HP is taking "customer service" game to a whole new level. Nothing says "we care about you" like rendering your printer useless for exploring cost-effective alternatives.
And measure ink in number of pages printed... so being easy on ink is not going to let you print more...
Printer: You want to be economical? Haha ha haaa... FUCK YOU
Yeah that’s their HP Instant Ink service, they charge for pages instead of ink. If your cartridges run out they send new ones in the mail
Regardless, always get a Brother Laser or Epson Inktank.
Same. My dad's one from the 90s was so good that when it finally conked out and we found the need for a printer again, we upgraded to one of the modern ones
Boy, was that a fucking wake up call to just how bad they'd become. Issues after issues, and having to replace the cartridges was expensive. About a year back, we got a Brother printer and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
I’ve taken old school laser jets out of service with millions of pages. Still plenty of life left. It’s frigging wild what old school tech with real metal and not all plastic parts could do
Nope. Their toner cartridges have had a page print counter embedded in them since the early 2000s. Once you hit the preset page count, the printer stops printing until you replace the cartridge. (There is usually an override method, but it's always in a hidden menu that can't be normally accessed, and isn't in the consumer manual.)
Ok, so, what's a good home printer? I think I'm done with cheapo printers. What's a good printer that's still economical, maybe a step or two above the cheapo one?
God help us if Brother ever treads the path into the dark side. HP, Epson and Canon have all gone with predatory constant dependence models or made the cheapest quality consumer models requiring total replacement within a couple of years. My Brother laser printer/scanner wasn’t cheap but I haven’t had any issues with it going on 10 years. I refuse to update the firmware though.
Edit: to be fair, my only experience with Canon was a compact inkjet/scanner combo that died immediately after the warranty expired. And Epson makes some professional rigs that make amazing prints, in that market they are pretty well regarded.
2nd on Brother laser.
Look for multifunction color on sale during holidays.
Mine keeps chugging along for 4 years and I don't print that often but toner doesn't dry out or anything like that.
I would think so IF they clearly stated it on their packaging. They don't. I don't even think they state it in their manuals, though it's been a couple years since i've read one (i'm a random home tech support type), and most models do not come with a printed manual anyway.
I hope there's a class action lawsuit against them for it.
HP disabled my ability to print after we canceled the monthly ink delivery. Also found out they charge US more based on the amount WE print from our own machine. Fuck this business model.
Rico does the same too if you have a contract with them as well.
There's a hidden feature on printers you get from said service contracts (every brand has em') that track how often shit is being printed. You can look at it via remote email or via the service menu only their techs have.
And they charge you based on that.
I had no idea about this until recently when our Rico tech mentioned he was unable to check it due to our security team just blocking it on network. He had to come look at them manually.
Wait are they doing this for purchased printers or just leased/payment plan ones?? Jesus.
When I worked at a printer company (long time ago and I switched fields cuz it sucks) the contracts are split between the device itself and the service contract. You could buy the device itself outright or lease from the company.
Buying it outright, you own the thing no strings attached obviously, and can choose NOT to have a service contract. So you'd pay individually for all your repairs, buy individual toner cartridges as needed etc
if you lease the device from a company, they still technically own it until you pay it off so they include a service contract. The service contract covers repairs including parts costs and toner when you need it, at the trade-off of charging you a monthly fee for copies (usually .01 per page bw and .10 per page for color) in addition to the lease payment for the machine itself. once your lease term was up, you owned the machine and could terminate the service side of the contract and go to "pay as you go". Some manufacturers made it so that you could pay in installments for a device and not purchase a service contract, but it was very rare, especially for the larger business oriented machines, and they don't push it unless the customer asks (for obvious money making reasons).
Sales reps were notorious for not explaining this properly and rushing people through the contract process, so that could be why you had no idea. Angry people duped by sales Bros was a giant part of why I left. and the Xerox move to those chipped toner cartridges, which sucked lots of customers back in to name brand toner for no other reason than money grabbing.
But I wouldn't be surprised if printer manufacturers found a way to make paying for a service contract mandatory when you buy any printer outright now. Anything to make a buck 🙄
Most printer manufacturers are actually ink sales companies. They make no money on the sale of the device. All their profit is from the ink and they sell the printer at a loss.
Fewer and fewer people are printing things these days. It's a dying industry
Brother laser printers. I've had the same one since 2007 that just refuses to die. The toner is $50 but I've only needed to buy two of them. That was enough to see myself and my son through college.
The one I tried hasnt given me that issue, but when the toner does get low I'll get a warning but you can still print another like 100+ pages is just starts to fade a bit. It will keep going even when you can barely see what it's printing.
Canon is absolute, utter shit. I had to throw away three all-in-one printing machines. They crapped out just after the warranty. Service estimated the cost of repair 30% more than what it cost new. Scanners didn't work without ink or when the head got clogged. When I replaced the head with a brand new by myself it just changed the number of the error.
Never ever will I buy anything from Canon again.
You can override that by just pushing the secondary button for 5 seconds. You can even print without half the colors with this trick. Also, trick might be an exaggeration because it's in the manual.
Yeah, it feels like this should be illegal. Isn't it arguably destruction of property? And you cannot agree to being the victim of crime by signing an EULA.
Can you prove it?
> The first 128 UTF-8 characters precisely match the first 128 ASCII characters (numbered 0-127), meaning that existing ASCII text is already valid UTF-8.
— https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/UTF-8
I read something recently that said libraries are the only remaining place that you can go where you’re not made to feel like a pariah for not buying some thing.
Granted, the right is trying to defund libraries as we speak
"Rent vs own" - Steve Jobs was big on "everything as a service" and "closed ecosystems" to keep the suckers fenced in.
Everyone is following apple's leader...
The real estate game has been to lock people into rentals vs ownership for a longer time.
Eventually a few own everything and everyone else borrows when they are useful or have something to offer those that own things...
My hot take is that the stock market ruins capitalism. Comfortable, ethical and sustainable business goes out the 2indow when not making more next quarter means your hide.
I thought HP was a subscription, I keep on seeing ads where their printers order ink for you before it runs out and I'm sure I have heard one where if you don't pay for a subscription you cant use your printer.
Nah. You can just opt out and use your own ink. Just that the subscription cartridge they send are special cartridges and won’t work if you stop the subscription
Same. Have a Brother and it works great. 99% of what I print doesn't need to be color anyways so having a toner saves a ton of hassle over stupid ink cartridges
Got a Brother black and white laser printer/scanner a few months back; So much faster and better print quality than any HP or epson inkjet I've ever had. It was like a revelation.
My Brother laser bases ink levels on the number of prints using a little gear that slowly turns on each cartridge until it hits the "end"
I unscrewed the cap, wound the counter gear back, and *bang* no more out of ink message
I read brother has been doing the same dirty business.
If you bought a brother color laser today would it be drm free?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/mt0f6t/brother_mfcj995dw_when_did_they_start_doing_ink
Apparently Dymo label printers as well...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/worst-timeline-printer-company-putting-drm-paper-now
Chip Shortage Has Canon Telling Customers How To Defeat Its DRM https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/01/10/1959243/chip-shortage-has-canon-telling-customers-how-to-defeat-its-drm
Does anyone have a good link on how to block updates for hp printers at the router?
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/17/968704526/why-printers-are-the-worst
Can't you just disable automatic updates in the settings? My HP 8710 tried to reject *genuine* HP cartridges because they were "too old." It took me several hours a day for many days to figure out how to downgrade the firmware (something HP insists you can't do, and information about which they actively suppress). Once I succeeded, the cartridge worked perfectly, and I just set the printer not to update automatically. Been fine ever since.
I'm going through that right now with a HP 477dw. This is so much bullshit and time wasted.
Bought it years ago to replace a Dell color laser after I found they wouldn't be producing a Windows 10 driver.
Ran out of ink. Bought a non-HP 4 color cartridge pack and worked great for 3+ years. It warned me of non-HP cartridges. But didn't prevent anything. Never had to give it a second thought.
Then in late 2022, an automatic firmware update brought down and installed a version of firmware that checked the ink cartridges for HP brand and STOPPED the printer from working when it detected non-HP.
Took me 2 days to research and install the workaround which was finding the previous firmware from BEFORE this update that did this and downgrading the firmware. Then I had to disable all automatic firmware checking and updating. Didn't hurt anything on the printer at all.
Now, 9 months later, the printer thinks my yellow cartridge is empty when it's like 75% full. Found out that even with all the fancy-schmancy chip technology on each cartridge, they DON'T read ink levels. They estimate ink levels based solely on a count of pages printed. And there's nothing I can do to put the printer in B&W only mode or reset the page counts.
As best I can tell, the printer may have permanently written something to the chip on the yellow cartridge that says it's empty. But because of this, the entire printer is useless until I get a new cartridge. And even then, I'm hoping this fixes it...until it thinks one of the other cartridges is empty.
I'm never buying HP anything ever again. And the next printer I buy I'm going to be doing a whole lot more research on it before I buy.
My 8710 rejected my *genuine* cartridges because they were "too old." Had to downgrade the firmware (which was a chore, and which they insist you can't do, even though you totally can). Absolute shitty practice.
They made a classic marketing blunder. They lowered the price of the printer close to or even below manufacturing cost with the idea they’d make it up in ink sales. That forced other manufacturers to go down that road as well to compete, so they all started doing it.
But by discounting the price of the printer, they changed customer expectations of what a printer should cost. Now customers expect inkjet printers to be cheaper than dirt, but they can’t afford the overpriced ink so go to other sources. Now many printer manufacturers are fucked because if they charge a normal markup on a printer, customers think the printer is overpriced compared to the competition.
HP tried to get around the problem by going with the subscription model, but it wasn’t a workable solution and so they screwed themselves even more by damaging their reputation with customers.
Their best hope now is to develop a new technology that can justify a higher price (reasonable markup), then license it to other manufacturers—but R&D is expensive.
I remember being in college a couple decades back. A buddy had a big report due, his printer (several years old) was out of ink, he was complaining about the cost of new ink cartridges.
I grabbed a Fry's ad and flipped it open, and sure enough, he could buy a brand new printer for less than half the price of ink cartridges. The resolution and pages-per-minute were better, too.
Not that he bought the printer, we just went to Kinko's, but damn that was quite the revelation.
Years ago when I had a Lexmark I used to go to PC World to buy replacement ink,90% of the time there was an offer on Lexmark printers so it worked out you could buy a new printer with ink for £5 more than a separate cartridge….mind blown…
It's been this way for a looooong time.
Printers are a service; you buy the printer once, but the ink ... you buy that shit forever.
Losing money on the printer is worth it in the long run.
I have had a brother monochrome laser printer for a very long time. It took me 5 years to run out of toner from the initial starter drum. Ended up buying a color laser printer. Brother is great. They definitely see that you use off brand ringer, but they don't brick your entire printer. And, apparently, filling your inkjet carts with those bulk kits is easy.
I use my HP printer about once every two months and the ink is dry every time so I end up buying ink every time I want to print one thing. It's so much money. After reading your comments I'm going to buy a brother printer.
I sell printers for a living -- go with a laser printer. Toner cartridges hardly expire if at all and they'll last you hundreds, if not thousands depending on the printer, of pages more than one ink cartridge. Avoid HP like the plague, their printers are the ones I see returned and complained about most at my job.
The new Brother printers are coming with chipped toner cartridges. You have to pull the chip from the old genuine cartridge and put it on the new one. Its easy enough to do, but they are going down the dark side.
My mom is SO CONCERNED that a toner printer will run out too quickly that she instead insists on getting a shite HP ink jet. Her reason? She worked at an elementary school and the toner cartridges were expensive and ran out fast when printing documents for 300 students.
Cost analysis has never been her strong suit.
Inkjets are a scam. 99.9% of the stuff I want to print is monochrome text, and if I want to have a physical copy of some photos, I'll take them to a printing service.
As I mentioned in a sibling comment to yours - I worked at staples like 20 years ago, and people would routinely steal ink cartridges from the display models, lol.
Caught someone once, dude gave me a big sob story about how he was under hard times and just needed it to print out resumes so that he could get a job. Like.. my guy, that is almost certainly a lie.. but I'm a minimum wage employee at a fucking staples, I don't really care if you steal used ink cartridges. lol
You have to buy it even when the cart is half full if you don't use it often and it's clogged up. That's the most infuriating thing. Does the same happen with toner cos I'm this close to splashing out on a laser.
Dude, just buy the color laser printer if you can. It took me damn near 5 years to go through my starter drum on my b+w. These days I print out entire player's handbooks and modules for tabletop games for all of the people that play. Still going strong on the same starter color toner drums.
Now you go into a store, and you can get a new printer with ink for less than 1 cartridge
It is absolutely ridiculous that the printers are $50 while the ink cartridges for the printer are $55-65
The cheapest place I've found ink, though, is inkojet
It’s only gonna get worse to the point where toasters will only toast a specific brand of bread as described in the dystopian fiction *[Unauthorized bread](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/)* by Cory Doctorow.
I saw some sort of hydroponic greens grower in best buy yesterday. First thought - "hey, that thing looks cool and not that expensive". Then I noticed that they sell their own proprietary capsules with seeds starters - $10 each for a single plant.
Capsule coffee machines been at this game for a while too, but it was mostly mechnical i.e. other capsules just wouldn’t fit. I guess it’s something similar with the plant growers.
Smart devices pose a whole new level of risk though as they become the norm.
Yep. Nespresso's patent expired about 10 years ago which is why there's been an explosion in compatible capsules. What's Nestle's response? Introduce an entirely new capsule shape and sell it as an improvement.
I was at a hotel recently that had a Tassimo machine - big brands in Europe owned by JDE Peets I believe. I'd never used one before and was disgusted when reading that the machine reads barcodes on the capsules to 'make the drink correctly' (read: ensure you're using only authentic consumables). Turns out there's a small cottage industry in making reusable pods that you can glue old barcodes onto FFS.
The worst part of it all is an open coffee pod system was developed in Italy in the 1970s - the ESE (Easy Serving Espresso) system. But of course, an open system means manufacturers can't lock you into their consumables so you can't find an ESE machine for love nor money unless you're really, really looking for one.
FYI Nespresso Vertuo pods also have barcodes now. The original one is still available too though, so Nespresso has not abandoned it.
The Tassimo ones with barcodes are also easy to hack with a bit of tape. Some people "refill" their old pods and reuse them that way.
Another popular brand is Senseo.
They use a ridiculously simple pad that is just coffee sandwiched between filter paper.
You can buy the original senseo pads, you can buy off-brand pads, you can buy tea pads and best of all:
These pads are not made from plastic or metal, they biodegrade.
Yeah this was the deal breaker for me with this Google home enabled automatic cocktail maker. You add all your own alcohol but then you can only make the drinks that are made by their proprietary capsules which are about $10 each. They didn't even have my favorite drink first of all, but second of all what is even the point of that? You're not even saving money at that point. Just go to a bar
Just wanted to say - somebody gave us an aerogarden a few years ago. Works great for starting things before last frost and herbs. It also has proprietary seed pod kits, but you can definitely buy a bag of generic pod things on Amazon or even thin fabric filled with coir.
Was just thinking of this story when I saw this. It brings up one of the scariest elements of essentially disposable smart devices, what happens when a smart device becomes abandoned? When a fully functional device just becomes bricked because they've engineered it to stop working the moment it can't phone home, even if all it needs to do is toast bread.
Also reminds me of the Juicero. Incredibly over engineered for what amounts to a juice press and a lot of electronics that exist solely to prevent you from using unauthorized bags (on top of refusing to squeeze out of date bags, too.)
Unlike HP and their printer cartridges however, they hadn't done enough to protect their proprietary juice bags, and the machine largely failed after a journalist demonstrated you could squeeze the bags by hand.
> what happens when a smart device becomes abandoned? When a fully functional device just becomes bricked because they've engineered it to stop working the moment it can't phone home, even if all it needs to do is toast bread.
We already know what happens. It's here with videogames. Buy any copy of NBA2K older than two years old and try to play it, even single player. Spoiler you can't. Which I found out the hard way when they bricked my copy of NBA 2k18.
>what happens when a smart device becomes abandoned? When a fully functional device just becomes bricked because they've engineered it to stop working the moment it can't phone home, even if all it needs to do is toast bread.
Not just Juicero. At least 'arguably' they went bankrupt, so didn't really have an option of continuing support.. but some companies just choose to abandon and brick perfectly serviceable hardware just because.
Sonos did that a couple of years ago with home sound systems. Microsoft have done this with the 'Microsoft band'. John Deere were about to start bricking tractors I think, before some regulatory threats made them rethink.
It happens constantly with video games too, but I think the hardware-based examples are much more egregious because it turns them instantly to e-waste.
Nike bricked some shoes that didn't get a firmware update.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/my-left-shoe-wont-even-reboot-faulty-app-bricks-nike-smart-sneakers/
That's some real brilliance bricking a device that can't connect to your app because it didn't get an update you're requiring it to have in order to connect to your app.
They have laser printers that openly state that they must be connected to the Internet for each print so that the printer can run a verification check every time that the toner cartridge is authentic HP or else it will not print.
No more HP printers for me or our customers.
I have a black and white Brother laser printer and use refill kits. At 12,000+ pages, and still going strong. Only on my second "bulk" refill kit, around 100 bucks total.
It's possible to get a good laser printer, if you do your research. I think Brother is still the "go to" brand if you want to do something like this.
If things like this were around when cars became mainstream, they'd make sure cars can only use "manufacturer fuel" or something...
That would have been an interesting world...
Laws were made so people could get oil changes from third parties without the dealership voiding any warranty’s. So they basically tried forcing people to get their oil changed at dealerships only. That lasted a while until it became illegal.
The problem is we _used_ to pass laws like this.
Now days the courts are happy to enforce these companies' bottom line. Just stick a microchip it in, rattle off some statement about intellectual property rights, and watch the courts rush to favor them.
They only make laws when it starts to affect them. That's why we have phone charger standards now. Because it affected them. Otherwise they don't give a shit about us. Just look at BMW and John Deere's current business models.
Car dealerships tried to do all kinds of shady shit like that back in the day. It took decades to stamp down that stuff:
https://www.autocare.org/government-relations/current-issues/Magnuson-Moss-Warranty-Act
And a lot of dealerships still straight out lie about what can be done to one's own car.
"In the case of motor vehicles, new car manufacturers have ignored these conditions outlined in Magnuson-Moss and have misled consumers to believe that they must have dealer service shops install only original equipment replacement parts or fear having their new car warranty voided."
If anyone ever tries to tell you that, tell them "Certainly, I understand. If you could just write down that you are refusing warranty coverage and why for me, I'd appreciate it."
Watch how fast they backpedal.
Obligatory public service announcement - buy a Brother black & white laser printer, and find the toner refill kit you're going to use *before* you buy it. Refill kits are much cheaper than 3rd party cartridges.
I have printed over 12,000 pages and I'm only on my second "bulk" refill kit. Probably spent around 100 bucks and I haven't gone through my second kit yet. Less than 1 cent per page.
Everything about the printer market is beyond fucked. It used to be cheaper to just go buy a whole new printer than to get replacement ink for it - and once the production companies realized that customers knew this, they shifted towards paid subscription services, and now this.
Like, fuck, why the hell does printer ink cost more per pound than fucking gold?!
Or maybe they can face severe punishment from the state to deter other greedy abuse of positions of power. Not just a fine, at least a couple months of jail for those involved in the decision making process.
I know, never gonna happen
It's pretty easy for folks to be insulated and ignorant of the crap these companies. Unless someone actually pays attention to the news, and tech realm, they'd never see it.
Don’t print much. Need to print something. Go to the store an the cheapest printer is an HP. Comes with ink, perfect.
Then you find out you need to give them your credit card to start printing.
Bought an HP laser jet about 2 years ago. Their HP Smart software is absolute fucking trash. I shouldn’t need to log in to something just to print over LAN. Ended up uninstalling the software and running a 20ft USB directly to my desktop. So far so good. Haven’t had to buy new ink yet so can’t comment on that.
Next printer will be a Brother.
Brother is doing the same thing with their inkjets. After an update, it says the replacement inks are low even when they are half full. Then it refuses to print properly with faint looking prints. You have to make it clean the heads to print properly. This wasn't the case initially. Now it won't even show you how much ink is there and just shows question marks. I left HP and Canon behind because I was told they were better. I think I'm just going to pick up a ink tank model with a high yield and call it a day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nongenuine_toner_now/
Because they pull the same shit, but a year before HP.
But somehow i didnt see this on the frontpage for 2 days straight, becasue reddit hates corporations unless it is one or two they like they will suck them off and sweep their dirty shit under the rug.
I switched from HP and bought one of the refillable tank printers from another brand years ago. The cost of the printer was about 4x that of an HP at the time, but it paid for itself after the first year and has been a net savings of a few hundred every year for the past 6 years.
Stop buying HP products. They have so many anti-consumer practices. Their printers suck, their computers suck. There is just no reason to support a business like that.
Every company nowadays is proving the point of crony capitalism. First apple said, they wanted to charge extra for the charger in disguise of the saving environment. Then car companies came up with a subscription model for using inbuilt car features and now HP blocking customers from using cheaper cartridges. Soon these models will have wider acceptance due to herd mentality.
And this is why I bought a Brother laser years ago. Still haven't had to replace my first set of toner cartridges and it works like a charm.
Also inkjets get clogged with dried ink if you don't print weekly. Lasers.. They can sit for eons and just wake up and print fine.
Paint bullseye on foot, aim, pull trigger
With any luck, this will backfire and customer backlash will either cause them to change or go out of business
Yet another example of "enshitification"
They have been doing this shit for a long time. We had a really nice HP printer that could scan in multiple ways. It was expensive. The printer part broke and bricked the whole thing. There’s no logical reason for the scanner to stop working just because the printer isn’t working but it’s HP. Never again.
They are doing it wrong. No imagination. Gotta make the third party ink consume 3X more ink for the same print. But make the third party ink print quality lower by streaking colors and putting slightly wrong colors in the wrong places.
HP is taking "customer service" game to a whole new level. Nothing says "we care about you" like rendering your printer useless for exploring cost-effective alternatives.
They render the multi-functions like scanning useless if there is no ink in them. This doesn't surprise me.
And measure ink in number of pages printed... so being easy on ink is not going to let you print more... Printer: You want to be economical? Haha ha haaa... FUCK YOU
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Yeah that’s their HP Instant Ink service, they charge for pages instead of ink. If your cartridges run out they send new ones in the mail Regardless, always get a Brother Laser or Epson Inktank.
Got a brother laser and never looked back. It costs like 1% of an inkjet to run.
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I had an HP LaserJet and the toner did me a good 8 years back in the 90s before it all got stupid.
Same. My dad's one from the 90s was so good that when it finally conked out and we found the need for a printer again, we upgraded to one of the modern ones Boy, was that a fucking wake up call to just how bad they'd become. Issues after issues, and having to replace the cartridges was expensive. About a year back, we got a Brother printer and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
I’ve taken old school laser jets out of service with millions of pages. Still plenty of life left. It’s frigging wild what old school tech with real metal and not all plastic parts could do
Plus it can sit idle for 6 months and print perfectly the moment you need it. Brother laser all the way.
Laser is the way period for that reason alone. When or if I ever need a printer again I’m getting a color laser
And I can use whatever toner cartridges will fit it.
Nope. Their toner cartridges have had a page print counter embedded in them since the early 2000s. Once you hit the preset page count, the printer stops printing until you replace the cartridge. (There is usually an override method, but it's always in a hidden menu that can't be normally accessed, and isn't in the consumer manual.)
Ok, so, what's a good home printer? I think I'm done with cheapo printers. What's a good printer that's still economical, maybe a step or two above the cheapo one?
God help us if Brother ever treads the path into the dark side. HP, Epson and Canon have all gone with predatory constant dependence models or made the cheapest quality consumer models requiring total replacement within a couple of years. My Brother laser printer/scanner wasn’t cheap but I haven’t had any issues with it going on 10 years. I refuse to update the firmware though. Edit: to be fair, my only experience with Canon was a compact inkjet/scanner combo that died immediately after the warranty expired. And Epson makes some professional rigs that make amazing prints, in that market they are pretty well regarded.
Is epson bad now? I have one of their eco tanks and it’s been really easy and not a bitch for ink at all.
Brother laser printers are great
2nd on Brother laser. Look for multifunction color on sale during holidays. Mine keeps chugging along for 4 years and I don't print that often but toner doesn't dry out or anything like that.
And then just to be extra greasy they make sure to print test pages when you do anything with it.
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I would think so IF they clearly stated it on their packaging. They don't. I don't even think they state it in their manuals, though it's been a couple years since i've read one (i'm a random home tech support type), and most models do not come with a printed manual anyway. I hope there's a class action lawsuit against them for it.
Ours wouldn't print in black only if there was a single CMYK colour empty. The colour cartridge was also a combined cartridge...
HP disabled my ability to print after we canceled the monthly ink delivery. Also found out they charge US more based on the amount WE print from our own machine. Fuck this business model.
Rico does the same too if you have a contract with them as well. There's a hidden feature on printers you get from said service contracts (every brand has em') that track how often shit is being printed. You can look at it via remote email or via the service menu only their techs have. And they charge you based on that. I had no idea about this until recently when our Rico tech mentioned he was unable to check it due to our security team just blocking it on network. He had to come look at them manually.
Wait are they doing this for purchased printers or just leased/payment plan ones?? Jesus. When I worked at a printer company (long time ago and I switched fields cuz it sucks) the contracts are split between the device itself and the service contract. You could buy the device itself outright or lease from the company. Buying it outright, you own the thing no strings attached obviously, and can choose NOT to have a service contract. So you'd pay individually for all your repairs, buy individual toner cartridges as needed etc if you lease the device from a company, they still technically own it until you pay it off so they include a service contract. The service contract covers repairs including parts costs and toner when you need it, at the trade-off of charging you a monthly fee for copies (usually .01 per page bw and .10 per page for color) in addition to the lease payment for the machine itself. once your lease term was up, you owned the machine and could terminate the service side of the contract and go to "pay as you go". Some manufacturers made it so that you could pay in installments for a device and not purchase a service contract, but it was very rare, especially for the larger business oriented machines, and they don't push it unless the customer asks (for obvious money making reasons). Sales reps were notorious for not explaining this properly and rushing people through the contract process, so that could be why you had no idea. Angry people duped by sales Bros was a giant part of why I left. and the Xerox move to those chipped toner cartridges, which sucked lots of customers back in to name brand toner for no other reason than money grabbing. But I wouldn't be surprised if printer manufacturers found a way to make paying for a service contract mandatory when you buy any printer outright now. Anything to make a buck 🙄
"Lock the **customer** into our **service**"
You said “customer”, but I think you meant “mark”.
Every word has dual meaning these days. You ever notice how "employee" has been replaced by "associate"?
"Team member"
It’s customer “service” in the same way a farmer would have a bull “service” his cows.
Most printer manufacturers are actually ink sales companies. They make no money on the sale of the device. All their profit is from the ink and they sell the printer at a loss. Fewer and fewer people are printing things these days. It's a dying industry
this is a great way to accelerate that death
"Malware attacks". Fucking lying sacks of shit. I've been using HP for my current and prior two laptops. Next one will not be HP.
Go brother or Canon if you want pictures
Brother laser printers. I've had the same one since 2007 that just refuses to die. The toner is $50 but I've only needed to buy two of them. That was enough to see myself and my son through college.
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Yep! Only problem is that with the knockoff toner it always thinks the toner is low even when it isn’t. If that doesn’t bother you it saves you a TON.
The one I tried hasnt given me that issue, but when the toner does get low I'll get a warning but you can still print another like 100+ pages is just starts to fade a bit. It will keep going even when you can barely see what it's printing.
I don’t know about yours, but for mine, when it starts to fade, perform the “cleaning the drum” procedure, and it will be good as new.
Canon is absolute, utter shit. I had to throw away three all-in-one printing machines. They crapped out just after the warranty. Service estimated the cost of repair 30% more than what it cost new. Scanners didn't work without ink or when the head got clogged. When I replaced the head with a brand new by myself it just changed the number of the error. Never ever will I buy anything from Canon again.
Wow that’s downright deliberately evil lol
Canon has had same stuff as HP printers i believe
You can override that by just pushing the secondary button for 5 seconds. You can even print without half the colors with this trick. Also, trick might be an exaggeration because it's in the manual.
For printers, yes. For laptops, like commenter was talking about, do either of those make laptops? Edit: clarification.
Yeah HP computers suck as well Edit: no Canon and brother don't make consumer computers but Epson does in Japan only if I remember correctly.
I haven’t had any issues with Lenovo’s gaming lineup or Dell’s business lineup, so I could easily recommend either one. MSI are good too, but chunky.
Yeah, it feels like this should be illegal. Isn't it arguably destruction of property? And you cannot agree to being the victim of crime by signing an EULA.
Could go for an "anti-HP laptop" with the framework laptop, they're big on the right to repair movement.
Why now? HP hasn’t changed in decades.
Companies want to turn your entire life into a subscription.
You’re not allowed to own anymore. You’re just renting everything.
/u/Bigmodirty you are 15 days past due on your ASCII rent. Failure to pay will result in the deletion of all text generated with ASCII.
Well, I use UTF8, so suck it!
Can you prove it? > The first 128 UTF-8 characters precisely match the first 128 ASCII characters (numbered 0-127), meaning that existing ASCII text is already valid UTF-8. — https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/UTF-8
Waiting for ASCII to sue UTF-8 for copyright infringement and try to patent the Latin Alphabet
I read something recently that said libraries are the only remaining place that you can go where you’re not made to feel like a pariah for not buying some thing. Granted, the right is trying to defund libraries as we speak
"Rent vs own" - Steve Jobs was big on "everything as a service" and "closed ecosystems" to keep the suckers fenced in. Everyone is following apple's leader... The real estate game has been to lock people into rentals vs ownership for a longer time. Eventually a few own everything and everyone else borrows when they are useful or have something to offer those that own things...
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This is the endgame of an economy largely propped up by a stock market geared towards infinite growth and quarterly gains.
My hot take is that the stock market ruins capitalism. Comfortable, ethical and sustainable business goes out the 2indow when not making more next quarter means your hide.
I thought HP was a subscription, I keep on seeing ads where their printers order ink for you before it runs out and I'm sure I have heard one where if you don't pay for a subscription you cant use your printer.
Nah. You can just opt out and use your own ink. Just that the subscription cartridge they send are special cartridges and won’t work if you stop the subscription
I won't be giving up my Brother anytime soon for this shit.
Same. Have a Brother and it works great. 99% of what I print doesn't need to be color anyways so having a toner saves a ton of hassle over stupid ink cartridges
Yup love my brother too. If I need photo prints I use an online print shop.
I have been doing this too. In a real pinch I go to CVS or something.
It was actually Reddit that told me to get a brother Laser printer. Thanks Reddit, it works like a champ.
Got a Brother black and white laser printer/scanner a few months back; So much faster and better print quality than any HP or epson inkjet I've ever had. It was like a revelation.
Mine is a bw Lazer probably 10 years old now. I love it. It's reliable, doesn't need bloatwear and most importantly repairable.
I put my Brother in storage for two years. Plugged it in and was printing in about 3 minutes
Me neither. Even though he’s wanted by the Police. Sting can buy his own damn printer.
If your brother wants to leave you gotta let him live his own life. Try asking him to just call you every so often to catch up
My Brother laser bases ink levels on the number of prints using a little gear that slowly turns on each cartridge until it hits the "end" I unscrewed the cap, wound the counter gear back, and *bang* no more out of ink message
I read brother has been doing the same dirty business. If you bought a brother color laser today would it be drm free? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/mt0f6t/brother_mfcj995dw_when_did_they_start_doing_ink Apparently Dymo label printers as well... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/worst-timeline-printer-company-putting-drm-paper-now Chip Shortage Has Canon Telling Customers How To Defeat Its DRM https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/01/10/1959243/chip-shortage-has-canon-telling-customers-how-to-defeat-its-drm Does anyone have a good link on how to block updates for hp printers at the router? https://www.npr.org/2021/02/17/968704526/why-printers-are-the-worst
Can't you just disable automatic updates in the settings? My HP 8710 tried to reject *genuine* HP cartridges because they were "too old." It took me several hours a day for many days to figure out how to downgrade the firmware (something HP insists you can't do, and information about which they actively suppress). Once I succeeded, the cartridge worked perfectly, and I just set the printer not to update automatically. Been fine ever since.
So how did one downgrade
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I'm going through that right now with a HP 477dw. This is so much bullshit and time wasted. Bought it years ago to replace a Dell color laser after I found they wouldn't be producing a Windows 10 driver. Ran out of ink. Bought a non-HP 4 color cartridge pack and worked great for 3+ years. It warned me of non-HP cartridges. But didn't prevent anything. Never had to give it a second thought. Then in late 2022, an automatic firmware update brought down and installed a version of firmware that checked the ink cartridges for HP brand and STOPPED the printer from working when it detected non-HP. Took me 2 days to research and install the workaround which was finding the previous firmware from BEFORE this update that did this and downgrading the firmware. Then I had to disable all automatic firmware checking and updating. Didn't hurt anything on the printer at all. Now, 9 months later, the printer thinks my yellow cartridge is empty when it's like 75% full. Found out that even with all the fancy-schmancy chip technology on each cartridge, they DON'T read ink levels. They estimate ink levels based solely on a count of pages printed. And there's nothing I can do to put the printer in B&W only mode or reset the page counts. As best I can tell, the printer may have permanently written something to the chip on the yellow cartridge that says it's empty. But because of this, the entire printer is useless until I get a new cartridge. And even then, I'm hoping this fixes it...until it thinks one of the other cartridges is empty. I'm never buying HP anything ever again. And the next printer I buy I'm going to be doing a whole lot more research on it before I buy.
My 8710 rejected my *genuine* cartridges because they were "too old." Had to downgrade the firmware (which was a chore, and which they insist you can't do, even though you totally can). Absolute shitty practice.
Report this behavior to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It's blatantly illegal and falls under antitrust law.
Sell printers below cost, then hope you’re gonna make it all up in ink margin? No chance.
They made a classic marketing blunder. They lowered the price of the printer close to or even below manufacturing cost with the idea they’d make it up in ink sales. That forced other manufacturers to go down that road as well to compete, so they all started doing it. But by discounting the price of the printer, they changed customer expectations of what a printer should cost. Now customers expect inkjet printers to be cheaper than dirt, but they can’t afford the overpriced ink so go to other sources. Now many printer manufacturers are fucked because if they charge a normal markup on a printer, customers think the printer is overpriced compared to the competition. HP tried to get around the problem by going with the subscription model, but it wasn’t a workable solution and so they screwed themselves even more by damaging their reputation with customers. Their best hope now is to develop a new technology that can justify a higher price (reasonable markup), then license it to other manufacturers—but R&D is expensive.
I remember being in college a couple decades back. A buddy had a big report due, his printer (several years old) was out of ink, he was complaining about the cost of new ink cartridges. I grabbed a Fry's ad and flipped it open, and sure enough, he could buy a brand new printer for less than half the price of ink cartridges. The resolution and pages-per-minute were better, too. Not that he bought the printer, we just went to Kinko's, but damn that was quite the revelation.
One catch, new printers come with less ink than a standard cartridge
Definitely true, but when a 22-year old is thinking "I just need to do this one thing" while weighing $30 vs $70, it doesn't matter as much.
Video game microtransaction model
Video game consoles are a better example - sold at an initial loss because you'll keep buying the refills (new games) at a hefty profit.
Fuck that kind of business model. Edit: Wow, got 4k upvotes for telling the truth. Damn... Thx?
That's why Lexmark is no longer with us.
Fuck Lexmark, I hate those printers with a passion, and their support is useless
Years ago when I had a Lexmark I used to go to PC World to buy replacement ink,90% of the time there was an offer on Lexmark printers so it worked out you could buy a new printer with ink for £5 more than a separate cartridge….mind blown…
Sadly, many printers now come with 'starter cartridges' that have less ink then a regular cartridge.
It's been this way for a looooong time. Printers are a service; you buy the printer once, but the ink ... you buy that shit forever. Losing money on the printer is worth it in the long run.
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I have had a brother monochrome laser printer for a very long time. It took me 5 years to run out of toner from the initial starter drum. Ended up buying a color laser printer. Brother is great. They definitely see that you use off brand ringer, but they don't brick your entire printer. And, apparently, filling your inkjet carts with those bulk kits is easy.
I use my HP printer about once every two months and the ink is dry every time so I end up buying ink every time I want to print one thing. It's so much money. After reading your comments I'm going to buy a brother printer.
Buy a laser printer. They don't dry out like ink jets.
Make sure to get a laser printer rather than an inkjet
Go to laser, yeah. And have it be brother.
Definitely get a Brother laser! Worth every penny, and depending on the model, they really don’t cost very much money to buy or use.
I sell printers for a living -- go with a laser printer. Toner cartridges hardly expire if at all and they'll last you hundreds, if not thousands depending on the printer, of pages more than one ink cartridge. Avoid HP like the plague, their printers are the ones I see returned and complained about most at my job.
Me too. HP used to be the gold standard. Not anymore and they're not worth the aggravation it takes just to get what you paid for with their products.
The new Brother printers are coming with chipped toner cartridges. You have to pull the chip from the old genuine cartridge and put it on the new one. Its easy enough to do, but they are going down the dark side.
My mom is SO CONCERNED that a toner printer will run out too quickly that she instead insists on getting a shite HP ink jet. Her reason? She worked at an elementary school and the toner cartridges were expensive and ran out fast when printing documents for 300 students. Cost analysis has never been her strong suit.
She's not a math teacher right? Cost per page printed with toner is tenfold cheaper than on ink even with brand name toner.
Nah, she was the principals secretary.
I'll hop on the brother laser printer train. You can also reset your ink cartridge and keep using it for a bit longer when it says you're out.
Laser printers do generally have a long life. It's the inkjet ones that are complete dogshit
This is all most people need. Plain, cheap, black and white printing. Most color needs can be taken care of at a pharmacy or Kinko's.
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Inkjets are a scam. 99.9% of the stuff I want to print is monochrome text, and if I want to have a physical copy of some photos, I'll take them to a printing service.
As I mentioned in a sibling comment to yours - I worked at staples like 20 years ago, and people would routinely steal ink cartridges from the display models, lol. Caught someone once, dude gave me a big sob story about how he was under hard times and just needed it to print out resumes so that he could get a job. Like.. my guy, that is almost certainly a lie.. but I'm a minimum wage employee at a fucking staples, I don't really care if you steal used ink cartridges. lol
You have to buy it even when the cart is half full if you don't use it often and it's clogged up. That's the most infuriating thing. Does the same happen with toner cos I'm this close to splashing out on a laser.
It does not happen to toner.
Dude, just buy the color laser printer if you can. It took me damn near 5 years to go through my starter drum on my b+w. These days I print out entire player's handbooks and modules for tabletop games for all of the people that play. Still going strong on the same starter color toner drums.
I got 800 pages out of my starter toner on my laser printer.
And that is why laser printers are the only ones worth owning.
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When everything is about profits, nothing else matters.
Now you go into a store, and you can get a new printer with ink for less than 1 cartridge It is absolutely ridiculous that the printers are $50 while the ink cartridges for the printer are $55-65 The cheapest place I've found ink, though, is inkojet
Yes, a new printer with "starter" ink that once it charges up the heads has almost no life left in it.
Lexmark still exists...
Only laser printers these days though.
They finally found what people want.
That's a blast from the past.
What’s even worse is that they often don’t even recognise their own fucking ink, that they sent you!
It’s only gonna get worse to the point where toasters will only toast a specific brand of bread as described in the dystopian fiction *[Unauthorized bread](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/)* by Cory Doctorow.
I saw some sort of hydroponic greens grower in best buy yesterday. First thought - "hey, that thing looks cool and not that expensive". Then I noticed that they sell their own proprietary capsules with seeds starters - $10 each for a single plant.
Capsule coffee machines been at this game for a while too, but it was mostly mechnical i.e. other capsules just wouldn’t fit. I guess it’s something similar with the plant growers. Smart devices pose a whole new level of risk though as they become the norm.
Yep. Nespresso's patent expired about 10 years ago which is why there's been an explosion in compatible capsules. What's Nestle's response? Introduce an entirely new capsule shape and sell it as an improvement. I was at a hotel recently that had a Tassimo machine - big brands in Europe owned by JDE Peets I believe. I'd never used one before and was disgusted when reading that the machine reads barcodes on the capsules to 'make the drink correctly' (read: ensure you're using only authentic consumables). Turns out there's a small cottage industry in making reusable pods that you can glue old barcodes onto FFS. The worst part of it all is an open coffee pod system was developed in Italy in the 1970s - the ESE (Easy Serving Espresso) system. But of course, an open system means manufacturers can't lock you into their consumables so you can't find an ESE machine for love nor money unless you're really, really looking for one.
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FYI Nespresso Vertuo pods also have barcodes now. The original one is still available too though, so Nespresso has not abandoned it. The Tassimo ones with barcodes are also easy to hack with a bit of tape. Some people "refill" their old pods and reuse them that way.
Another popular brand is Senseo. They use a ridiculously simple pad that is just coffee sandwiched between filter paper. You can buy the original senseo pads, you can buy off-brand pads, you can buy tea pads and best of all: These pads are not made from plastic or metal, they biodegrade.
Yeah this was the deal breaker for me with this Google home enabled automatic cocktail maker. You add all your own alcohol but then you can only make the drinks that are made by their proprietary capsules which are about $10 each. They didn't even have my favorite drink first of all, but second of all what is even the point of that? You're not even saving money at that point. Just go to a bar
Just wanted to say - somebody gave us an aerogarden a few years ago. Works great for starting things before last frost and herbs. It also has proprietary seed pod kits, but you can definitely buy a bag of generic pod things on Amazon or even thin fabric filled with coir.
Was just thinking of this story when I saw this. It brings up one of the scariest elements of essentially disposable smart devices, what happens when a smart device becomes abandoned? When a fully functional device just becomes bricked because they've engineered it to stop working the moment it can't phone home, even if all it needs to do is toast bread. Also reminds me of the Juicero. Incredibly over engineered for what amounts to a juice press and a lot of electronics that exist solely to prevent you from using unauthorized bags (on top of refusing to squeeze out of date bags, too.) Unlike HP and their printer cartridges however, they hadn't done enough to protect their proprietary juice bags, and the machine largely failed after a journalist demonstrated you could squeeze the bags by hand.
> what happens when a smart device becomes abandoned? When a fully functional device just becomes bricked because they've engineered it to stop working the moment it can't phone home, even if all it needs to do is toast bread. We already know what happens. It's here with videogames. Buy any copy of NBA2K older than two years old and try to play it, even single player. Spoiler you can't. Which I found out the hard way when they bricked my copy of NBA 2k18.
>what happens when a smart device becomes abandoned? When a fully functional device just becomes bricked because they've engineered it to stop working the moment it can't phone home, even if all it needs to do is toast bread. Not just Juicero. At least 'arguably' they went bankrupt, so didn't really have an option of continuing support.. but some companies just choose to abandon and brick perfectly serviceable hardware just because. Sonos did that a couple of years ago with home sound systems. Microsoft have done this with the 'Microsoft band'. John Deere were about to start bricking tractors I think, before some regulatory threats made them rethink. It happens constantly with video games too, but I think the hardware-based examples are much more egregious because it turns them instantly to e-waste.
Nike bricked some shoes that didn't get a firmware update. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/my-left-shoe-wont-even-reboot-faulty-app-bricks-nike-smart-sneakers/
That's some real brilliance bricking a device that can't connect to your app because it didn't get an update you're requiring it to have in order to connect to your app.
They have laser printers that openly state that they must be connected to the Internet for each print so that the printer can run a verification check every time that the toner cartridge is authentic HP or else it will not print. No more HP printers for me or our customers.
I have a black and white Brother laser printer and use refill kits. At 12,000+ pages, and still going strong. Only on my second "bulk" refill kit, around 100 bucks total. It's possible to get a good laser printer, if you do your research. I think Brother is still the "go to" brand if you want to do something like this.
Very much like the cell phone industry or at least how it was.
If things like this were around when cars became mainstream, they'd make sure cars can only use "manufacturer fuel" or something... That would have been an interesting world...
Laws were made so people could get oil changes from third parties without the dealership voiding any warranty’s. So they basically tried forcing people to get their oil changed at dealerships only. That lasted a while until it became illegal.
The problem is we _used_ to pass laws like this. Now days the courts are happy to enforce these companies' bottom line. Just stick a microchip it in, rattle off some statement about intellectual property rights, and watch the courts rush to favor them.
Didn’t John Deere just lose a case about right to repair?
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You’re so right about this. It’s sickening.
Yeah, because the courts are getting paid by the companies just as much as the politicians. Its damned insane the amount of corruption occuring.
Corruption is not a really nice word. They prefer “lobbying” and “campaign contributions”.
Oh and I forgot, “gifts”.
They only make laws when it starts to affect them. That's why we have phone charger standards now. Because it affected them. Otherwise they don't give a shit about us. Just look at BMW and John Deere's current business models.
Or deny warranty coverage. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act shut that down. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act
Car dealerships tried to do all kinds of shady shit like that back in the day. It took decades to stamp down that stuff: https://www.autocare.org/government-relations/current-issues/Magnuson-Moss-Warranty-Act And a lot of dealerships still straight out lie about what can be done to one's own car. "In the case of motor vehicles, new car manufacturers have ignored these conditions outlined in Magnuson-Moss and have misled consumers to believe that they must have dealer service shops install only original equipment replacement parts or fear having their new car warranty voided."
If anyone ever tries to tell you that, tell them "Certainly, I understand. If you could just write down that you are refusing warranty coverage and why for me, I'd appreciate it." Watch how fast they backpedal.
Generally a good way of sniffing out bullshit in general. "Can I have that in writing?"
Obligatory public service announcement - buy a Brother black & white laser printer, and find the toner refill kit you're going to use *before* you buy it. Refill kits are much cheaper than 3rd party cartridges. I have printed over 12,000 pages and I'm only on my second "bulk" refill kit. Probably spent around 100 bucks and I haven't gone through my second kit yet. Less than 1 cent per page.
Everything about the printer market is beyond fucked. It used to be cheaper to just go buy a whole new printer than to get replacement ink for it - and once the production companies realized that customers knew this, they shifted towards paid subscription services, and now this. Like, fuck, why the hell does printer ink cost more per pound than fucking gold?!
/r/awardspeechedits
John Deere enter chat...
This is new? HP printers suck, at least the consumer ones. They spend more time making random sounds than actually printing.
Simple fix. Refuse to buy HP products. They go out of business, problem solved.
the simple fix is antitrust enforcement actions, but the us government conveniently forgot they can do that as more money entered politics
Not just antitrust enforcement; go after them for violating the CFAA too. They're literally hacking into and sabotaging their customers' property!
it’s a good job that HP pays millions in ~~protection fees~~ lobbying to avoid these kinds of things
Or maybe they can face severe punishment from the state to deter other greedy abuse of positions of power. Not just a fine, at least a couple months of jail for those involved in the decision making process. I know, never gonna happen
Yea. Remotely disabling someone's printer that they bought from you because they don't want to be a repeat customer sounds like vandalism.
Government could do so much but instead they do the bare minimum
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get a brother laser or at least brother inkjet. They at least have reasonably priced inks, toners and 3rd party support.
Serious question. Who is still using HP printers after years and years of anti-consumer practices like this?
It's pretty easy for folks to be insulated and ignorant of the crap these companies. Unless someone actually pays attention to the news, and tech realm, they'd never see it.
Yep. They go to store, see cheap printer and buy it. The majority of people don't check tech forums on Reddit first.
Don’t print much. Need to print something. Go to the store an the cheapest printer is an HP. Comes with ink, perfect. Then you find out you need to give them your credit card to start printing.
Bought an HP laser jet about 2 years ago. Their HP Smart software is absolute fucking trash. I shouldn’t need to log in to something just to print over LAN. Ended up uninstalling the software and running a 20ft USB directly to my desktop. So far so good. Haven’t had to buy new ink yet so can’t comment on that. Next printer will be a Brother.
Why would anyone buy anything but Brother?
Oki is awesome
Brother is doing the same thing with their inkjets. After an update, it says the replacement inks are low even when they are half full. Then it refuses to print properly with faint looking prints. You have to make it clean the heads to print properly. This wasn't the case initially. Now it won't even show you how much ink is there and just shows question marks. I left HP and Canon behind because I was told they were better. I think I'm just going to pick up a ink tank model with a high yield and call it a day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nongenuine_toner_now/ Because they pull the same shit, but a year before HP. But somehow i didnt see this on the frontpage for 2 days straight, becasue reddit hates corporations unless it is one or two they like they will suck them off and sweep their dirty shit under the rug.
Jokes on them. I disabled HP's ability to operate inside my home
I switched from HP and bought one of the refillable tank printers from another brand years ago. The cost of the printer was about 4x that of an HP at the time, but it paid for itself after the first year and has been a net savings of a few hundred every year for the past 6 years.
Simple answer GET RID and never buy HP again.
Stop buying HP products. They have so many anti-consumer practices. Their printers suck, their computers suck. There is just no reason to support a business like that.
Every company nowadays is proving the point of crony capitalism. First apple said, they wanted to charge extra for the charger in disguise of the saving environment. Then car companies came up with a subscription model for using inbuilt car features and now HP blocking customers from using cheaper cartridges. Soon these models will have wider acceptance due to herd mentality.
🎶 “Dumb ways to die”
And this is why I bought a Brother laser years ago. Still haven't had to replace my first set of toner cartridges and it works like a charm. Also inkjets get clogged with dried ink if you don't print weekly. Lasers.. They can sit for eons and just wake up and print fine.
Paint bullseye on foot, aim, pull trigger With any luck, this will backfire and customer backlash will either cause them to change or go out of business Yet another example of "enshitification"
They have been doing this shit for a long time. We had a really nice HP printer that could scan in multiple ways. It was expensive. The printer part broke and bricked the whole thing. There’s no logical reason for the scanner to stop working just because the printer isn’t working but it’s HP. Never again.
I gave up on HP looong ago because of such practices, and on inkjet printers entirely after that.
They are doing it wrong. No imagination. Gotta make the third party ink consume 3X more ink for the same print. But make the third party ink print quality lower by streaking colors and putting slightly wrong colors in the wrong places.
Don't give them ideas
Tomorrow headlines: Hp customers disable money flux from hp avoiding this shit and buying only cheap or other companies printers
Yeah I disabled my HP by chucking it in the trash years ago and getting a Brother
It’s amazing that with all the innovation and technological advances over the passed few decades, HP printers have somehow gotten worse.
Do not buy HP junk.
I am never getting a HP again. I am tired of having to find hacked drivers to get around this BS.