CompuServe Messages

I have a bit of a problem which I hope you can play detective with; it involves hardware and software conflicts, and of course all the suspects are accusing each other (except the butler, who admits he probably did it but doesn't know how): I recently bought an Amiga A4000/040, a Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 550C, and Softwood's Final Copy II Release 2; running this combination with the Amiga-supplied "HP_DeskJet" printer driver, I noticed that graphics colors were fine, but the black cartridge wasn't getting used unless I selected "grayscale" or "black and white" for the FCII "Graphics Printer" option. A call to Softwood said that this was a problem with the Amiga printer driver, and suggested I throw another 50 bucks at a "SuperDJ" (3d party) printer driver; instead I decided to lurk the HPPER Forum, and — lo and behold! — Hewlett-Packard had uploaded a new Amiga-specific printer driver for the "HP_DeskJet550C", which I DLed, unpacked, and installed (aware of the warning of HPPER Sysop Ted Dickens that the "driver is untested as I have no access to an Amiga"); sure enough, this driver took any true-graylevel information it found in FCII color graphics and used the black cartridge to spray it, which brought out new details I hadn't seen before. The problem is, when this driver "sees" an entire line of nothing but black text, it fades out at the far-right-side of the line, as if the black cartridge ran out of ink; interestingly, it doesn't matter _where_ the line had _started_ printing from: lines that had started printing from the right were also "faded" on the right. Again, switching FCII to "grayscale" solved the problem — however, it also printed the same text _visibly_blacker_. (Naturally, Softwood claims no responsibility.) Going back to the HPPER Forum I notice that there seem to be lots of mechanical problems with 550Cs; I posted a note describing my problems and Ted Dickens replied "we're working on it", but I'm not sure he really understands the problem, especially since he has no Amiga background. This past weekend my "Power Up" package finally arrived, and I've been playing with ADPro (when I haven't been arguing in the "tavern"), which is REALLY demanding of a printer, and I can't say I've noticed any problems with either the 550C itself or with the "HP_DeskJet550C" driver, except that the overall print-intensity seems to be dark (and intensity is, to read the messages on HPPER, one of the physical problems with the 550C); and still, when I print a combined-text-and-graphics file with FCII in "color graphics" mode, every time I hit all-black-text…. As our online CATS representative, you're my only hope, because you're probably the only person in the world who can examine every aspect of this problem. Do I: Assume I have a physical printer problem and take it back; pester Softwood for a Final Copy II "fix"; wait for HP to figure it out; or make a $50 sacrifice to the Gods Of Self-Publishing? I was _hoping_ there'd be an obvious oversight you could correct for me….