I think all new inkjet printers do this. I have an Epson Workforce and after my wife printed a small color job, I had to buy new color cartridges to print a black and white document.
From what I've read, even when you are printing just in black, the printer uses a small amount of color ink to stop the cartridge heads from clogging. Still, I would appreciate not having to run out and buy a blue cartridge just to print 3 pages of a text document.
Actually this could be true. I had an assignment in our security class to investigate this[0] and it turned out three out of three printer tested used this! Made a little processing program to facilitate the detection[1]. Quite shocked to see how common it was..
Something I didn't realize at first, but read about online is that when you buy a new printer that comes with cartridges, those cartridges almost empty. You will have to get replacements for them after just a few print jobs, the next cartridge you install will last a lot longer.
That's true. If they bundled a full cartridge with the printer, it would often be cheaper to just buy another printer than to buy ink/toner. My color laser printer was $200. A full set of toner replacements from HP would be $357 - third party it's about $120 for all four colors.
From what I've read, even when you are printing just in black, the printer uses a small amount of color ink to stop the cartridge heads from clogging. Still, I would appreciate not having to run out and buy a blue cartridge just to print 3 pages of a text document.