Yes i have seen it in some of the ink jet printers at work. They can get really full. I think the printer companies expect you to buy a new printer before then.

Yep - a definite problem. Had a friend with a seldom used printer that had given the 'reservoir full' message but didn't want to replace it. Some Net investigation led me to advice to dismantle the printer, wash out the sponges (actually no free sludge at all) and reassemble. HOWEVER then had to follow info on tech site to 're-initialise' the printer before it would work again - perfectly I might say. Appears there is no 'reservoir' to fill up, or sensor to detect it, just a built in redundancy feature!!

I use inkjet photo printers commercially. I go through hundreds of ink packs and thousands of sheets of paper. The trick to "less" ink wastage seems to be, leave the printer turned on.
Every time you turn the printer off/on it does a nozzle clean and wastes some ink.
Ok probably not an ideal solution if you only use a printer occasionally, but if you prints lots and often, dont turn it off.

Actually they still do, MikeP! Especially lasers.

Oh, and some of the larger machines buffer your printouts on internal hard drives that rarely get wiped when they machines are replaced or upgraded.

Paranoia indeed!

--Geoff

Another 'secret'. Years ago colour printers used to print a unique code that identified the date, time and serial number of your printer in yellow microdots that allowed anyone who new where to look to identify the printer used. The reason? to identify printers used to print banknotes or documents found on terrorists.
Don't know if they still do so. Anyone out there know?
Ain't paranoia wonderful?