[dpcan]

This is not unique to Epson, so if you go out an buy an HP thinking you'll be safe... do your research first.

I have an HP Officejet 6700 Premium right behind me that works the exact same way. If I run out of Magenta, it won't even print in black.

I've been thinking of trying to find a way to inject some water or something into the empty cartridges to trick it. The strange thing is - I almost never print in color, yet somehow, I run out of color ink. I don't get it. And it's costing me way more than I want to spend to print.

[eosrei]

The simpler option is to buy a high quality laser printer. I'm on the same cartridge in my HP4200N for almost 10 years since it's good for 12,000+ pages.