The best way to make a difference against this nastyness realistically available to us is probably the "one star review".
And when you do, resist writing 10 paragraphs about all the times HP has ever wronged you or a long story about how much you needed the printout when it refused to print.
One star, one sentence. "Expires full inks after only x months forcing you to buy new ones when you don't need them."
I know for certain these short, sweet reviews change the buying behavior of my non-techie family.
Normally, I loathe one-star amazon and yelp reviews. They are almost always knee-jerk reactions to some function not working perfectly, or, more often, the consumer felt disrespected and didn't receive the proper service, even though the product or food is flawless.
However, there's an exception to everything. Just this week, my printer crapped out a week after inserting 3rd party ink cartridges. I just thought that printers have a planned obsolesce period of around 2 years. It's one thing to make a device so cheap that it's only capable of lasting 2 years. Intentionally sabotaging your own products just to extract a little more coin is beyond a slap in the face, it's consumer rape. Sony did something similar with their about face on installing Linux. Although I don't agree with what they did, they could at least explain it away as trying to prevent piracy.
I am never, ever, ever buying another product by HP again, never signing up for any of their cloud services and I will tell clients, friends, colleagues, and anyone else in shouting distance to do the same. Luckily, the TinyScanner app (my fave document scanning app, sorry Office Lens) and my phone are more than enough to replace my scanner/fax/copier/printer and I hope I never have to buy one again. For some reason though, faxes are still being used in high numbers in Japan.
Amazon et al should really make it possible for people to disaggregate their opinions on this kind of think. Lots of delivery companies are terrible but there's no ability to leave feedback ("driver threw parcel over fence") etc.
Tech support is also uniformly awful, and someone always winds up getting shipped a lemon and complains about bad tech support. Unless there's some kind of fundamental design flaw that led to the product failing, or truly common issue that is likely to affect me, I don't actually care. Someone always tries to install a brand new router and finds it won't even power on, then they call tech support and have a horrible time talking to someone in India who can't go off-script.
"Luckily", Amazon fixed the glitch by having the "star rating" consist of an "intelligent" summary of the reviews instead of the average, which means that there are products with 3.5+ stars despite having 50%+ 1-star reviews and very few 5-stars.
The top review they show is also a paid ("free product") review praising it with a lot of text, nicely pushing all the 1-star ones out of view.
Excellent advice, but just one problem. For most sites, you had to have bought the product to submit a review, or to submit a credible review ("verified purchaser"). I personally stopped buying anything from HP years ago.
So HN readers and techies in general are in the ironic position of having better judgment about the products but less able to influence the manufacturers.
It's like hoping to see informed advice from doctors posting on a homeopathic website. The doctors are not buying homeopathic potions.
On principle I hate the idea of encouraging people to submit reviews for products that they haven't purchased. It's a crime worse than time-bombing generic printer cartridges and makes online reviews basically worthless.
I don't give a shit about your moral stand against HP. Give me an honest review of a product you own or don't say anything.
I would agree that there's absolutely a difference between a review for a product you've used or helped support and a review written because somebody on HN told you to write it.
It really does feel like at least half. I went to buy an iPhone 7 case and they all had 50+ 4.5 star reviews... before the iPhone 7 had shipped. I filtered one case with 40+ reviews to "Verified Purchases" only, and only a single review was left.
It is an honest review of the product, though. If you know for a fact that the particular model of printer is designed to take cartridges with forced expiration dates, then it is about a characteristic of the product which you consider bad enough to rate it 1 start.
This is very different than, hypothetically, going over all HP products in Amazon and giving 1 star because, say, HP sued someone you don't think they should have, or filed taxes in a way you think is fraudulent or clubbed baby seals. It is also different from rating HP laptops badly because of this issue with their printer, for example. It is actually a review about a major flaw in the product that I would be purchasing, and thus relevant to me as a buyer regardless of moral stands of any kind.
I'm curious to know if the scoring rubric that emits one star for printers with expensive ink was developed before this story, or invented as post hoc justification. An expensive but otherwise functional printer seems more like about three stars, no?
Disagree. You don't have to own a product to write an honest review of it. You don't need to have a Galaxy that caught fire to warn others of what's happening. I'm going to leave a 1-star review because my review is an accurate description of the product even though I haven't owned it.
The real problem is people who review products on unrelated issues, like the political positions of the CEO.
The end result of this isn't reviews that serve as helpful warnings to consumers, but rather reviews that nobody takes seriously at all because they aren't a reliable record of user experience.
It's easy to quibble with this in cases like the Samsung batteries. But exploding batteries aren't the common case: much dumber things are.
My review _is_ a reliable record of user experience. If the reader buys the printer he is likely to face the same issue that I'm describing. To not warn them of the issue with the product seems way more unethical to me in my moral framework than the moral stance of keeping the reviews sacred.
Heck, if I and others didn't do this and the printer was still at 4stars because the uninformed majority don't understand the technical aspect of this planned obsolescence, other uninformed readers may not feel the need to read the reviews at all (the average is 4! It probably has no issues! HP is a household name, I'll be using this for years!)
This mentality seems to me to have produced reviews --- on Yelp, on Grubhub, and christ have mercy on the Apple App Store --- that are basically worthless. You can painstakingly read all the reviews and try to glean useful tidbits, but you cannot look at the overall review scores and use them to make reliable decisions.
> you cannot look at the overall review scores and use them to make reliable decisions.
As I said, my review (that the printer has hard-coded planned obsolescence in place) is a fair review allowing you to make a more informed, reliable decision.
It's not worth a long debate, but you're not telling me your whole argument so I don't know how to respond.
The problem comes when a small subset of unhappy users... creates a mountain of bad reviews.
"It never happened to me, or any HP printer I've ever dealt with, but I read online that..."
I'd put a 5 star review on my Samsung Note. Why? Because my phone didn't explode. Hell... my phone has been through the RINGER and it still works. Can I give it a 6 star?
But because of a small SMALL subset of users that have issues with Samsung Phones, all of a sudden there are a thousand 1 star reviews who say "they explode and kill puppies (because that's what the TV/Internet told me)"?
What percentage of iPhones were affected by Bendgate? How many reviews were from Android users who never would have bought an iPhone anyway?
There's a line and, personally, I think that it's crossed when you review something negatively for an issue you've not personally experienced.
Is HP shitty for doing this? Does Samsung need negative press for it? Should Apple have to face their issues? Of course.
But unless YOU PERSONALLY have been affected, you are just part of a mob out on a witch hunt.
So if you haven't been killed by taking counterfeit or misleading cancer-drugs you don't have a right to call out the fraud?
You don't appear to have thought this all the way through...
Of your examples, only HP intended to make a crappy product. Apple and Samsung tried to make a better one (thinner, more battery life, etc) and just made some mistakes. Mistakes deserve pointing out, intentional dishonesty does deserve a witch-hunt. Every day you don't point this out to non-technical people is a day the scammers get rich from their scams.
Is a one star review really an accurate description of "replacement ink is expensive"? I mean, if the printer literally self combusted and burned your house down when 3rd party ink was used, that seems like it would be worse, but one star is already as low as we can go.
Because the internet justice mob has never been mistaken? Because vigilantes never get a just a little carried away, and firebomb completely unrelated products with one star reviews?
The one star rating is not an honest attempt to review the product--it's just pushing an agenda. For the vast majority of people the third-party cartridge issue is a footnote, not something meriting a one-star review.
It (the review) only concerns actual product features. No political slant, no revenge, etc. It's 100% a product review and nothing else.
Imagine test-driving two cars. On the first, a wheel falls off as you round a corner. Obviously you aren't going to buy it, but then by your logic - not having bought it - you aren't allowed to comment on it.
Also, do you really believe that someone is going to be okay with a product they buy refusing to function, just because it's a tech device? Replacing consumables, even if the consumable is high-tech, is something that even non-techies can understand. As proof, I couldn't fabricate my own tires but would be annoyed if my car wouldn't run with 3rd-party tires, despite not being a mechanic. It's rude and sociopathic, to assume others are too stupid to come to the same conclusions.
>For the vast majority of people the third-party cartridge issue is a footnote, not something meriting a one-star review.
Then those people can always NOT write an one-star review. As for the others, there's nothing wrong with pushing an agenda, if you think it's an important fault of the product.
Nobody should review a product with which they do not have personal experience, even if the website isn't verifying purchases. If reviews are to be useful they must not be subject to crowd mentalities. They should be limited to actual users. We are free to scream about how what they are doing is evil, and get that to the top of google, but I would never submit a review of a product that I do not have hands on. The only honest 'review' is to not purchase the product.
Either the product is totally mediocre (and people hold no strong opinions about it), or the reviewer is a crazy, raving lunatic attempting to hide that fact behind a moderate score.
The short reviews also have another benifit, they seem more factual and reliable. A long emotional rant nearly always looses all credibility with me, even if they had justifiable complaint.
I very much disagree. A one-star 'review' is seldom a review. Complaints, which is the better classification for these posts, are better when included in a 2-star review that offers some context and demonstration that the reviewer is in a stable state of mind.
Such behaviour is the reason I threw out a perfectly working HP OfficeJet one day and will never buy a single HP printer in my life.
In the OfficeJet in question I only used genuine cartridges, but every few year it would stop receiving black and white faxes because (the nearly full) color cartidge was passing its expiry date - forcing me to throw away the full color cartridge and buying a new one.
That article was 6 years ago and I haven't really heard of anything about printers containing adware since then, so I suppose the amount of negative reaction that generated was enough for them to abandon the idea.
I just had a Lexmark tell me cyan, yellow and magenta were low, which was fine since the document I was printing was black text with 2 exceptions for arrows where to sign in red.
It printed all the text in orange and the 2 arrows were a perfect red.
It's not without purpose though. It does it because printing all four colors ("registration") instead of just black makes for a deeper black (if that makes sense).
However, you don't want to use 100% registration for text as it can easily eat up your ink/toner. A good compromise if you need deeper blacks is 100% K with a bit of CMY (don't know the percentage).
I'm not discarding the idea that printer companies do it so the customer has to buy more ink; that may be somewhat true. However, even high end printers that are designed to last still do this to an extent, so it's not entirely a money grab.
Either (a) you most likely agreed to an arbitration clause when purchasing the printer or (b) customers don't care enough. Or both. My money is on the second one.
Customers are cheap and lazy. If their printer breaks, they go buy a new $40 one instead of doing research and finding a quality one for a few hundred. "What does this $300 laser do that this $40 inkjet doesn't!?" You mean besides last longer, actually work when you need it to, and not have nozzles that clog up?
People continuing to purchase cheap PoS printers and just accept that "printers break after a year; get a new one" is what allows this nonsense to keep happening.
Slightly offtopic, but, I've been using a HP printer for the past years (Photosmart D7360) and am also VERY annoyed, one example: whenever one of my color cartridges is past it's expiry date i can't print in black and white. Even though the black cartridge is brand new. I first have to go buy a new color cartridge (which i don't use) and then i can print in black again.
The warning message says something like "if you print with an outdated cartridge it may damage the printer".
That anti-counterfeiting measure (secret yellow dots encoding a serial number) was originally on color copiers. Then it got extended to color laser printers.
Do we really know that it hasn't been extended to ink jets as well?
I think the grandparent has a legitimate observation. It would explain why you need to have working color cartridges to be able to print in black and white. (It's obvious that paper money is not going to be counterfeited in black and white, but maybe they decided to hide serial numbers on all printouts, not just color printouts.)
Can confirm, this happened to our HP 6830 printer on September 13. Extremely annoyed because we only bought this printer in June, and was working fine with a replacement ink. I was actually researching legal precedents to this, and learned that Lexmark has been fighting something like this in court for over a decade[1].
There's the Epson Eco-Tank series. Ink is in four bottles at the side of the machine, good for about 4000-6000 pages. Refill with Epson ink bottles or (a bit more messily) from bulk ink. The printer costs about $279.
You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That's the price of long life print heads.
You can also buy mods for printers (I have a http://www.rihac.com.au/ ) to give them proper ink reservoirs.
When I got mine done (a canon) they requested my old empty cartridges, as they just grab the chip out of them and trick it into thinking its always full.
"Good" Linux support means being able to just download a PPD and shove it into CUPS. AFAIK HP is the only one that requires their own crappy GUI on top.
Personally, I never ever had to use hplip's GUI tool, except for configuring wireless printing. After doing so, I could uninstall it and use bog-standard CUPS.
The only time I had to use (admittedly annoying) HP GUI installer is for scanner part of HP CM1015 MFP. Printer part of the same MFP worked fine with just normal CUPS.
Generally, I have less problems with printers like the XP-320 than HP printers because they are just download the PPD -> good to go. No fucking with HPLIP or an entire software stack around it.
How is the support good?
I've bought a pro laserjet and the wireless wont work (bug is years old), manual duplex won't work, the print jobs like to go disappear into some limbo every now and then...
Already got an epson printer thats working well? you can buy an Inklink that fits to it much like the ecotank - much cheaper and saves you $1000's www.rihac.com.au
The only problem of epson is it sounds like (from the reviews) that they have bad Wireless support which is kind of a must for some people like me who use their phone to print.
Not sure if it was a time bomb, but HP does have an "auto update" feature that could seem like a time bomb.
We got nailed by this with our HP 8610. Were using 3rd party cartridges with much success for months. Last week my wife had a huge (for us) print job and encountered an annoying bug (prints blank sheets every other print). Updated the firmware hoping it would fix the problem. Next thing we know, cartridge error.
Spent 3-4 hours researching how to downgrade firmware with no luck.
No mentioned of new Sept 13 firmware on any HP driver website that I found.
3rd party is shipping us new cartridges for free, but it will be 2 weeks. Had to buy another printer.
The fact that a printer even needs "firmware upgrades" should be a big turn-off, because inkjets have been around for decades; they're not a bleeding-edge technology with many unknowns, they're relatively mature and essentially all bugs should've been found and fixed long ago.
From what I understand, most inkjets are pretty dumb devices in that they just accept raster graphics and spray the pixels onto the page. A lot of them can't even do ASCII/text-mode anymore.
Maybe they're now deliberately leaving bugs in so they can ostensibly "fix" them while also doing anti-user things like cartridge blacklisting...
There is a firmware upgrade for this model on HP site: version R1547A from Mar 22, 2016. There wasn't new firmware releases on September 13, it's the date hardcoded into previously released firmwares as the date when to activate this "feature".
I replaced my HP laser with a Brother laser a while back (just printing "stuff", not photos)
I replaced my black cart on the HP (2600n) with a 3rd party product, and got away with it. However, when I replaced the color carts (one ran out), which I was forced to, since it wouldn't print B&W at all otherwise, the printer detected the alien carts, and immediately refused to clean itself or something - I started getting black streaks on my black text, even though the black cart worked just fine for months the day before.
Here's a tip for Brother printers. When the printer asks you to replace the toner and stops printing, you can override it with a setting. The default setting disables printing until you replace the toner. You can change the setting to keep printing until the toner really runs out.
Forcing you to stop printing is naughty of Brother, but at least there's a setting so you can keep printing—if you're clever enough to find it.
I think this calls for a cheap open source printer to be made. Nothing complex is needed initially, just black and white with low running costs. In reality, any liquid that stains the paper of a given consistency should be fine. It shouldn't be costing this much to replace ink.
All you need to do is buy from a business that doesn't depend on fraud. Samsung make very nice and cheap black & white laser printers. I've bought two over the last few years, around $70. I see one on Amazon for $75 that has wifi printing as well), comes with a cartridge that lasted me 2-3 years and some thousands of pages, and replacement cartridges are $60 for branded ones, less than half that for generics. The printer is tiny, quiet, fast, etc. I can't believe people still buy anything else, after all we don't print photos at home much anymore, do we?
There are other manufacturers that do the same kind of model.
Just avoid HP and (in my experience) Canon. Laser is the way to go.
There's also Xerox apparently, cousin got a B&W laser[1] with WiFi for 55€. Original toner is around that price, but third party toner with warranty is 20-30€.
+1 for the Brother monochrome lasers. I have two of their 2270dw printers that I bought after throwing away my three HP printers (after I couldn't make an important print out due to cartridge time-outs). Best thing I ever did. Now I'm both saving money and getting reliable prints.
The cost of the ink should in theory be next to nothing. You can buy ink from our local pound shop and mess around with drilling holes in your cartridges and hoping nothing goes wrong.
A thousand pages in the UK could cost (by my estimates) about £5 to print. A cheap pack of 500 sheets is £2 and a large bottle of ink is £1.
You can buy separate inkjet printheads intended for industrial high-volume printing applications and build the rest from parts salvaged from other printers. Very low running cost, but also low-resolution, and those printheads are not cheap.
Alternatively, reverse-engineer existing printers to be able to use them with your own firmware that doesn't care what cartridges are in it.
I'm reminded of "The technology involved in making something properly invisible is so mind-bogglingly complex that 999,999,999 times out of a billion it's simpler just to take the thing away and do without it." There are things I'd like to build, but a printer is so likely to work badly that I'd probably just not print stuff instead of trying.
One thing I've wondered about is why there seem to be various "hacking scenes" for other electronics like routers, game consoles, mobiles, and now even some 3D printers, but seemingly nothing for regular 2D printers; despite the fact that the hardware costs are extremely low. Given all the anti-user security those other devices have yet are bypassed by such skilled hackers, a printer may be absolutely trivial in comparison.
Perhaps people are just not so interested in printers, or the thought of getting ink and paper everywhere puts them off?
It's probably because there's no single printer model that seems worth the effort. The printer landscape is basically hundreds of shitty cheap models. New ones all the time. A moving target. The more I think about it, it's probably intentional.
I've had the same LaserJet 4000N for close to 20 years. These things were built in the late '90s (pre-shenanigans) and last. Toner changes are cheap and infrequent. Find one on eBay.
Ideally you would not want to start from scratch and instead purchase the rights to an old proven printer's design.
Anyone know of who you could approach that would sell this design to you?
Then you could probably get on Kickstarer and say "If we raise X dollars we will purchase the rights of this Y printer and open source all of the components"
I wouldn't doubt it for a second. Printer makers use the razor/razorblade model for consumables, where the printer's dirt cheap, but the ink costs an arm and a leg. This is just the latest tactic for getting people to go OEM only.
At this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon's cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.
I haven't really thought about it recently, but (parts of) Asia seems to have this whole printer ink thing figured out. Just about every printer I see in Thailand has the tubes coming out which go to bottles similar to this [1]. There are little refill stations in malls, and that seems to be the standard. No overpriced OEM cartridges, just a straight ink reservoir.
I never understood the razor/razorblade analogy. A razor handle without a blade is just a shaped bit of plastic or metal, without any working or moving parts. The precision engineering is all in the blade. It'd be weird if the handle wasn't cheap and the blades more expensive.
But a printer really is a non-trivial set of electronics and working parts, so it is more surprising that they're so cheap.
As another poster points out, modern blades are different than older style blades where the blade was just a thin piece of sharp metal. I have one from my great grandfather... the blades are the definitely the cheap, disposable part. That's the model which the idea refers to.
Razor/razor blade is a marketing strategy. Sell/give the base at a low or free cost, and make the money on selling the consumables at a significant markup. The razor itself also has to be engineered for durability, with springs, latches, etc. While it's a comparatively simple part, it needs to be rugged to last a few years in a moisture filled environment where it's liable to be dropped and otherwise abused.
Similarly, the print heads are the precision part in a printer. Drive components in the printer itself -- motor, the belts, rollers, etc, are all pretty cheap and easy at this point; the same print engine will be used over several series of printers. The print heads on the other hand, have piezoelectric parts and/or heat elements that have to be very quick and accurate to do a good job. Both cases, while there is definitely some engineering in them, it doesn't rise to the cost levels we see them being sold at.
That's because you've probably grown up under this regime. Older style razors are the opposite.
My dad has probably spent $100 in shaving supplies over the last 30 years. I got suckered into Gillette and could probably buy a Honda Accord for the money I've dumped into this crap.
Change that today! /r/wicked_edge You don't have to use the fancy soaps / brushes to wet shave, but they do help. Buy a handle (~$25) and blades are dirt cheap QTY 100 for ~$12 - 20.
Safety razors are very cheap. I believe the OP is referring to the profit model of companies like Gillette, extracting larger margins on a more consistent basis in trade for a marginal amount of ease of use for the consumer.
Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there's toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won't recognize it. And it's useless torefill it if you don't change some chip in each toner.
And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.
Life based on printed pages would be OK. If you actually print the number pages you promise, I can compare the total costs of cartridges and printers.
But I think some models also have timer. After 6 months or year, the printer starts to complain that the ink has "dried up". To prohibit you from saving up that unicorn blood by printing less.
By banned list is HP, Canon and I'm very cautious about Samsung.
Remembers me about the marketing that a specific soda brand should cost more in hot days so selling machines would increase the price automatically. That was rejected by consumer pressure...
Someday, your printer will kill more "printing credits" on those days that you are on a hurry.
Sucks for poor and/or disabled and/or elderly people, sucks for people with infants, and of course, for everyone who doesn't like to have games played on them so they save one cent which others get to pay with five cents. Oh well, amirite?
If you're disabled or kid, just pour that stuff to glass.
Sip is not in any way definite measurement. Sheet of paper is somewhat decent.
Better one would be this: buy a car. It will automatically stop ignition after 100 000km. Do you really have problem with that, if you know it beforehand?
I also have the C301dn and am very satisfied with it compared to previous printers (inkjets). Works when you need it even after months of non-usage and toner replacements are cheap off ebay. The only thing that worries me is the drum unit / fuser / belt life as I have no idea what happens when they reach 0%. There is a hardware hack though to reset those as well.
I couldn't find hard resets to my drum unit/fuser. No soft ones too. Here the replacement costs more than I would pay for a new printer.
And, what makes me sick, the quality was as good as brand new, so the "we limit the amount of printings because we care about the quality loss" yada-yada is pure #@$#*!$@
I haven't owned and HP printer in a while, but this article will stop me from making an HP printer my next purchase if and when I need one. What a dirty, cheap tactic by HP! They'll fire some low-wage earner worker and a mid-level manager over this, while the real culprit stays at his job I'm sure. Definitely class-action, and even criminal, no? Consumer fraud, deception?
Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.
Eh, those were terrible anyway. I have an ML2525w which should be wireless, but in reality almost never joins the wifi network on boot reliably like all of the ESP8266s I have. I have to re-run setup on it all the time, and half the time it doesn't get detected by the tool. I gave up long ago and just hard-wired it. If I follow the exact turn-on procedure it likes and wait for it to be fully settled before attempting to print, it generally will start printing within a minute or so.
Honestly, I'm so done with printers. If I really need something, I can run to the 24hr kinkos or the office center in my complex. Owning a printer in 2016 seems kind of silly.
I've had no connectivity issues with my Samsung color laser printer. I need it here in SE Asia, since bureaucracy still reigns and paper vs. electronics is not quite there yet. It reminds me of Brooklyn in the 70s for that matter - the DMV comes to mind!
Love my ESP8266; did you year about the ESP32 yet? I am trying to port Wasp Lisp/Wasp VM to it for networking (not pentesting) not for IOT, but creating a mesh network of sorts here in the village I have been staying in East Java - no Kinkos or Starbucks here!
I'm pretty sure there are more open 3D printer projects, than open paper printer projects. Which just reinforces the differences between 2D and 3D printing.
HP and others have a lot of patents in that space with an army of lawyers to defend them unfortunately. It would have to avoid using anything coming close to these patents...
I would be very happy to have a libre SW/HW BW printer that uses the technology of 1996 and must, then be based only on expired patents. Both '96 laser and inkjet would be OK for my limited use.
I think that laser technology of the 90s was simple enough that it could be reimplemented these days without too many problems. And I will be happy to pay €300 for a provably open laser printer that does do tricks like simulating empty toners or printing tracing dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
Patent attorney here. I used to do a lot of patents for the printer cartridges. The printer companies use the "give away the razor, make money on the razor blades" business model. The make very little on the printer, and make a killing on the cartridges. Thus, they spend a lot of effort trying to keep generic cartridges out of the market.
Unfortunately, the inapplicability of intellectual property doesn't seem to matter much. They probably wouldn't use an expired patent in a suit, but many of these places just make minor tweaks and file for a new patent on the "new invention". There's enough grey area that you have to go to court to hash out whether or not the technology is infringing.
Opposing IP lawyers working for one of the largest media companies in the world have openly told an associate that while the thing they C&D'd her on may have had a good chance to be ruled non-infringing, she should comply with the C&D anyway since she would be financially ruined by a lawsuit, win or lose (realistically, she wouldn't be able to win because she'd run out of money WAY before the case even approached a conclusion -- one of big companies' favorite strategies is to "starve out" their legal opponents by making the case as expensive and convoluted as possible).
How I get screwed: My HP printer will occasionally print a black-and-white page using all three colors of ink. Discovered this one day when I rubbed a fresh page and it smeared three colors. They call it 'wear leveling' or something. But we all know it means 'using up your expensive color ink instead of your cheap black ink'. What a crock.
This should be an option, so that if your black ink has run out but your color ink hasn't, you can print something without having to go buy more ink. But as a default I agree it shouldn't do this.
Yeah the problem is that some of them don't allow you to do this anymore.
Overall I've started to buy B&W only laser printers and I buy a new printer when the toner runs out.
You can find Samsung entry level laser printers with a toner good for 300-500 pages on Amazon for about 30£ on sale that's cheaper than buying a toner.
1st world problems for sure but this is beyond stupid.
I bought it once it but it costs about 50-60 GBP (i had printers for as low as 17 GBP on sale) and it only doubles the page count if you use it all the time, once you let the tones sit they seem to degrade quite quickly for some reason.
Stop buying dirt-cheap printers that are sold at a loss. These are designed to be paid off by expensive toner / ink. These are designed to make you waste the supplies if you don't use them up fast enough. They are designed to reject third-party cheaper supplies.
Pay a couple hundred more upfront for a no-bullshit device. I hope those still exist.
How can you guarantee that paying a couple hundred more upfront would save us all from this pre meditated corporate gluttony?
Stop buying printers from companies that build in mechanisms to purposely brick them. Buying a high-end HP is just as risky in my opinion, based on this story.
The problem with avoiding Canon is that essentially any desktop laser printer on the market is in fact largely Canon's product (and the best of them in terms of reliability and TCO are little more than Canon made print engine in a plastic box).
On the other hand I have reasonably good experiences with OKI and Brother LED printers. These printers tend to be reasonably cheap (I've got OKI multifunction on sale for ~150 EUR), are full Postcript/PCL printers and supplies are reasonably cheap too, both original and third-party.
I bought a cheap no branded Chinese black and white only laser printer for $15. Best printer I've ever owned. It just... Prints! The firmware is totally unobtrusive and no problems with non branded toner. It prints whatever I ask it to print and that's it!
Unless you are running a business a couple hundred dollars is way too much to pay for printing once in a while. A consumer printer should not cost hundreds of dollars.
I agree. Another option is to research which printers can trivially have their bullshit disabled. I bought a $30 printer about 5 years ago that I refill with bottles of toner for $2. The 'modding' involved a piece of tape over sensor.
If this is affecting printers in Australia, then HP are going to learn a very costly lesson in ethics. The ACCC will have to do an investigation, but the instant they confirm this has occurred they will face stiff fines for third line forcing and anti-competitive behaviour distorting the market.
i'm in australia and bought some cheap fuji-xerox laser printer a year or so ago.
non-oem ink refills are far cheaper than oem ones. a large component of the cost of non-oem ink refills is getting a replacement chip that counts how many times you can print before it claims it needs refilling. you can buy more of these chips along with bulk ink refills. it's like DRM for ink or something.
Does this also happens with laser toner cartridges ? I really have no idea why people even buy those inkjet printers anymore, price per page is lower with laser printers and prices even for a color laser are in sub 200€$ range.
Nope. My 55€ Canon inkjet is larger then laser printer from Samsung for 70€.
> Cheap inkjets are cheaper than cheap lasers.
Nope. Cheap lasers are in the same ballpark as cheap inkjets (50€$). The major difference is in toner/cartridge consumption and exchange interval. A laser toner can last significantly longer then inkjet cartridge and isn't prone to damages of no regular usage.
> Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
Absolutely correct and this also brings an answer why people choose those inkjets : "ah, I rarely print anything, so I'll have a device to print everything".
But it differs if you calculate the cost of inkjet cartridge drying out/printing problems with non regular usage. Technology on laser toners doesn't have such limitations.
Yes. I was deploying our system in a physician's clinic when their HP printer suddenly refused to print with a cryptic error, even after all the toner was replaced it refused. Only when I stepped in & suggested they buy the brand name ink did things get resolved. Lucky for the busy clinic, they only had 1 HP printer.
Is there a reason that Shutterfly or other similar services don't satisfy those needs? I try not to own things anymore unless I use them frequently (lessons learned after moving twice in Manhattan), and printing color photos definitely isn't a frequent need for me, or I suspect, for most people.
Haha, no, they're always laughing at us. First and foremost they take the money. Then they force/trick you into loading 200MB of crap to get a kB driver loaded. Then they ignore you, except for the multiple, obfuscated spywares the driver bundle installed.
I've had nothing but great success using third party ink with Epson printers. Every two-three years I buy a new epson printer and either a continuous ink system or refillable cartridges. I never worry about the kids printing too much or the print cartridge getting dry and clogging.
Epson gets used a lot as a base in the third party space - for things like T-shirt printers and other textile based printing. The print heads are reliable and accurate.
Had this one printed out (oh that irony) and taped it to our office wall when we had to deal with crappy printers on a daily basis working for a big DAX company.
In southeast Asia, you can get an Epson L300 tank printer for about $170 USD. Each tank refill costs $10 and lasts for 10,000 pages. This line of printers isn't offered in the US. It's market segmentation. I think it's indicative of the level of oligopoly in the printer industry that they can segment this well and get away with it.
This isn't even remotely surprising. in early 2000's work had 5 heavy duty color laser printers from HP to print B&W letters on. All carts stopped working after a certain page count. Even if the color wasn't used it would decrement the counter. We threw out THOUSANDS of full color toner cartridges.
Same experience here. I smiled as I threw out my HP color laser which had probably cost me over ten thousand dollars over its life. I've saved time, money, and customers by throwing all my HP printers away. (I didn't even sell them - I didn't want to give it away to some unsuspecting victim.)
What do you think is the best way to enforce the rules on HP and make this action illegal? Contact the Member State authorities? Feel this should be enforced by the EU instead of national... gah, directives.
Inkjet printers have been simply the most loathsome category of electronics I've encountered. Concluded some years ago to never own one again. Garbage! Zero tolerance!
For anyone tired of paying so much for ink replacements, look into a CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) [1]. I got one for our Epson and it far outperforms ink cartridges and even the replacement ink is cheap.
I've had some issues with the printer recognizing the cartridges, but after fiddling around enough it eventually does. It's definitely worth the effort.
Yes there is a reason: To print high-quality photos.
I have an ink jet for photos (admittedly rarely needed these days) and a black&white laser for everything else.
Also, part of the problem is that lot of people don't realize how expensive it is to run an ink jet and how massively cheaper a laser is in the long run. The average person needing a printing goes to the store and sees a laser for around $200 and an ink jet for $49, and buys the ink jet, thinking it's a better deal.
If you need occasional scanning, its the way to go. I buy a cheap all in one every two years when target/Walmart clears them out. Last year I bought 3 for $20/EA.
I bought a Lexmark laser printer about 12 years ago. A few days ago I bought my very first replacement toner cartridge for it - until this point I have been using the included cartridge, which is probably a half-capacity one. As you can guess, I do a lot of printing.
The box for the cartridge actually says that it will:
1) Only dispense a certain amount of toner before the printer will stop printing and that there will still be some toner left in the cartridge when this happens.
2) Update the firmware on the printer so that it won't accept 3rd-party cartridges.
3) Stuff about me agreeing to return the used cartridge to Lexmark for recycling since I bought a "return program" cartridge. Lexmark sold the cartridge for a reduced price, returning it for recycling is my end of the bargain.
They didn't use these exact words, but it was very clearly written and seemed like it would be pretty understandable to a regular person.
On one hand, I have to give Lexmark props for full disclosure that doesn't hide behind a click-through license or any weasel-words/legalese. On the other hand, changing the printer after purchase to lock the owner into Lexmark cartridges seems kind of low.
I'm really not sure how I feel about this though. I don't mind buying the manufacturer's cartridges or packing up the old one to be returned. But at the same time I'm worried that, in another 12 years, Lexmark might no longer be making cartridges for this printer and I'll have to throw the printer away.
As an aside, does anyone remember the last time they were happy with ANY HP product? Everytime I see that logo I get chills knowing what a pain in the ass it's going to be.
Edit: I am specifically thinking about HPSM, and HPNA here.
The hardware labs at uni had a couple of ancient (to us -- probably 80s hardware being used in the mid-2000s?) HP logic analyzers with Z80 bus probes.
They turned out to be much more reliable and easier to use than the modern USB pod things also provided which plugged into a Windows box to display the analysis traces.
dec0dedab0de: "As an aside, does anyone remember the last time they were happy with ANY HP product? "
For the record, a company with which I consulted was very happy with the HP 1000/2100 series computers, and especially the exquisite keyboards that now-terminated HP employees once made, with tender loving care, for those computers. I suspect that one of these computers is stored safely in an underground cave somewhere awaiting it's rediscovery, alongside a somewhat-notorious VW beetle:
I have a calculator on my desk even though I have a smartphone with me and M-x calc is just a few keystrokes away. It saves a window switch when doing calculations, and the tactile feel of buttons reduces mistakes.
I have several BC (Before Carly) HP products that are rock solid marvels of engineering. Everything AC is a rotten piece of junk.
The company now called "HP" is an impostor; it's a sad ghoulish potemkin shadow of a once-great company.
I'm using 820, 840 and 725 laptops which in my opinion offer a good balance of price and performance. At least they did when I last bought them and I compared to what I could find on the market.
There's something funny with some Linux kernel versions, which shows up as kacpid hogging up a lot of CPU time, but you can disable it by echoing disable to the /proc filesystem. You may find such issues with very many laptops. But the physical and ergonomic things are very OK, considering the price, with these laptops.
My HP Compaq 8510w mobile workstation died two weeks ago. Had it since about 2009 and it has enjoyed at least 10,000 miles in a bicycle pannier. I had to replace a screen hinge a few years back and that's all.
As for their consumer-grade laptops over that same period - having had to repair so many, replace year-old batteries and AC adapters I wouldn't go near them with a barge pole.
I bought a HP laser printer (P1005) in 2008 or so and I'm still printing papers on it using the original toner cartridge. I was wondering for years when will it die, but it keeps printing. Couldn't be happier.
I have an HP Chromebook 13" that's been pretty good so far. That's an official collaboration with Google being the driving force behind the specs and HP being responsible for the manufacturing, though, so it isn't really comparable to their printer line.
I don't know how the DRM works on ink cartridges, but if all the off-brand cartridges just use the same mass-produced cloned DRM "chip" (or whatever it is), it not possible this is actually caused by a certificate expiring rather than an intentionally malicious act by HP?
I really don't have any clue what I'm talking about, just wondering if there's any alternative cause whatsoever.
If the intent isn't to stop generics, why have DRM on an ink cartridge at all?
Even if this instance is due to HP making a mistake, such as forgetting a certificate renewal, the intent is there right from the beginning, by using the DRM in the first place.
Yup. I have had two brother printers so far. The first was about 8 years old when the paper feed became unreliable, so I replaced it with a newer (color) model. Prints great, takes whatever cartridges fit, works fine with Linux, windows and osx. Haven't tried network printing from Android or iOS yet.
Disclaimer: I probably print about five pages a month, so it hardly sees extensive use. I also don't print photo quality stuff, mostly role playing maps and characters for gaming sessions. But under those constraints, it's been great.
Real simple: if you don't like it, go buy another brand printer. That's the beauty of democracy: you're free to buy another printer/ink just like they're allowed to protect their proprietary assets!
Bunch of whiners....
It's very sad - I am old enough to remember when HP was synonymous with quality and doing the right thing for both customers and employees. Hewlett and Packard (the founders) would never have pulled a stunt like this. Fiorina destroyed that legacy almost overnight.
I'm in Silicon Valley and I know someone working in their outsourcing group. HP has a "secret" office where they try to get all their development offshore. They will arrange travel visas to rotate people from other countries into hotels to work on projects. It is coordinated across the entire company in order to cut costs. I wish that we wouldn't allow such companies to sell in the United States (ie. companies that hide their income and employ offshore in order to avoid employing US employees. Such companies shouldn't be able to sell in the US.)
And I'd buy their products from their reputation. I can't imagine they'll redeem themselves from such a long period of reprehensible policies and shoddy products.
That would be amazing if Amazon released store brand printers with no nonsensical ink policies. They would wreak havoc on the entrenched players. Amazon could pull it off.
Which is the future now that there's talk of the car's computer checking crypto signatures on each part and refusing to start the engine if they don't match. Heard of this concept at least once here on HN.
In the case of automated multi-ton death machines moving at high-speed near other people, that seems totally reasonable. You shouldn't be allowed to tinker with your automated car and risk everyone else's lives.
As long as it's advertised that way upfront, then I don't see why not. Tesla is not going to be the only automated car manufacturer. Today, you can buy cars that only take specialty parts. You can also buy cars that take standard parts. I'm sure it will be that way with automated cars too. Same way that you should be able to buy an iPhone with all of its non-standard quirks.
As for safety, it depends on the specific parts. An automated car is a complete integrated system. Once people start swapping parts, the test-matrix to ensure safety explodes. People modifying the driving software in their own cars, for example, is definitely a no-go. (And modifying any software at all should be prohibited unless the driving and entertainment computers are completely air-gapped.)
What about the brake pads in my multi-ton death machine? Should I be prohibited from replacing them with third-party parts for the fear of risking everyone else's lives?
The big three made the same dumb arguments a hundred years ago... third party parts have never been a problem. People fought hard for the right to get replacement parts, and it's a shame we need to re-fight this battle because of the lemmings among us.
Not trolling, but why do you use printers? I haven't used paper for 5 odd years now. The gov here (Spain) gives me tons of paper; I photograph it and then leave it and have them print it out when needed. Outside that I have not needed paper since the ipad. Why do other people?
Some people prefer to read certain types of documents on paper. At work I've occasionally printed out slabs of reference material so I can go review it with a pen at the cafe across the road.
Kids. School projects (science fair posters) and reports. And they also do some creative games/puzzles with them. Or print reminder/todo lists for them.
I'll also print interesting graphs or graphics, to share/discuss with them. It's much harder to discuss in front of a screen.
Lots of places (authorities etc) require you to leave a physical paper that is signed and that they can put in a folder and store in an archive.
Last time I needed this was yesterday, the local football association (yes soccer) requires the player list to be signed and given to referee before match. I make the list and usually print three copies: one for the referee, one for the opponent team and one for our own coach to check against players.
I need to print out things every so often. Things like official notices to my tenants, concert tickets, forms to be mailed to various government agencies.
I don't own a printer though, I just use the own at work. I'm there five days a week anyway. I also do all my mailing from work, which is more convenient than trying to do it from home on the weekend.
Because of this sudden influx of complaints, it didn’t take long to trace the “failures” to a HP firmware update that was released during the spring.
I wonder how long it'll be until someone hacks it and releases a firmware that has the checks patched out. I vaguely remember this being done for a few other chipped-cartridge printers many years ago, although that was more intended for CIS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system ) where it makes no sense for the printer to keep thinking it's using small cartridges.
Patching the firmware might be possible, but 99.42 % of consumers and corporate users won't be doing such things even if the instruction is provided to them on some Web page.
Create 1 or 2 good, serviceable network printer and experiment with different business models like subscriptions or pay-as-you-print, where the printer manufacturer _owns_ the printer an office or home just rents it.
In such a model, the companies incentives would align with the users values:
- Cheaper printing per page
- Less overhead on distribution
- No artificial costs and limitations
- Generally better printer:
- More serviceable
- Better software
- Long term support
- More environmentally friendly
Most people I know doesn't own a printer and just use the office printer anyway,
so why not make the office printer just-work?
Another possibility is still to sell printers, but have the cartridges produced by a completely separate company. Have the cartridges also conform to an open, published specification which any company (printer maker or cartridge maker) is free to implement. The printer maker will be forced to sell printers based on their cost, not as a loss leader.
Yes, but that's the opposite end of the market (e.g. industrial pronting, very large size or volume). I am wondering if there is something in the middle.
Photocopier/Printer leasing is common for small and medium sized businesses too. If you google for photocopier leasing you'll find a huge number of options.
There is a little chip inside the cartridge, EPSON's chip was cloned in China so you can use the third-party inks "safely", however it's not the case for HP.
For $69 it's easy enough to buy a different printer brand.
I buy a new ink cartridge and put it in my old printer and it doesn't work. Why should I assume the problem is the new ink cartridge and not the old printer?
If this can be proven, and a class action lawsuit is filed, this would spell the end of HP. I don't think they would have any choice but to declare bankruptcy.
Just get a CISS printer. I got an Epson L300 when I started college (4 years ago) and the printer is still going strong and I still have one full bottle of black ink (it came with 3x black ink bottles in the box). It was about $150 when I bought it and I spent $0 on ink.
Well, on my mom Windows 10 pc hp software asked her if the cartridge was pirate (unofficial?). Well, actually it was original, the only thing is that I'm keeping an empty color cartridge instead of replacing it since I only use black... I'm wondering wtf happened there
I'm not a legal expert, but I want to believe that there is some law preventing manufacturers from sabotaging their own products in order to extract more coin from your consumers.
any hard evidence about pre-programmed date on firmware?
I think this is evil and smart,
- people would by printers
- some unofficial ink cartridge market will add good reviews etc (low printing cost)
- increased cartridge sales for HP after set date
Sounds more like, unofficial iPhone cables not charging, but smarter (possibly illegal though)
edit: some google search reveals[1] more like firmware update at September 13 (auto update), then pre-set date. Pretty much like Apple and third party cable update.
edit2: More I read, I start to see 3rd party cartidge vendors didn't implement the chipset on cartridge fully compatible, instead they went easy way around.
Third party ink vendor says: "We do not yet have an updated chipset that will work with this new firmware version. . Customers can expect cartridge replacements with updated chipsets to be available in two to three weeks, possibly longer."
second sneaky thing I have heard about them recently, there was also a big thing about them disabling the printers when you unsubscribe from the instant ink package.
And when you do, resist writing 10 paragraphs about all the times HP has ever wronged you or a long story about how much you needed the printout when it refused to print.
One star, one sentence. "Expires full inks after only x months forcing you to buy new ones when you don't need them."
I know for certain these short, sweet reviews change the buying behavior of my non-techie family.
Make a difference. Write a product review today.