Our Brother printer (inkjet circa 2014) doesn't use ink when we're not printing because we unplug it when we're not using it, as we do with all of our corded electronics. If it's been more than 2 months since we've printed a page, it only takes two minutes for the printer to run the "ink > clean" cycle, and then it prints just fine. We've had the same black cartridge for three years, no problems, and we're still using the color cartridges that came with the printer when we got it secondhand.