HP Photosmart 8250 ink weirdness

A few weeks ago I purchased an HP Photosmart 8250. The printer is
fantastic and prints beautifully. I bought it while I was in manchester
because it was cheaper to buy a printer there than it was to rent one
for three days.

I got back to the states and I set it up at my office. The light
magenta cartridge was out. So I bought a new one at Staples. I
installed it and was told that the printer only works with series 363
cartridges. Same cartridge. Same size. Same printer. But apparently HP
sells cartridges with region codes associated with them so that you can
only buy the ink in the country you bought the printer.

I spoke to their tech support and they told me that my suspicions were
true. I can't use American in with my British printer. It wasn't
technical. But he didn't give me the reason behind why they'd do this.
He did tell me that there is a way to switch my printer to be used in
the US. I haven't gone through that process yet but I am in the middle
of it.

Has any9one heard of this before? Whats the reason behind this? Is
there a way to set the printer to not care about the region code? Its
not that I travel often, but if I do an I bring the printer with me I'd
like the ability to buy ink over there.

Any help would be great.
Larry.

"Larry Viezel" wrote in message
oups.com...

Has any9one heard of this before? Whats the reason behind this? Is
there a way to set the printer to not care about the region code? Its
not that I travel often, but if I do an I bring the printer with me
I'd
like the ability to buy ink over there.

Yes, I have heard of this, and no, there is no way for a user to disable
the regionalization. The reason for regionalization has to do with gray
marketing of cartridges. Printers designed to be portable (such as the
Photosmart 485 or the DeskJet 460) are designed to take cartridge from
any of the four regions, but most of the other printers are not. As
you found from support, HP can reset the region for you on a limited
basis. When you have the region reset you will need to replace al the
ink supplies to match the new region. It is not possible to use
supplies from different regions in the printer at the same time.

Regards,
Bob Headrick, MS MVP Printing/Imaging

On 19 Jun 2006 11:18:23 -0700, "Larry Viezel"
wrote:

A few weeks ago I purchased an HP Photosmart 8250. The printer is
fantastic and prints beautifully. I bought it while I was in manchester
because it was cheaper to buy a printer there than it was to rent one
for three days.

I got back to the states and I set it up at my office. The light
magenta cartridge was out. So I bought a new one at Staples. I
installed it and was told that the printer only works with series 363
cartridges. Same cartridge. Same size. Same printer. But apparently HP
sells cartridges with region codes associated with them so that you can
only buy the ink in the country you bought the printer.

I spoke to their tech support and they told me that my suspicions were
true. I can't use American in with my British printer. It wasn't
technical. But he didn't give me the reason behind why they'd do this.
He did tell me that there is a way to switch my printer to be used in
the US. I haven't gone through that process yet but I am in the middle
of it.

Has any9one heard of this before? Whats the reason behind this? Is
there a way to set the printer to not care about the region code? Its
not that I travel often, but if I do an I bring the printer with me I'd
like the ability to buy ink over there.

Any help would be great.
Larry.


Yes this is the new protection buit in to HP printers. Not only are
there different cartridges for US, Europe & Asia, there is now no way
to reset the cartridge when you refill it.

The big problem is that there is no information on the printer about
this problem. I asume that they are trying to stop grey imports

DJT