your cart will dry out if stored in a warm/dry environment, such as by a heater.  your best bet is to check the expiration date on the bottom of the package, most of the carts have dates on or around the bottom of the box.\n\nmost of the time you should be able to get a few hundred of pages out of your cartridge.  it depends on the coverage. IE if you are printing entire blocks of black ink, then you will use much more ink than if you are only printing a few lines of text.\n\ni would get a new cart, and do a physical page count if you have to to see if it happens again.  if it does, you might want to contact lexmark and find out what they recommend.