Well, I unboxed my shiny new $22 Lexmark Z1300 Friday night and
eagerly ripped my pair of "compatible" cartridges from InkStop out of
their packages-Jiminy Christmas, *why* do they make those things so
damned hard to open?-and was quickly greeted by a pair of "invalid"
messages when I stuck the cartriges in and fired everything up. No
way around it as far as I can tell. The printer and/or its driver
seemed convinced that the cartridges were something other than the
Lexmark 34 and 35 they wre advertised and sold as. Oh well, I didn't
have any life-or-death print jobs that couldn't wait overnight anyway.
Back to InkStop the next afternoon. Kid Behind the Counter intoned
that "some printers can use them and some can't." My, that's
comforting to know. So, I wondered, what did he have in mind with
regard to honoring his establishment's 100 percent satisfaction
guarantee? Well, says Kid, he could exchange their cartridges for a
pair of OEMs. I assumed (but didn't ask) that I'd have to pony up the
(substantial) price difference, so I begged off and agreed for now to
go with another pair of theirs. Besides, I had a Plan B in reserve
(more on *that* later) which didn't involve my buying OEM from them.
Didn't help. Same thing when I got home with the second pair. My
suspicion is that these really aren't a 34/35 pair but a 32 and 33
(the sales receipt, upon close inspection, lists the black cartridge
as "compatible" with both 32 and 34 and the tricolor with 33 and 35)
and the Z1300 can tell the difference. Also, I noticed, upon trying
the standard troubleshooting step of cleaning the electrical contacts
on the cartridges, that they appeared to be somewhat worn, with
"dimples" in them that *might* affect whether or how well they can
connect to the ones in the printer. One would tend to think, however,
that *four* cartridges wouldn't *all* be that bad.
Anyone out there with any particular expertise care to weigh in on my
hypothesis or know of a possible workaround? By the way, if it makes
any difference, the printer is installed on a MacBook Pro running OS X
10.4.11 and Vista virtually via VMWare Fusion Same issue in both
OSs. Well, if there's no way to make them work, it's not my problem-
it's Kid's, or whichever of his coworkers is in tomorrow.
Oh, and about Plan B. I decided to give Office Depot a chance to
shine where Staples stumbled and took a copy of their Internet page
for the OEM 34/35 pair to a local store. They had it in stock for a
shelf price $4 more than they were selling it for online-$57 versus
$53. I guess this time I was lucky enough to have a manager, who
quickly agreed to the lower price, come over. Maybe if I'd been a bit
more persistent with Kid's brother out at Staples, he'd have gotten
hold of someone with a tad more authority and I'd have saved an extra
buck. Nevertheless, the printer's working.
