fine. I've never had to update the driver from the one that came with printer's CD.

On the negative side, I don't print that much, but the printer really devours ink and it lacks a duplex function. I hate wasting paper. On my old HP, I was able to print on one side, then put the paper back into the machine and print on the other side. Interesting that this doesn't work on the newer Epson. Newer isn't always better. Draft quality is quite a bit worse than draft quality on my old, old HP ink jet. Today I always have to print in normal mode. There are some other quirks which I don't recall at the moment. I've had it, I guess, at least three years, so maybe I should expect to collapse soon.

By the way, the Print Edit add-on in Firefox is quite handy. It can save you a lot of paper and ink, and newer versions have been better rather than worse, is often the case.

I've considered getting a monochrome laser because it looks like it would be cheaper than having to buy those expensive inkjet tanks for my all-in-one. Brother is often recommended, but what I saw at Office Depot is incompatible with 10.6.7. I would probably not even bother with wireless, instead just plug in the laser where I use the computer. Lots of horror stories out there about problems with drivers, wireless, and cheap build quality.

I remember when laser printers came out I thought they were coolest thing in the world. Now that I can afford one, they're cheap crap.

It's a comment I make about so many products now: I don't mind spending more on a quality product, esp. if it will have some longevity. I don't insist on having the cheapest product imaginable, nor the most disposable. Obviously I have a medieval approach to economy.

FWIW, if and when you decide to take up the search for a new printer again in the future, I recently went through that same process and landed on choosing a Brother MFC-J985DW to fill my needs....it has been 100% effective since I placed it in service. I haven't had it long enough to run the original ink carts dry, so I can't say with total assurance that it will be as economical as I was led to believe by the reviews, but they are pretty favorable.

Ease of setup for wireless was very reasonable, and print quality hasn't disappointed.

(....AND it has full AirPrint capability so my iPhone and iPads now have a color printing option)

edited to add AirPrint capability info

I'm not going to tout my Canon Image Class LBP 6000 laser printer as anywhere near top of the line (Its most endearing attribute is that it suits my very minimal needs.), but I will say that I'm totally pleased with the concept.

If you don't require color ability, a laser printer will definitely save you money, perhaps even time, over an inkjet: my starter 700 page cartridge may last me for the rest of my life. I use my printer very infrequently, and after 4 years, the cartridge shows no signs of drying out as my inkjet cartridges used to do after only a few months.

Here's a caveat: Be very careful about deleting old printers after you install the new one. I recently hooked up my new Epson SureColor P600 and, after using it for about a week, found a home for my Epson Stylus Photo R2880 (which was in excellent condition). Reasoning that I no longer needed the drivers for the 2880, I went to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and deleted that printer. Boom! I lost all my presets and was unable to reset them because certain settings (draft mode, printing in reverse order) were no longer available. (Actually, draft mode was accessed via a slider that was grayed out.)

I reset the printing system and added the P600 back, with no joy. I reinstalled drivers directly from Epson, also no joy. I finally restored from a backup and got back all the functionality that I had previously had. I'm not going to delete that former printer again!

Not a problem I'm likely to ever run into, Jon, but thanks for the heads-up.

I wonder if it might be better placed in a separate thread?

I will second the recommendation for a Brother. Just because the manufacturer doesn't put new compatibility labels on every box in their supply chain or the retailers update their shelf labels every time Apple releases a new version of MacOS does not mean a printer will not work with Sierra or MacOS 10.13, Mac OS 10.14, etc. when they are released. I never use the software in the box anyway as it is invariably out of date, sometimes years out of date. I go to the manufacturer's web site and download the latest version there.

My Brother printers have proven 100% reliable and I have never had a minute's problem with MacOS compatibility, which is more than I can say for either HP or Epson. Canon has also been good for me, but not as long lived as Brother.

As to ink costs remember all the printer manufacturers sell the printer hardware at or near cost and make their money from the ink/toner and paper. There are so many variables it is very difficult for an individual to arrive at a realistic cost per page.

I'll note that you've mentioned before that Brother printers are Mac friendly, and I'll add to that that Canon printers are NOT.

Mine is recent enough that it should be able to work with my AirPort Express, but it doesn't, so I"ve got to cable it up whenever I need to print.

Do you mean Canon Laser Printers? My Pixma 712 inkjet has been running without any issues since 2008…..hard to get friendlier than that.

Running is great, but by friendly, I meant documentation and support. (Yeah, I was talking about my laser printer.)

All I can say is I have an elderly Canon Pixma ink jet networked through an Airport Express 802.11n (1st Generation) that I use for specialty print jobs such as graphic images on odd sized gloss or matte paper media and it works flawlessly.

Maybe it's because my printer is looow end, but It's never been networkable.

As a matter of fact, this thread got me to looking, and I found an updated driver, but still no joy.

The Canon Pixma IP4500 is not supposed to be networkable and neither is a Dymo Labelwriter 450 Turbo, but I have both running on my network using Airport Express units as wireless print servers.

The way I set them up is...

1. configure an Airport Express 802.11n (1st Generation) or later to Join a wireless network (not create or extend)
2. connect the non-networkable printer to the Airport Express via USB
3. In System Preferences ➢ Printers & Scanners on the Mac, click on the plus (+) sign at the bottom of the list of printers.
4. The Airport Express connected non-networkable printer shows up in the list of available printers as "Canon IP 4500" of the type "Bonjour".
5. Select it and click Add
6. The printer mounts just like any networked or locally attached device.

NOTES:

• The driver for the printer must be installed locally
• Once a printer is mounted MacOS sees all printers the same regardless of how it is attached (USB or WiFi)
• The printer driver is independent of the connection
• An Airport Express can join virtually any WiFi network but it can only extend a network created by another Airport base station

Artie, I think your Canon should work. I hope there is a clue in here that will help you get it up and running. Neither my Canon or Dymo printers are networkable but both work perfectly using an Airport Express as a wireless print server. Better in fact than either did when shared from another Mac.

Thanks to those who responded.

I don't expect to drain a laser cartridge in a short time. I don't print print much. My concern was more about the drivers and build quality. I guess I could ignore the requirements and return the printer if I couldn't get it to work on 10.6.

Thanks for the instructions and encouragement.

I was getting absolutely nowhere with the instructions, though, and was just about to throw in the towel when I realized that, as I invariably do, I had forgotten to turn my printer on.

The going was smoother after that, except in step 1, AirPort Utility asked me to choose a network (to join) from its drop-down, and the printer wasn't on the list, nor was I able to find a way to get it there.

The newly added printer shows up as an option in a "Print" pane, but I've got no idea how to get macOS to connect to it.

Have you got any idea what, if anything, I've missed, or, as the case may be, failed to comprehend?

I also went through my Canon's documentation, and I found instructions for setting up networking via Terminal. Unfortunately, though, the instructions are generic, and, as per tech support, my printer isn't one of the supported ones.

So, unless you can get me past step 1, I'm stuck with a cable.

(It's not critical now that I've got a router with two built-in wireless networks, but going your route will turn my Base Station into a dedicated print server, leaving me unable to use it for Internet, and I was hoping for full AirPort Express functionality, i.e. Internet, printing, and AirPlay.)

I understood you were installing the printer using a SPARE Internet Express not an Airport Base Station, Airport Express that you are using to create your network. What I am proposing requires a dedicated Airport Express or other print server to work. If you are not attempting to use a dedicated AE then lets drop the whole matter. If my initial understanding was correct then...


You too Glad I'm not the only one that pulls that trick.


The printer should NOT be on the list of networks to join. You want the Airport Express to join the same network your Mac is connected to. That should be on the list unless it is a "hidden" network. If that is the case your will have to type in the network name.


If the printer was previously installed on your Mac via USB...

1. delete USB connected printer by selecting it in System Preferences > Printers & Scanners and clicking on the minus sign (-) at the bottom of the list of printers and acknowledging you want to delete the printer
2. after the USB connected printer is deleted, click on the plus (+) sign at the bottom of the list and selecting the networked printer from the list of available printers that will appear. It will have a name something like "Cannon IP4500" and a type of "Bonjour"
3. click on the "Add" button and wait while the printer installs.
4. The next time you click on Print or Command+P your Canon should appear on the list of available printers,
5. Select it and click on the Print button.

You were correct, but my explanation was typically obscure.

I"ve been using my AirPort Express for Internet, but my router's got built-in 2.4 and 5 GHz networks, so I moved my Internet to the 5GHz network and turned my AE into a dedicated spare to use for this project.


After following your instructions I got to this point, but I still couldn't print.

This may be the kicker, though... The 5 GHz FiOS network I joined was neither in the AirPort Utility drop-down nor hidden, but I typed it in anyhow. I just noticed, though, that NONE of the 5 GHz FiOS networks that appear in my menu bar WiFi drop-down appear in the AU drop-down: only the 2.4 GHz networks appear.

It looks like I can only do this via the 2.4 GHz FiOS network (which will, of course, limit my connectivity options).

Back to square one.

Update: Catch 22'd!!!

I went out for a walk, planning to start over with the 2.4 GHz network when I got back, but the fresh air cleared my head, and I realized that changing my AE status from "Create..." to "Join..." would disable it as respects AirPlay, which I run 24/7, and since I print extremely infrequently, AirPlay won the day.

At some point I"ll try the 2.4 GHz network, and if I'm able to print, I'll maybe buy a 2nd generation "n" AirPort Express if Apple comes up with some refurbs...and I"m able to find an outlet into which to plug it. (I HATE the new AE's which lie flat unless you spring for a wall-mounting kit! Hmmm... Anybody got an opinion on Vertically mount the new AirPort Express with Apple AC wall plug? Other than the plug's obstructing the WAN port which I don't need, I don't see any down side.)

Apparently you have a first generation Airport Express and those predate 802.11n and the 5GHz band. However with almost all dual band WiFi routers any device connected to the 5GHz band can connect to any device on the 2.4 GHz band and vice versa. For example I have a number of devices (2 Brother printers with built in wireless connectivity, a stand alone Fujitsu copier, sprinkler systems, door locks, lighting controls, garage door openers etc.) that are 2.4GHz ONLY but I can access all of them from my Mac, iPhone and iPad connected to the 5GHz band. I don't know, or particularly care, which band the three printers using Airport Expresses as print servers are connected to.

When I have a choice, I will connect printers and other low volume devices to the 2.4GHz network and save the 5GHz for high volume loads. In fact with the exception of 2.4GHz ONLY devices, my Netscape router automatically identifies low volume devices and moves their connection to the 2.4GHz band.

Why do you have to create a network on your AE for Air Play? According to this Apple article you just have to be on the same local area network. Using either an Airport Base Station or my Netgear router that includes both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks created on the same device. While Verizon may have some funky configuration on their WiFi router I can't imagine they would restrict communications on the same local area network. To be clear I have three network IDs appearing here all created by the same Netgear WiFi router...

• 2.4 GHz
• 5GHz
• Guest

With the right password you can log onto any one of the three. Guest is a special network for visitors that connects only to the internet. But anyone logged onto either of the other two has full access to any device on either network, including AirPlay. With so called Mesh routers there is no differentiation between bands it is all hidden in the firmware/software of the router and appears as a single network.

Nope; I couldn't be engaged in this experiment if I didn't have at least a 1st generation "n" AirPort Express. (The older ones haven't been supported, i.e. configurable with AirPort Utility, since a few versions of OS X back.)

Here's what I"m seeing: this screenshot shows that my AE isn't seeing any of the 5 GHz FiOS networks, while this one shows that it is seeing other 5 GHz networks at the same time.


Your linked doc deals with iOS devices, not Macs.


I suspect that playing music to an AirPort Express is an exercise similar to the one in which I"m engaged.

To run AirPlay on a Mac, your stereo must be plugged into your AE and you must be able to connect to its network. (I imagine that that's the same way my old Lexmark printer that did function through my AE worked.)

I am too. I assume you scrolled down the list of networks to see if the 5 GHz bands showed up later further down the list.


"you must be able to connect to its network" may not be not the best wording. Airplay works fine from my Mac, my iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV to a sound system connected to an AE that has joined the network created by my Netgear WiFi Router. Perhaps a better wording might be you must be connected to the same network?

Even knowing that the list is in strict alpha order (except for l.c. being at its bottom), I scrolled down it an embarrassing number of times in the vain hope that those networks really were somewhere on it.


Good point.

I think the correct wording

• as respects a situation in which an AE has created its own network is "To run AirPlay, your stereo must be plugged into your AE and you must be connected to it(s network)."
• and as respects a situation in which an AE has joined another network is "To run AirPlay, your stereo must be plugged into your AE and you must be connected through it to the network it has joined."

Closer?

Sometimes Airport Utility and setting up Airport Express appears a bit flakey. I know that when you reset an Airport device and then set it up from scratch (recommended) the Airport device temporarily creates its own network and the device you are running Airport Utility on has to join that network to complete the setup. This leads me to two questions

1. Are you resetting the Airport Express to start with (paperclip in the reset hole until the light begins to flash green)
2. this is off the wall, but when you start the setup process is the device running Airport Express logged onto a 5GHz network? (Admittedly I am grasping at straws here, but…)

To me that sounds pretty close, but if we were in a design meeting working on the documentation, I would probably argue your first scenario is superfluous. That is the kind of description that a team of four or five software engineers and tech writers could easily spend an entire day getting to everyone's satisfaction and would still be incomprehensible to anyone who had not been in on the discussion/argument/dustup that wrote it. Of course after all that work the editor, who may or may not fully understand the situation, would step in and rewrite it to the satisfaction of no one on the design team. I have been there and done that more than once. 😲

I was making my changes without resetting my AE...just changing my existing configuration, and in that scenario, the 5 GHz FiOS networks didn't appear on the "Join" list regardless of which of the four available bands (n (b/g compatible), n only (2.4 GHz), n (a compatible), n only (5 GHz)) was my starting point.

I also tried a factory reset, but I suspect that my refurbished AE wasn't 100% refurbished, because even though the light flashed as it should have, my settings were intact afterwards. (I now remember having tried a factory reset once before with the same wonky results.)

But my 5 GHz FiOS network (not all of them) appeared on the join list afterwards along with my 2.4 GHz FiOS network.

So in the end, my position has improved, but something's still going on, and now I must suspect that my AE is at least partly to blame.

Any time I have changed the network configuration of an Airport device I started with a full reset. As to the reset process itself,

1. hold the reset button for ten seconds or more after the light starts flashing green.
2. If Airport Utility is running when the reset is performed quit Airport Utility
3. Restart Airport Utility and the device being reset should not appear among the devices on the network
4. After several seconds a banner in the upper left quadrant of the Airport Utility screen labeled "Other WiFi Devices" becomes solid (not greyed out)
5. click on the "Other WiFi Devices" banner and the reset Airport device should appear with a network name like Apple Network 883124
6. click on that device and proceed to set it up from there by giving it a name and a password
7. click on the Wireless tab and select the desired operating mode (join, extend, create)
   • If you selected Create you will need to name the network and fill in the blanks that appear depending on the selected security level
   • If you selected Join you will be presented with a list of the available networks NOTE: You will be presented with a list of networks on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands if and ONLY if this the Airport device has been reset and you have connected to it in Airport Utility via the Apple Network NNNNNNN
   • If you Create or Extend a network you will have the option to create a Guest Network that has access only to the internet.
8. Regardless of the Wireless mode you have the option of enabling Airplay on the device.

FWIW Airport devices are not infallible — particularly some of the early Time Capsules. I have a first generation Time Capsule and the WiFi section went wonky and unreliable. It is now connected to my network via Ethernet with WiFi disabled and the drive is performing a yeoman's work as Network Attached Storage and the additional Ethernet ports in turn provide connectivity for a variety of sensor devices feeding into the LAN and Internet.

There are three ways to reset an AirPort base station; you've described (albeit not quite correctly) a Hard reset, and beyond that there's a Factory Default reset. (There's also a n/a Soft reset.)

So I followed Apple's instructions in an attempt to get back to square one, but both Hard and Factory Default resets failed: after having undergone both procedures, my AirPort Express was still configured as it had been when I began.

The lessons to be learned are that my "refurbished" base station apparently isn't as refurbished as it was made out to be, and, sadly, that the reliability of everything I've reported thus-far is questionable.


My AE's being faulty may make this moot, but doesn't that fly in the face of my having seen both 2.4 and 5 GHz networks (albeit not all the available 5 GHz ones) in a "Join" pane without having done any sort of reset?

Note: Apple sells refurbished AirPort Express base stations for $50, but now that I've determined that my first refurb has apparently been faulty since day one, I'm not at all thrilled by the thought of buying a second one...even at a $50 saving.

Lest we forget where this all began...

So I finally got my AirPort Express to join my 2.4 GHz FiOS network, and as you said it should, AirPlay worked, but if I used the 2.4 GHz band for Internet at the same time, playback was choppy and subject to drop-outs; using the 2.4 GHz network for AirPlay and the 5 GHz network for Internet worked fine.

Unfortunately, though, no matter what I tried, including deleting and reinstalling drivers, I couldn't get the Bonjour printer to print..."Connection Error", regardless of which network I was using for Internet, and despite the fact that I deleted the USB printer before installation, and all settings looked correct.

Unless you've got any ideas, I"m throwing in the towel, because at this point my problem could be with my base station.

Many thanks for all your help. (At the very least, I learned a bunch - well, a little, anyhow - about networking.)

The 2.4GHz bands have a 20MHz bandwidth compared to the 5GHz bandwidth of 80MHz. You can get smooth playback on 2.4GHz, but you have to set a significantly larger buffer size on the receiving end.


I recently had that error connecting to a shared Dymo Label printer on my Mac mini server. After many unsuccessful attempts the problem was finally resolved by replacing the printer with a similar Dymo Label printer, switching the connection from the Mac mini server to an unused Airport Express; and rewiring and reconnecting all 22 of the electronics in the computer cabinet. In fact I solved my final networking problem this morning by moving a network repeater from one outlet to another six feet away on the same wall. I am convinced that in spite of all our technical knowledge there is still an element of ART to creating a good WiFi network. I know this, if I ever redo my network again it will be with some form of mesh routing — probably Orbi or Plume.

Are you serious? All that just to correct the Dymo problem? (How'd you even figure it out?)

"Mesh routing" sounds like a wonderful idea with networks as complicated as yours sounds.

My wife uses the Dymo label printer for a lot of tasks, not just labels per se and when it suddenly quit working… need I say any more. Reworking the electronics cabinet was a task I had been putting off and adding one more device, an AE, in such a small space elevated it from should do itito get it done — NOW!!!. As I already had another Dymo printer and an Epson printer networked via Airport Express units, switching the failed Dymo to an AE that was sitting in a drawer unused seemed a logical thing to try. Moving the repeater had nothing to do with the Dymo problem, it was to fix a problem with a WiFi controlled lamp, that would pair and then later disappear from the network.

During all of this I did a lot of research on Mesh routing and there are several variations on how to achieve it. If you have a large or complex house and your base WiFi router cannot reach all areas there are two options to "fix" the situation.

• Add an "extender" that picks up the base station signal and creates new networks for the remote areas of the house. This is what I have done so in my house I have XXXX-5GHz, XXX-2.4GHz, created by the base router and XXX-5GHz-Ext, XXX-2.4GHz created by the network Extender. As we move through the house our iPhones and iPads switch between the four networks depending on which has the strongest signal at that specifics location in the house. Because the computers, Apple TVs, door locks/openers, thermostats, light switches, etc. are fixed locations they stay on a selected network.
• With a "Mesh" router there would be only one network and that network would appear on both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The band a particular device connects to is determined by the router. There are almost as many ways this is physically implemented as there are Mesh network routers. For Example:
  • The Netgear Orbi has a base and one or more Extenders, traffic between the units and network control is via a dedicated 5GHz network
  • The Plume system has small (think nightlight sized) relatively inexpensive units plugged into an outlet in every room of the house. Routing between the units is configured via an internet.
• In either case the band is invisible to the user
• There are pros and cons to conventional and mesh network routing but in the end the big difference is where management control is located. With conventional Router and Extender networks the network manager retains control over the configuration and traffic, with Mesh routing that control resides in the router's firmware (or in Plume's case the internet based configuration utility.

Suffice it to say my next network — if there is one — will be Mesh and unless something new comes along either Orbi or Plume.

I looked into Orbi and Plume, and I both love the concept and hope that I never need to take advantage of it. (I couldn't go the Plume route...haven't got enough outlets.)

I have a Brother HL-2230 B&W laser printer. It's been great. I have had a couple of jams but was easily fixed. What I want to pass on if you haven't already purchased a printer is that when it says you are low on toner, other than shaking the toner cartridge back and forth to even it out, there is a little formula that keeps it printing for hundreds of extra pages. Here goes:

Resetting Brother Toner Cartridge
1. Turn off printer
2. Open front cover
3. Hold “go” button and turn printer on
4. Let go of “go” button then press twice
5. Pause and then press 5 x for standard toner and 6 times for high yield toner
6. Close front of printer
7. If it says “printer is not connected”, turn printer off then on again.

I've had to do it a couple of times but it always works for tons more copies until, of course, it is empty. That hasn't happened yet. I bought it in Sept. 2014 and I am only on my second cartridge. I didn't know that trick with the first cartridge. I don't use it a lot like in an office but average more than one copy a day.