I try and remove our white heads as soon as we are done printing any white, but have definitely forgot to do so two or three times since we got the 700W. It will certainly waste ink and maintenance cartridge life, especially if its over a long weekend. One other thing we also found out the hard way was they are very serious about all the various shaking directions of the ink cartridge when you replace it. We forgot to do it once and it caused all kinds of problems, and somehow the machine even knew and scolded us. Ended up having to replace both white heads which were close to expiring anyways, but also had to do some kind of crazy cleaning cycle a few times that took quite a bit of ink. That all being said, the quality/density of the white is fantastic compared to anything else we have seen.