One thing -- you have to have a vaccum tight seal when the heads are on the capping station for the syringe method to work. If the rubber gaskets or tubing does not have a good seal, you will not get good suction and you will be pulling air with your syringe instead of the junk from the heads. Also, if your don't have good suction, your cleaning cycles are likely not doing their job anyway. So it's a good idea to keep those rubber gaskets around the capping station clean and soft and make sure all the plumbing below is air tight.
As for the paper towel method, the tech showed me a better way to soak the heads. With the printer powered down, simply remove the panel below the interface to expose the pump and tubes leading from the capping station to the pump. Crimp each tube and hold it with a binder clip. Fill each head cap with cleaning fluid. The crimp will prevent the cleaning fluid from just draining out to the waste bottle and allow it to pool in the caps. Move the carriage back into place gently until it clicks. Let the heads soak overnight. The next morning, uncrimp the tubes and crank up the printer. Run a cleaning cycle or two and then run a test print.
I did this last night and have 100% of my nozzles back.
One more notable tidbit... the main difference between the normal/medium cleaning cycle and the powerful cleaning cycle is the amount of ink used in the process. However, in the powerful cleaning cycle the heads are run across the wipers in the opposite direction they are normally wiped, with the rougher side of the wipers. This really scrapes the surface of the heads. So, it's a good idea to run a normal cleaning cycle immediately after a heavy cleaning cycle to wipe the heads the normal way one last time.
