[ILUG] unfreezing(?) the printhead of an ink-jet printer?

[Frank Peelo]

John McCormac wrote:
...

> A cheap printer (Lexmark or HP) will be around 100 Euros including a 
> small ink cartridges.

Can be less, maybe half that for a throwaway printer.

When my mother's Stylus C42UX died, we got her a DeskJet 5940. Think we 
had to download a PPD file for it, but when we got it working, we were 
just amazed by the speed and lack of hassle. And the HPLIP control panel 
just looked so much better than mtink. (Mandriva 2006) Only downside is 
that gimp-print doesn't know that printer, but we got reasonable results 
with some other printer type, can't remember which, think it was DeskJet900.

When my Stylus Color 680 failed, on a Sunday morning about a month ago 
when I had to get some stuff printed out before Monday, the only DeskJet 
that I could find in PC World was a DeskJet D2360. This cost EUR44.99. 
And it looks it, flimsy plastic lid instead of the metal casing. USB 
cable was extra, but I had one already. As John said, the included ink 
cartridges were 5ml ones instead of the normal 15ml. A replacement set 
of 2 cartridges was about another EUR40.

Put it on my (Mandriva 2007) machine, asked the PC to set up the 
printer, it went and downloaded/installed the necessary HPLIP and the 
PPD file, and the printer worked. Have to say I was surprised. But I was 
slightly disappointed with the print speed. Only slightly faster than 
the Epson. Guess you get what you pay for.

fp