I was cleaning out old things and found an old printer which was a free gift of buying laptop computer , never used, Epson stylus C45, likely 10+ years, filled with dust, all cleaned up,
it also came with ink cartridge . What should I do ?
Clean out the dust and start using it? Could the ink cartridge already dry out? Anything to pay attention to?
If the cartridge is in the printer it will have dried out. if still sealed, could well be ok.
You can get refill kits and bottles of ink on Amazon quite reasonably.
And of course there's the quesiton of whether your driver works with Win 10.. (I have an inkjet bought about 20 years ago I still use..)
If the ink cartridges were installed, you will probably have to replace the print heads as well. Unlike HP inkjets of that vintage, the Epson ink cartridges don't include the print heads. The ink will have dried in the heads, and I doubt that they'd be cleanable.
If the cartidges were not installed, just buy new ones.
The drivers don't list Win10 support, but as Win 8.1 is on the list, I'd bet that they'd work fine. Epson Stylus C45 Driver, Manual, Software & Download
The printer came with the cartridge installed by the factory, I didn't install the cartridge into the printers, in that case, the print head is likely to be dead and has to be replaced (10+ years now certainly)?
Because I don't really need to print very badly, and inkjet printer nowadays are very inexpensive, if I need to put any cost, I'll then just throw the whole printer away...
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I don't know if the cartridege is sealed, but it's already installed into the printer since it came out of the factory. I did not even open the outer box for 10+ years.
If it likely requires any replacement, I'll then just throw it away. Now asking advice.
My advice in buying an inkjet printer is - don't buy an inkjet printer. If you're working in black and white, laser printers have gotten cheap enough. They don't dry out with infrequent use, and their consumables are relatively inexpensive.
Color laser printers aren't insanely expensive, but they are useless for photo printing.
I like Brother because they seem to do a better job of driver support for old printers than their competitors. (Not a US company, if that matters, though.)
These days it's cheapest to buy an inkjet printer on offer for £25 then buy a new one when the cartridges run out!
Umm, would you really? Non-environmentally freiendly trail of disastrous plastic rubbish that will end up in the ocean...
And we're trying to curb the use of plastic bags...
- as I said, my printer (not used often) was bought around 1998, and my hifi and speakers and bike from the 80's.. but I'm developing a trail of laptops... 3 failed, 2 functional to dispose of
I'm just trying to fix a failed Dell laptop Help Dell Inspiron Windows 10 Laptop Dead
I've taken it pieces and I'm surprised how fragile some of the components are.
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