[Leica] Infrequent printer selection?

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

> Have you noticed any change in quality as the cartridges age?

I have spent many many many hours on the phone to Epson tech-support, trying 
to get one of my various broken 3800's working again. A typical conversation 
with tech support involves them making a suggestion, me trying it, and then 
us waiting for something to reboot, reset, or print.

During the waiting periods I usually peppered them with questions. One of 
the topics that I discussed with all of people I talked to was ink lore: 
storage, expiration, etc. They said that there are two issues once a 
cartridge has been opened and installed, namely oxidation of the ink (which 
changes its color) and evaporation causing a change in the viscosity of the 
ink (which changes the rate at which it is sprayed, hence its color).

Different tech-support people had slightly different stories and experience, 
but all of them were adamant that ink works better when it is new. A couple 
of printers ago I was trying to debug a prints-in-wrong-color problem, and 
one of the tests they wanted me to make was to replace the Magenta and Photo 
Magenta cartridges with new ones. When I pointed out that they were asking 
me to discard $100 worth of ink to run a test, they were quite willing to 
send me new cartridges.

(Swapping out the magenta cartridges didn't fix the problem; it ultimately 
turned out to be an electronics problem in the printer's logic board).