Thanks Mark,
will do some more cleaning, hope that gets me somewhere, as I am already on my second head. My environment shouldn't be problematic, middle of Europe, no dust, normal room, mostly matte papers. Printer was out of use for 3 weeks only, so no clue what happened there.
thinking of getting the Canon 1000, since it seems to have a standby mode to alleviate those issues
cheers and thanks, I'll let you know how it goes
Stephan