News-Record.com

Is it just me or is the world of printers and ink cartridges evil?

I spent a good hour at Staples yesterday trying to identify the correct Dell ink cartridge for my printer. This is after having gone to Office Depot a few weeks ago ("we don't carry Dell") and then to Ink Restore, who managed to lose my cartridges ("sorry, call the manager.") But finally the book report had to be printed, so we went to Staples, which for some reason is the only place you can buy Dell cartridges.

But which one? No, it couldn't be as simple as reading the package. It's top secret information, apparently. A similiarly befuddled woman and I stood there staring at the display, trying to figure out which would work in our 924 printer. We had some choice words for Dell about this time. We waited some more and had some choice words for Staples. Finally, the nice store manager looked it up for us and we got our cartridges. We're Series 5, as it turns out.

So feeling very proud of myself, I went to install the cartridge and triumphantly print out my daughter's book report. It seemed to fit, but I can't say for sure because the printer decided to stop working. I tried a variety of fixes, including turning it off and on and jiggling it, to no avail. I was on the verge of throwing it across the room when my daughters stopped me. After all, we had the cartridges now!