Just a quick question.

Some printers will and some won't.

My HP was nice. No color it would print in b&W. No B&W required you to remove the b&W cartridge and it would do it's best to make b&W out of color.

My Epson is another story. Can't print B&W if a color is outl

Brother - don't know.

You can 'trick' the printer into thinking the color carts are full. Take out the empty cartridge and slide the outer housing back. You will see an empty 'window' of the ink resivoir. The printer apparently uses light to pass through this to determine ink volume. I simply put a small piece of opaque tape (blue painters tape) over the resivoir and it though the tank was full. You could probably also color it with a sharpie - anything to keep light from passing through. This works in a pinch when you need to print at 10 pm!

A sharpie doesn't work. Duct tape does because duct tape fixes everything. Brother's customer service representative says that the printer shuts down after the ink cartridge access panel is opened, so don't open the panel/cover if you can't replace the cartridge. Also, apparently it is damaging to the printer to print with an empty cartridge. Unfortunately, I see a load of ink in still in my cartridge. This is a complete waste of ink and a terrible design flaw.

You are the man tdbohannon... just saved me in a big pinch, good to know its very easy to fool this machine, small piece of duck tape on the yellow cartridge and I was back in business printing