Ink Cartridges - Squeezing Out a few more Pages

I accidentally discovered a little trick for getting a little bit more printing out of a dying ink cartridge this week. While printing out copies of a two page form, I noticed that the first page was a little light in places. The second page was too light to even be legible. I concluded that the ink cartridge had died. So I just had the bank for which I needed the form copy my original for the second page and made a mental note to pick up a new ink jet cartridge later this week.

The next day, forgetting that the ink cartridge was dead or dying, I sent a different two page form to the printer. To my surprise, the first page printed out just fine. The second printed out fine on the bottom of the page, but the top part was again illegible. I tried printing out the second page a few more times just to see if the results were a fluke, but no, each time it came out the same. Curious by now, I resolved to let the printer rest overnight and try printing the second page again the next day. Sure enough, it printed out just fine. Resting for a period seems to somehow bring the ink cartridge briefly back to life.

I'll still get a new ink cartridge, of course, but it's nice to know that if you don't feel like heading out to the store right away there might be a way to sometimes get a little printing out of the old cartridge. I can not say exactly how long the printer needs to rest to achieve this effect (3 hours? 12?). Nor can I say this will work for every ink jet printer. Possibly it might be useful for some models and not others (mine is a 10+ year old HP DeskJet 855CSE). For the cost of a sheet of paper, however, I figure it is worth a try.