Print Quality is Poor - the cause and solution

People often think that when they have problems with print quality that it is the cause of the ink cartridge. They are particularly prone to think this when they have purchased compatible ink cartridges or refilled ink cartridges.
However this is not always the case and the problem could lie elsewhere. To explore this a little further we can look at some of the problems that occur.

First of all here are some of the problems:

- Half of the page is not printer out.
- Irregular print quality meaning that one page is OK and the next one is smudged.
- The print is faded and or a general low quality.
- The pink or the blue in the colour comes out wrong.
- Broken lines through the print

Where half of the page is not printed out - either the top half , or the print stops half way across the page. This is probably not caused by the ink cartridge at all, but by not having the proper driver installed on your computer.

When you buy a new printer it may be more advanced than your existing computer and may not have the relevant drivers installed. This is easily fixed by downloading the proper driver from the manufactures website. They are generally free.

If you are experiencing problems with a generally low quality or faded print rather than blame the ink cartridge look at the printer setting. Do this by going to the print command - File - Print - Properties - Main - Quality Option.

This last command of Quality Option allows you to set the type of print you want. If it is set at "text" the quality will not be as good as "text and photo". Therefore by enabling the photo options you will improve the print quality.

It is worth remembering that the "text" facility is a very good way of saving ink. This setting is fine for drafts and other documents where the print quality is not important.

The quality of the paper also impacts on the quality of the print and if you want top quality print then similar quality paper is required.

Where the wrong colour ink comes out this is likely to be caused by either an empty ink cartridge or a poor quality ink cartridge. If the ink cartridge is new then either one of the cylinders has not been filled, has been filled with the wrong colour or it is a faulty ink cartridge. In this case it is advisable to return the ink cartridge to your supplier.

Broken lines in the print probably mean that the ink cartridge is empty, or if you have just replaced it , faulty.