Just to follow up: the hpoj driver has been replaced by hplip (http://hpinkjet.sf.net/) and while the original release (0.8.2) suffered from the same bug, the current release (0.8.7) has been fixed and works nicely on ia64. To add icing on the cake, there is even a Debian package for it! No more guessing about ink-levels... ;-) --david