HP detonates its timebomb: printers stop accepting third party ink en masse

bye bye HP printer. I’ll find something else to use or just print it out at work.

1 Like

No the question is: What specifically do you suggest should we do beside blowing up some HP office building in Podunk, Mississippi?

1 Like

The low end Mono lasers from most manufacturers are fairly decent, I quite like the Brother HL-2xxx (and similar engineed) series, they seem to last well with just consumable replacements. Have a proper paper drawer too. The higher up Brother models don’t seem to be as good as the older ones.

The Epson workforce pro range are good too, some issues on the early models but they seem to have ironed that out. Priced out of the home market, but a decent choice for a small office. The ecotank supplies do seem to be selling well which does suggest that the people who bought them do use them.

I’ve not found a good low priced colour laser printer and they all seem to have issues crop up that aren’t worth fixing.

Of course the sensible answer if you only need B&W is to buy an old Laserjet 4xxx series that will run forever.

8 Likes

It seems like they are trying to move to a service based models not unlike your cable modem. If that is true they should sell it as a service, maintenance free, complete with a traveling technician, like they do with corporate printing accounts. Or we can just stock up on black Friday when the cost is less than the cost of ink

1 Like

I don’t have a local drugstore, and I often need to print maps, counters, etc, and use label paper for the counters.

2 Likes

I like buying used office b/w laser printers - the Kyocera FS-1300D is a good one, build to withstand a nuclear attack. They sell for under 40€ (eBay) and often include a 80/90% full toner cartridge. You can print 10K-14K pages with one cartridge. Can’t beat that …

6 Likes

The 1XXX’s are great too, mine is a 1018, very small footprint but dependable. I do think these have the same “razors” model as inkjets, a OEM cartridge for an 1102w is 50% the cost of the printer.

1 Like

I agree. Kyoceras are the least painful method to print.

1 Like

I think the word you’re looking for is “recall”.

1 Like

If only there were some way of paying in EULAcash™, the currency whose value retroactively changes if the value of the product it is purchased with retroactively changes…

3rd party cartridge lockouts are a dick move in general; but the ones that exist at the time of sale, while I oppose them, don’t strike me as fundamentally illegitimate(though, that said, they should definitely not be accorded legal protection; if 3rd parties can find their way around them, too bad, so sad).

Playing “I am altering the deal; pray I don’t alter it any further.” on customers after the time of purchase seems like a pretty stark turn into ‘If this isn’t considered fraud, we need to change that.’ territory.

18 Likes

Why yes, when people stop buying HP/Samsung printers because they no longer trust HP due to nasty shenanigans like this. Kind of like no-one in their right mind buys Sony stuff any more since the rootkit debacle (“Better safe than Sony”…): http://www.networkworld.com/article/2998251/malware-cybercrime/sony-bmg-rootkit-scandal-10-years-later.html

5 Likes

I haven’t had a printer connected to my home PC for at least 15 years, if not more. After I used my first inkjet so infrequently the ink kept congealing I decided to go without and have never looked back. I can count on one hand the number of times I sort of wish I had one but in all those cases all I had to do was wait until work the next day to print it out there or go to Kinkos.

Most shit I see people print at home is just that: shit. Stuff they think they want to keep and are worried they might lose it on the web. Or horrible-looking copies of photos. I really can’t think of too many things in my life at home that need to be printed out – pretty much everything can remain digital as far as I’m concerned.

Edit: What I’m saying is that I suggest people stop buying printers from any company and remove that nonsense from your life.

3 Likes

Once you go wax block, you’ll never want to go back.

6 Likes

Oh god no. If you have to pay for it.

Smells nice though.

1 Like

“…reach into your home and boss you around via your gadgets, has proliferated into pacemakers,…implanted defibrillators;”

Citation needed. While there is plenty to be worried about when it comes to cybersecurity of implanted medical devices, it mostly relates to privacy, not functionality. Muddy Waters/MedSec need not apply.

I’ve got a Brother HL-5xxx series laser printer that I’ve had for a couple years now. My kids print homework on it, and I print coupons/movie tickets/shopping lists (I work better with paper lists and pen), and use it to print paper cut art projects and things sometimes for photo props/fun. Before that I had a similar one that lasted a few years before the toner ran out. The toner on this one’s still 70% full.

The ink jet domain is a racket, but if you have reasons to need/want to print there are better options.

3 Likes

I had to replace the drum on a Brother laser printer a few weeks ago, and I got the generic one, in order to save over $100. There were some sort of registration tabs on the back of the drum that were preventing the access door from closing. I guess that Brother must use these tabs to create separate markets for replacement parts that are actually identical, and the company making the generic replacement screwed up. Well, I just got out my diagonal cutters and started hacking away at all that plastic until the damn thing fit inside the printer, and wouldn’t you know, it’s been working perfectly!

12 Likes

I stopped buying HP anything back in the 1990s when Carly fired my best friend’s spouse (19 years selling large-format laser printers) with an email from a 3rd party axeman. For me, their karma just went down the toilet with that one.

Since then I’ve owned Canon, Epsom, and now a Brother HL-L8350CDW laser printer. I do a lot of printing for a non-profit because it is actually cheaper for small runs than even PSPrint. I buy the OEM Brother cartridges because my one experiment with off-brand cheaper wasn’t great. They’re actually not that more expensive than the alternative. I also appreciate the fact that Brother includes a pre-paid label with every printer cartridge to send it back to the company, hopefully to be reused.

If all the printer vendors “did the right thing” and offered a good product for a fair price, I don’t think we’d be having this discussion.

HP has been watching their market share dwindle for over a decade. This printer cartridge public-relations debacle is totally knee-jerk – and, given HP’s first and biggest impact on the market was its printers, maybe (one can always hope! – man I missed FuckedCompany.com) – HP is finally circling the drain.

3 Likes

don’t trivialize black lives matter, someone will get their underwear in a twist.

2 Likes

But why is Jerry here? These are the questions i need answered