That angers me so much. In university I owned an Epson inkjet printer that refused one night to print out my paper in b&w because the cyan cartridge was empty.
Never bought an Epson cartridge after that, only counterfeits on eBay.
Never bought an Epson cartridge after that, only counterfeits on eBay.
Then I gave up and would order the el-cheapo amazon refills and change all 7 at once, empty or not.
(one big change every few months instead of random refills every week or so)
https://sagittal.org/photo/CIS/inkchip/chip.html
...which is why there are lots of aftermarket CIS units for them:
I'm sure many people would happily shift from printing all black, to all cyan, then all magenta (yellow probably isn't practical) in an attempt to get maximal utility out of their color cartridge otherwise.