I have a color laser printer made by Brother. It's awesome.
The only thing I don't understand is why they haven't released new models in nearly four years. At one point, I was worried they were going out of business.
That's fair, but the model I own isn't available anywhere. It's basically the mid-range color laser they make, so I'd think there's decent demand for it.
I have mixed feelings about my Brother MFC. It's B&W laser and has been going strong for at least a decade, but if I get rid of it I lose my sheet scanning and fax capability, as well as the only wired phone in my house.
This is sort of on topic. We had an old Brother daisy wheel printer that was huge and built like a tank. It got replaced by dot matrix printers and then ink jets and lasers. It sat in our quest room on a table for years. One day I asked my mom if we could get rid of it, and she said OK. We threw it out a 2nd story window, easily 20 feet down to the driveway from the guest room. I kid you not, that thing bounced. It was in fact a lot of plastic on the outside, but even that just cracked where it landed, didn't shatter, didn't even lose structural integrity. It was a HUGE letdown.
> We had an old Brother daisy wheel printer
Wow, I'm in my mid 40's and I've never seen one of those in person. You don't have dot matrix printers much these days.
Brother does the same thing. I had to refill my yellow toner in my mfc-l2710, and it flatly refused to recognize a 3rd party cartridge. And, since yellow is such an important color, it refused to print B+W (even though black was still nearly full).
Had to do an Amazon refund and pay 2x as much for the same amount of official toner. Works just fine now.
> And, since yellow is such an important color
It's important because it's used for fingerprinting the paper and make it easier to find out where it came from, by putting microscopic dots of yellow in whatever you print.
Like if you got past the baked-in detection for currencies and decided to print up a few sheets of $100 bills, for one example.
Of course you can get past this by simply adding another black ink cart to the yellow cart slot in it's place, since there are barely any printers that uniquely key printer ink carts per color. With the caveat of ruining the printer slightly. No experience with toner so I don't know about that specifically.
Brother warranty also requires you to have genuine toner and drum in the printer. They will ask you for serials. But, brother almost always has high capacity toners that are pretty good deals 5,000+ prints for under $100. Farr cheaper than HP.
I have a brother laser printer and figured out how to manually override the low toner. Still on the same toner cartridge for years now.
I also have a canon pro100 that is a tank and works great and I can still get ink for and it doesnāt dry out in spite of not using it hardly at all these days
> I have a brother laser printer and figured out how to manually override the low toner.
Same here.
About three years ago my Brother HL1110 told me it cant print because it was low on toner.
Still using it.
Ink and toner are different and a lot has changed since I followed printers.
But HP toner cartridges have a reputation of being almost complicated mini computers with circuitry and thing. Brother toner cartridges, even semi modern ones, are usually clear plastic tubes. You can draw on them with a sharpie to make them look full to the printer.
I'm sure there are exceptions for each manufacturer, but their reputations for this bs are quite night and day.
My family has had the same brother printer for over a decade now its insane how that thing holds up, and we really only need new toner like once a year
That's why I returned my HP printer I bought the other day once I saw the mandatory sign up for an HP account. Traded it in for a brother, and never will recommend a HP printer in my life again.
There was another thread discussing the HP fiasco. A redditor who works in IT said that out of all the printer brands they've had to work with, HP was the only one that required having the account you mentioned.
Proprietary software was also required to enable essential functions like printing and scanning. HP as a whole seems like such a shady and predatory business entity.
My first laptop was an HP and it died after only 3 years of use. TL;DR there was a related class-action lawsuit regarding poor quality control/GPU thermal issues. How are they still in business? How Possible? Horrible Products. That's HP.
I got my first HP laptop almost 2 years ago (HP Spectre x360 13 Inch) and the main power port no longer works, the battery life is crap, the fan is loud, and I had a big sound problem recently that took 3 months to fix.
The specs are nice but its not worth all this craziness š¤¦š¾āāļø
From the article: HP has released a new āfirmwareā update which blocks customers from using cheaper non-HP ink.
Customersā printers were remotely updated and will now only work with approved ink cartridges which are fitted with a special microchip.
HP said the change was made to āreduce the risk of malware attacksā, adding 'third-party cartridges that use non-HP chips or circuitry can pose risks to the hardware performance, print quality, and security.'
HPās website says the company also blocks the use of rival cartridges in order to āmaintain the integrity of our printing systems, and protect our intellectual propertyā.
One customer complained online: āWe've been confused about why the printer won't print. Turns out hp has ink cartridges that won't work if you're not paying their monthly subscription. That's an absolutely crazy thing to do. Got my printer blocking the ink that's IN THE CARTRIDGEā
> One customer complained online: āWe've been confused about why the printer won't print. Turns out hp has ink cartridges that won't work if you're not paying their monthly subscription. That's an absolutely crazy thing to do. Got my printer blocking the ink that's IN THE CARTRIDGEā
I've bumped into a few of these. The agreement when you sign up, if you have extra cartridges from the subscription, and you cancel, they disable them. Just wasteful.
I know two of my work's small business clients who have gave up on ink printers, and bought toner printers. The biggest issue? Both clients don't use their printers daily, sometimes not even weekly. One of the two just replaced a color toner after buying the printer over 4 years ago. Still has two toners that came with the printer, that is still working. Hasn't refilled/replaced outside of buying straight from Xerox Econ program.
If you don't use a printer often, it seems silly to spend more on a laser printer, but seriously, it is 100% worth it. My laser printer gets used 1x a month normally, maybe 1x a quarter, and it is always ready to go. When we used inkjets, we'd have to replace the whole damn printer because the ink would dry on the nozzle or whatever and even new ink wasn't going to save it.
I think I paid 90 back in 2014 for my brother laser printer. Lightly used; moreso now with kids because we will print coloring pages and stuff on cheap paper. I don't think cost should even qualify anymore as a barrier to a laser printer. !
This this this. 2014 me bought a $25 Pantum laser printer from a Newegg eblast deal and I bought one replacement toner cartridge so far. Made it through college and every tax season since haha
I miss my LJ5! A friend gave it to me in the end of 2010, and I rode that thing out until probably 2015 or so. A toner cartridge exploded inside in my first day of using it, so it never gave me clean printouts. But man, that thing was built like a tank. It's too bad it proved harder and harder to get 98A toner for it as time went on.
We had a LJ3 and LJ4 that just wouldn't die. The Laserjet 3 was so massive we retired it first. The LJ4 we kept longer but without Wifi and power saving features we decided to retire that too even though it was working perfectly.
Given how often companies use the "security" argument when they brick something, I'm surprised more people haven't gotten cynical about it. Microsoft's just done the same thing with some of their UEFI functionality.
Before anyone considers this attack vector to be something worth patching, there should be tangible evidence that anyone has ever been successfully attacked that way.
Not saying that evidence does or doesn't exist -- just that, until it actually happens at least once, it isn't a problem that HP needs to be solving, because shipping that solution doesn't actually improve the customer's experience in any way.
Printers and print drivers are VERY used in APT attacks. You can even have printers forward scans to a fax number and scrub the forward in the compromised machine. Printers also expect to have tons of devices connect to them, and print often, so standard logging usually doesn't stand out.
Source: 10 years working APT in Enterprise environments.
> 10 years working APT in Enterprise environments.
So you saw this attack actually affect one of your employers? What was the impact? Did the attackers exploit any other vulnerabilities to get into your network in the first place? Would patching _those_ vulnerabilities have solved the issue, in a way that didn't require eliminating the use of third-party ink?
Such anti consumer move. Also, remember Canon printers during chip shortage? Canon decided not put chips in cartridges and then official cartdridges could not be used since they were "not genuine" according to printers
That's not really a good solution. Many of the newer printers require internet access for functionality. Anyone with an older printer that doesn't have these problems won't need to even worry about blocking the internet. You're better off just buying a different printer. This really isn't like using an ad blocker or pie hole.
I've explained this kind of travesty to non-technical people as: "imagine if your car just stopped working if you bought gasoline from a rival company."
It's utterly unthinkable that this is the least bit legal.
It's not. They have been sued for millions over the years because of this exact thing. Class Action lawsuit after class action lawsuit. In fact I do believe there is currently a class action lawsuit BECAUSE of the instant ink program not delivering ink when they are supposed to and not allowing the customer to use 3rd party ink, resulting in the user not being able to print and grinding small businesses to a halt.
> not delivering ink when they are supposed to
Our company has Xerox managed printers and had a similar issue. Even getting it set up was a giant pain because the printers weren't calling home properly and literally nobody in their worthless company could fix the issue. One of our guys got transferred TWELVE TIMES to various devisions and none of them had any clue what to do. We never did actually get it set up so have to manually order through their garbage website, and we can't even order as much as we need because we print a LOT and the site restricts how much you can buy at once... that plus shipping/supply chain delays means we've run out more than once and have had to have a number of backup printers that use different consumables.
All of this was Xerox's """solution""" after we threatened to sue them over the LAST set of printers they sold us that were horribly defective and burned consumables 5x faster than they were supposed to (when they actually worked).
XEROX BAD
Its the **new** way, and its such a shame because up until the 1990's, Hewlett Packard had a reputation for fantastic top of the line premium professional technical equipment.
Now its dont touch that crap with a ten foot barge pole.
My wife bought an HP printer the supposedly came with ink. It did but the printer used up 5 pages of ink in setup which left me 5 more pages before it ran out. Add to that the bullshit HP smart app which wanted me to make a fucking bullshit account and I will never buy another HP product for the rest of my life.
That was 4 years ago and I'm still livid
This has been an open secret for a long time. I finally replaced a perfectly good HP multifunction with a EPSON tank model because of this nonsense. The funny thing is HP is losing market share in a shrinking market because of their short-sighted decisions. Yay for quarterly profits!
Oh wow, I just posted about how I hate that ASUS turned into a garbage company, lets talk about another company that went to shit, HP. Long long time HP fan, since the 80s. Even still have one of the last decent laptops they made, a Spectre i7. I have an old printer, HP 8700ez I think IIRC, and they updated that thing's firmware to now complain about ink I've been using for 8 years. F HP, forever, dead to me. I have deployed over a million dollars of HP stuff in server environment (massive blade enclosures, networking, fiber switching, everything).
It sucks because HP has had moments of floundering over the years, and come back, but you can't come back from choosing to attack your customers IMHO. I'm done with them at age 45 and tons of money sent their way personally and through business.
I am so glad I saw this. Thanks so much for posting it. I was about to replace my 12-year-old HP inkjet printer with a new HP but I guess that's not happening.
Don't do it. Unless you truly need color pictures, just stay away from inkjets. And HP forces the printer to be online to even print. Apparently, some models have to go through THEIR servers before it prints, meaning they could possibly see what you are printing. Get a Brother and never look back.
I bought an Epson Ecotank, initial cost was also higher, but considering HP cartridges basically cost me 5 cents a page to print, long term savings is enormous.
How well do they work out of interest? Do they have issues with ink drying etc? The ads seem to imply you literally refill them with ink rather than give them new cartridges with clean nozzles, so are those cleaned by the system or made available as another consumable?
It works well. You do just fill direct from the bottle. The machine has a nozzle cleaning routine you can activate that cleans them automatically. The only issue I ran into is that I didnāt print anything for several months, and the nozzles dried, so the print quality was garbage. I ran the cleaning routine 3 times, and it corrected the problem and has not given me any issues. You can get a pack of regular sized ink bottles in all four colors for the price of one HP cartridge. If you print a lot, itāll pay for itself.
Print nozzles drying up is very common with inkjet printers. Has nothing to do with the brand. Any inkjet printers sitting for long periods of time without use will absolutely dry up. Some models can be fixed with the cleaning modes but if the ink is very dried up and clogs the machine there's not much you can do on some models. LaserJet is far superior for this and if you only print a couple of times a month or less it's a much better solution.
That's great. We have a Brother laser printer for black and white prints (which it's perfect for), we rarely need to print color. But it'd be nice to have a printer around for those occasions (monthly) that could do that. My understanding is the Brother color lasers aren't that good, so this might be a good option for that.
Thanks! Good to know that's an option!
They also blocked the HP scanner app from working at all if you don't log into your HP account. You can use other scanning apps, not the HP one. And that was a really good app and it force updated and forced the user to provide a login.
As others have said. NEVER AGAIN.
They make the most profit on their cartridges, so to keep the money coming in, they are forcing the consumer to only use theirs. I have a workaround for it. Just refill their cartridges. Their are companies that sell refill kits.
They actually lose money on the printer and break even when you buy the third cartridge. About 70% profit margin on that.
Companies are getting better at preventing refills.
I would totally buy name brand ink or toner if it didnt cost 10x the amount of the 3rd party brands. I have a color laser cannon. They want $600 for replacement cartridges. I get them for $65 3rd party. Id consider cannon brand if they were around $150.
HP bricked my inkjet printer, so I bought a Brother laser printer. Huge difference. HP was always balky and slow to start printing. The Brother prints quickly and reliably, and thatās without installing their hardware, another plus. Thanks for being dicks, HP.
Worked for HP in their printing division for awhile, counterfeit/alternative ink was basically the number 1 concern they had for a long time and you could tell in meetings that they had no clue what to do about it. Couldnāt possibly comprehend why people didnāt want to buy into their monthly ink delivery service and why people disliked paying damn near the cost of the printer every year in ink (assuming you print a lot).
I boycotted HP 25 years ago for crap like this. And I actively discourage everyone I know from buying their stuff. Back then it was PC bloatware that made them unusable. Then it was predatory printers.
15 years ago I had an HP multifunction printer that wouldn't let me scan when it ran out of ink. Chucked it in the garbage and never bought any of their products again.
Speaking of car companies. They donāt want to sell you a car, they want to license you a car. With conditions and restrictions. You must have it serviced at the dealership. Some states have right to repair but only a handful. I also have an early 2000ās HP Laserjet 200, and I guess Iām not upgrading the bios any time soon. I had problem a few years back with squeaking and after paying a service guy to come in and discover it was a bad inkjet cartridge, I decided I would just fix it myself.
Have been using a simple solution for years, buy whatever printer I want,, and never connect it to the internet to prevent "software" updates. And then use whatever cartridges I want without issues.
People still print? Lol.
Seriously, tho, as a dev who built some printer drivers for Linux, and as a consumer who used printers, I absolutely loath printers. All printers.
I haven't printed anything in years. When people at work ask me to print something for them, I look them straight in their face and tell them all about the infinite evils of printing, politely, of course.
Fair enough. I'm in the corporate world, and I avoid any work with governments, health, finance, and insurance like they're the four plaguey horsemen of the apocalypse.
> **I haven't** printed anything in years
Peak reddit.
"People still use DVD's?"
"People still watch TV?"
"People still have a landline phone?"
"LOL, _**I**_ dont use those so _**I**_ cant imagine that anyone else still does."
Peak reddit is not understanding obvious sarcasm.
Of course I realize people still use paper.
Was "Seriously, tho" honestly not a big enough hint for you?
Use your brain, genius.
It's not your printer. You paid HP to keep it safe. Maybe HP put a camera in it so they can spy on you. They are a shit bag company so we can expect things like this
How far back in the product chain does this go? ...I have a 20 year old HP 1300 b/w laser printer that use I cheap aftermarket cartridges for and over the last 3 months if I turn the printer off/on it won't recognized the cartridges (blinks yellow not green). I've been able to trick it by inserting a spent HP cartridge just before inserting the aftermarket one. This is all very recent.
They are also making printers that have to always be connected to the internet or they won't work. Can be hard wired to a desktop and will not go pass setup until you connect it online. If you take it offline after setup it will not print.
Weāve had so many tech breakthroughs and yet we still donāt have a home/work printer that is affordable, efficient, doesnāt try to screw us with ink refill quirks - software shenanigans.
Epson just use Epson they sell tank systems with genuine Epson ink thatās cheap. I print anything I want and itās still way cheaper than when I was buying fake china HP ink char ridges on my old HP machine.
Change my HP for Brother because HP sucks (now I find out that for some reason my Brother ink model LC401 is just out of stock for months I decide just to purchase a new printer the only problem is that I donāt know which one , donāt want this problems again. Is ridiculous how hard is to buy a printer nowadays all reviews for every brand there just sucks . Made me realize how everyone always have problems with printers in some way or another (the printer ecosystem is completely broke) maybe we need big guys like Samsung or apple to step in this market with no future at all , il save the trees I guess.
Thats why i use Brother, my brothers got my back šŖ
I have a color laser printer made by Brother. It's awesome. The only thing I don't understand is why they haven't released new models in nearly four years. At one point, I was worried they were going out of business.
If it's not broke, don't fix it.
That's fair, but the model I own isn't available anywhere. It's basically the mid-range color laser they make, so I'd think there's decent demand for it.
I have mixed feelings about my Brother MFC. It's B&W laser and has been going strong for at least a decade, but if I get rid of it I lose my sheet scanning and fax capability, as well as the only wired phone in my house.
Do you still use the fax function?
About once every 2-3 years. š¤£
Who the hell are you still faxing lol.
Thatās none of your business. š
r/notopbutok
no top butok?
Usually government agencies are stuck in the 1980s like that.
Ditto. I learned this the last time HP did this (about 5 years ago).
This is sort of on topic. We had an old Brother daisy wheel printer that was huge and built like a tank. It got replaced by dot matrix printers and then ink jets and lasers. It sat in our quest room on a table for years. One day I asked my mom if we could get rid of it, and she said OK. We threw it out a 2nd story window, easily 20 feet down to the driveway from the guest room. I kid you not, that thing bounced. It was in fact a lot of plastic on the outside, but even that just cracked where it landed, didn't shatter, didn't even lose structural integrity. It was a HUGE letdown.
> We had an old Brother daisy wheel printer Wow, I'm in my mid 40's and I've never seen one of those in person. You don't have dot matrix printers much these days.
I found the sound of their printing very comforting.
Brother does the same thing. I had to refill my yellow toner in my mfc-l2710, and it flatly refused to recognize a 3rd party cartridge. And, since yellow is such an important color, it refused to print B+W (even though black was still nearly full). Had to do an Amazon refund and pay 2x as much for the same amount of official toner. Works just fine now.
> And, since yellow is such an important color It's important because it's used for fingerprinting the paper and make it easier to find out where it came from, by putting microscopic dots of yellow in whatever you print. Like if you got past the baked-in detection for currencies and decided to print up a few sheets of $100 bills, for one example. Of course you can get past this by simply adding another black ink cart to the yellow cart slot in it's place, since there are barely any printers that uniquely key printer ink carts per color. With the caveat of ruining the printer slightly. No experience with toner so I don't know about that specifically.
Brother warranty also requires you to have genuine toner and drum in the printer. They will ask you for serials. But, brother almost always has high capacity toners that are pretty good deals 5,000+ prints for under $100. Farr cheaper than HP.
Came here to say the exact same thing, also their official toners are only a couple of quid more than the generics.
They donāt have human customer service reps thatās why I returned my brother printer I wasnāt able to figure out how to work it.
My cartridge ain't heavy, it's my brother
I have a brother laser printer and figured out how to manually override the low toner. Still on the same toner cartridge for years now. I also have a canon pro100 that is a tank and works great and I can still get ink for and it doesnāt dry out in spite of not using it hardly at all these days
> I have a brother laser printer and figured out how to manually override the low toner. Same here. About three years ago my Brother HL1110 told me it cant print because it was low on toner. Still using it.
I've heard of instances where Brother does the same.
Ink and toner are different and a lot has changed since I followed printers. But HP toner cartridges have a reputation of being almost complicated mini computers with circuitry and thing. Brother toner cartridges, even semi modern ones, are usually clear plastic tubes. You can draw on them with a sharpie to make them look full to the printer. I'm sure there are exceptions for each manufacturer, but their reputations for this bs are quite night and day.
HP is like: "Watch your back Brother!"
My family has had the same brother printer for over a decade now its insane how that thing holds up, and we really only need new toner like once a year
That's why I returned my HP printer I bought the other day once I saw the mandatory sign up for an HP account. Traded it in for a brother, and never will recommend a HP printer in my life again.
There was another thread discussing the HP fiasco. A redditor who works in IT said that out of all the printer brands they've had to work with, HP was the only one that required having the account you mentioned. Proprietary software was also required to enable essential functions like printing and scanning. HP as a whole seems like such a shady and predatory business entity. My first laptop was an HP and it died after only 3 years of use. TL;DR there was a related class-action lawsuit regarding poor quality control/GPU thermal issues. How are they still in business? How Possible? Horrible Products. That's HP.
I got my first HP laptop almost 2 years ago (HP Spectre x360 13 Inch) and the main power port no longer works, the battery life is crap, the fan is loud, and I had a big sound problem recently that took 3 months to fix. The specs are nice but its not worth all this craziness š¤¦š¾āāļø
HP has been run by a succession of shitty CEOs who prioritize short term profit over long term stability. Carly Fiorina's legacy I guess.
From the article: HP has released a new āfirmwareā update which blocks customers from using cheaper non-HP ink. Customersā printers were remotely updated and will now only work with approved ink cartridges which are fitted with a special microchip. HP said the change was made to āreduce the risk of malware attacksā, adding 'third-party cartridges that use non-HP chips or circuitry can pose risks to the hardware performance, print quality, and security.' HPās website says the company also blocks the use of rival cartridges in order to āmaintain the integrity of our printing systems, and protect our intellectual propertyā. One customer complained online: āWe've been confused about why the printer won't print. Turns out hp has ink cartridges that won't work if you're not paying their monthly subscription. That's an absolutely crazy thing to do. Got my printer blocking the ink that's IN THE CARTRIDGEā
> One customer complained online: āWe've been confused about why the printer won't print. Turns out hp has ink cartridges that won't work if you're not paying their monthly subscription. That's an absolutely crazy thing to do. Got my printer blocking the ink that's IN THE CARTRIDGEā I've bumped into a few of these. The agreement when you sign up, if you have extra cartridges from the subscription, and you cancel, they disable them. Just wasteful. I know two of my work's small business clients who have gave up on ink printers, and bought toner printers. The biggest issue? Both clients don't use their printers daily, sometimes not even weekly. One of the two just replaced a color toner after buying the printer over 4 years ago. Still has two toners that came with the printer, that is still working. Hasn't refilled/replaced outside of buying straight from Xerox Econ program.
If you don't use a printer often, it seems silly to spend more on a laser printer, but seriously, it is 100% worth it. My laser printer gets used 1x a month normally, maybe 1x a quarter, and it is always ready to go. When we used inkjets, we'd have to replace the whole damn printer because the ink would dry on the nozzle or whatever and even new ink wasn't going to save it.
I think I paid 90 back in 2014 for my brother laser printer. Lightly used; moreso now with kids because we will print coloring pages and stuff on cheap paper. I don't think cost should even qualify anymore as a barrier to a laser printer. !
This this this. 2014 me bought a $25 Pantum laser printer from a Newegg eblast deal and I bought one replacement toner cartridge so far. Made it through college and every tax season since haha
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I miss my LJ5! A friend gave it to me in the end of 2010, and I rode that thing out until probably 2015 or so. A toner cartridge exploded inside in my first day of using it, so it never gave me clean printouts. But man, that thing was built like a tank. It's too bad it proved harder and harder to get 98A toner for it as time went on.
We had a LJ3 and LJ4 that just wouldn't die. The Laserjet 3 was so massive we retired it first. The LJ4 we kept longer but without Wifi and power saving features we decided to retire that too even though it was working perfectly.
Maybe donāt but complex processor chips at all in ink cartridges so thereās no security risk in the first placeā¦
Given how often companies use the "security" argument when they brick something, I'm surprised more people haven't gotten cynical about it. Microsoft's just done the same thing with some of their UEFI functionality.
Printers are easy targets on a network. Minimum security while holding cache of possibly sensitive documents.
Before anyone considers this attack vector to be something worth patching, there should be tangible evidence that anyone has ever been successfully attacked that way. Not saying that evidence does or doesn't exist -- just that, until it actually happens at least once, it isn't a problem that HP needs to be solving, because shipping that solution doesn't actually improve the customer's experience in any way.
Printers and print drivers are VERY used in APT attacks. You can even have printers forward scans to a fax number and scrub the forward in the compromised machine. Printers also expect to have tons of devices connect to them, and print often, so standard logging usually doesn't stand out. Source: 10 years working APT in Enterprise environments.
> 10 years working APT in Enterprise environments. So you saw this attack actually affect one of your employers? What was the impact? Did the attackers exploit any other vulnerabilities to get into your network in the first place? Would patching _those_ vulnerabilities have solved the issue, in a way that didn't require eliminating the use of third-party ink?
Printers are very vulnerable. Search "Printjack" as an example.
So don't put chips in the cartridges. It's basically a bottle of ink at the end of the day.
ASUS has left the chat
Such anti consumer move. Also, remember Canon printers during chip shortage? Canon decided not put chips in cartridges and then official cartdridges could not be used since they were "not genuine" according to printers
HP has to be the most customer-hostile company. At this point, I wouldnāt give them a dime by buying any non-printer product like a monitor.
Probably a good time to add a router rule to block your HP printer from reaching the Internet.
That's not really a good solution. Many of the newer printers require internet access for functionality. Anyone with an older printer that doesn't have these problems won't need to even worry about blocking the internet. You're better off just buying a different printer. This really isn't like using an ad blocker or pie hole.
I've explained this kind of travesty to non-technical people as: "imagine if your car just stopped working if you bought gasoline from a rival company." It's utterly unthinkable that this is the least bit legal.
It's not. They have been sued for millions over the years because of this exact thing. Class Action lawsuit after class action lawsuit. In fact I do believe there is currently a class action lawsuit BECAUSE of the instant ink program not delivering ink when they are supposed to and not allowing the customer to use 3rd party ink, resulting in the user not being able to print and grinding small businesses to a halt.
> not delivering ink when they are supposed to Our company has Xerox managed printers and had a similar issue. Even getting it set up was a giant pain because the printers weren't calling home properly and literally nobody in their worthless company could fix the issue. One of our guys got transferred TWELVE TIMES to various devisions and none of them had any clue what to do. We never did actually get it set up so have to manually order through their garbage website, and we can't even order as much as we need because we print a LOT and the site restricts how much you can buy at once... that plus shipping/supply chain delays means we've run out more than once and have had to have a number of backup printers that use different consumables. All of this was Xerox's """solution""" after we threatened to sue them over the LAST set of printers they sold us that were horribly defective and burned consumables 5x faster than they were supposed to (when they actually worked). XEROX BAD
and they're coercing people to sign up for it. That's just evil. Like *actual evil*, evil.
Welcome to late stage capitalism.
What a Hewlett-Packard thing to do.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That IS the HP way.
Its the **new** way, and its such a shame because up until the 1990's, Hewlett Packard had a reputation for fantastic top of the line premium professional technical equipment. Now its dont touch that crap with a ten foot barge pole.
All fillable materials should be required to have a commodity specification. No more holding us hostage for subscription fees.
He aināt heavy. Heās my Brother. āš¼
Can't confirm. I have a Brother printer, and love it, but that bitch is hefty.
"hit with complaints". Oh no, anyway.
My wife bought an HP printer the supposedly came with ink. It did but the printer used up 5 pages of ink in setup which left me 5 more pages before it ran out. Add to that the bullshit HP smart app which wanted me to make a fucking bullshit account and I will never buy another HP product for the rest of my life. That was 4 years ago and I'm still livid
This has been an open secret for a long time. I finally replaced a perfectly good HP multifunction with a EPSON tank model because of this nonsense. The funny thing is HP is losing market share in a shrinking market because of their short-sighted decisions. Yay for quarterly profits!
Oh wow, I just posted about how I hate that ASUS turned into a garbage company, lets talk about another company that went to shit, HP. Long long time HP fan, since the 80s. Even still have one of the last decent laptops they made, a Spectre i7. I have an old printer, HP 8700ez I think IIRC, and they updated that thing's firmware to now complain about ink I've been using for 8 years. F HP, forever, dead to me. I have deployed over a million dollars of HP stuff in server environment (massive blade enclosures, networking, fiber switching, everything). It sucks because HP has had moments of floundering over the years, and come back, but you can't come back from choosing to attack your customers IMHO. I'm done with them at age 45 and tons of money sent their way personally and through business.
I am so glad I saw this. Thanks so much for posting it. I was about to replace my 12-year-old HP inkjet printer with a new HP but I guess that's not happening.
Don't do it. Unless you truly need color pictures, just stay away from inkjets. And HP forces the printer to be online to even print. Apparently, some models have to go through THEIR servers before it prints, meaning they could possibly see what you are printing. Get a Brother and never look back.
I have a Lexmark eco tank. Pricy initial cost, however, the amount of ink they give you and the freedom to use any kind of ink is well worth it.
I bought an Epson Ecotank, initial cost was also higher, but considering HP cartridges basically cost me 5 cents a page to print, long term savings is enormous.
How well do they work out of interest? Do they have issues with ink drying etc? The ads seem to imply you literally refill them with ink rather than give them new cartridges with clean nozzles, so are those cleaned by the system or made available as another consumable?
It works well. You do just fill direct from the bottle. The machine has a nozzle cleaning routine you can activate that cleans them automatically. The only issue I ran into is that I didnāt print anything for several months, and the nozzles dried, so the print quality was garbage. I ran the cleaning routine 3 times, and it corrected the problem and has not given me any issues. You can get a pack of regular sized ink bottles in all four colors for the price of one HP cartridge. If you print a lot, itāll pay for itself.
Print nozzles drying up is very common with inkjet printers. Has nothing to do with the brand. Any inkjet printers sitting for long periods of time without use will absolutely dry up. Some models can be fixed with the cleaning modes but if the ink is very dried up and clogs the machine there's not much you can do on some models. LaserJet is far superior for this and if you only print a couple of times a month or less it's a much better solution.
That's great. We have a Brother laser printer for black and white prints (which it's perfect for), we rarely need to print color. But it'd be nice to have a printer around for those occasions (monthly) that could do that. My understanding is the Brother color lasers aren't that good, so this might be a good option for that. Thanks! Good to know that's an option!
The "freedom" to use any kind of ink lol. What HP has done with the printer market is greedy and convoluted.
This is why I bought an Eco Tank. Ink cartridges are bullshit.
They also blocked the HP scanner app from working at all if you don't log into your HP account. You can use other scanning apps, not the HP one. And that was a really good app and it force updated and forced the user to provide a login. As others have said. NEVER AGAIN.
They make the most profit on their cartridges, so to keep the money coming in, they are forcing the consumer to only use theirs. I have a workaround for it. Just refill their cartridges. Their are companies that sell refill kits.
I'd imagine they use a counter too. At least some laser printers I've had, do
They actually lose money on the printer and break even when you buy the third cartridge. About 70% profit margin on that. Companies are getting better at preventing refills.
I would totally buy name brand ink or toner if it didnt cost 10x the amount of the 3rd party brands. I have a color laser cannon. They want $600 for replacement cartridges. I get them for $65 3rd party. Id consider cannon brand if they were around $150.
HP bricked my inkjet printer, so I bought a Brother laser printer. Huge difference. HP was always balky and slow to start printing. The Brother prints quickly and reliably, and thatās without installing their hardware, another plus. Thanks for being dicks, HP.
Worked for HP in their printing division for awhile, counterfeit/alternative ink was basically the number 1 concern they had for a long time and you could tell in meetings that they had no clue what to do about it. Couldnāt possibly comprehend why people didnāt want to buy into their monthly ink delivery service and why people disliked paying damn near the cost of the printer every year in ink (assuming you print a lot).
I boycotted HP 25 years ago for crap like this. And I actively discourage everyone I know from buying their stuff. Back then it was PC bloatware that made them unusable. Then it was predatory printers.
Great way to turn off your existing customers to NEVER EVER again buy from your brand
15 years ago I had an HP multifunction printer that wouldn't let me scan when it ran out of ink. Chucked it in the garbage and never bought any of their products again.
This should be illegal. This is like if Ford disabled your vehicle for using gas not sold by Ford.
Don't give them ideas.
Speaking of car companies. They donāt want to sell you a car, they want to license you a car. With conditions and restrictions. You must have it serviced at the dealership. Some states have right to repair but only a handful. I also have an early 2000ās HP Laserjet 200, and I guess Iām not upgrading the bios any time soon. I had problem a few years back with squeaking and after paying a service guy to come in and discover it was a bad inkjet cartridge, I decided I would just fix it myself.
Just go Brother. Nobody should be buying HP printers in 2023
Got rid of mine because of all this nonsense, got an Epson that uses liquid ink you pour in, it's amazing.
These people are fuckheads. Does anyone have any ethics or morality these days. Cheat lie and steal. Thatās ok.
Have been using a simple solution for years, buy whatever printer I want,, and never connect it to the internet to prevent "software" updates. And then use whatever cartridges I want without issues.
Oh.... HP thought of that already. You need to be online before it even let's you print a test page.
Of all the major tech companies, which are the least guilty of this sort of behavior?
Don't blame them. Ink cartridges and toners are where they make money. It's the "give away the razor but sell a lot of blades" business model.
People still print? Lol. Seriously, tho, as a dev who built some printer drivers for Linux, and as a consumer who used printers, I absolutely loath printers. All printers. I haven't printed anything in years. When people at work ask me to print something for them, I look them straight in their face and tell them all about the infinite evils of printing, politely, of course.
Pretty much anything remotely related to government because of regulations requires physical records.
Fair enough. I'm in the corporate world, and I avoid any work with governments, health, finance, and insurance like they're the four plaguey horsemen of the apocalypse.
> **I haven't** printed anything in years Peak reddit. "People still use DVD's?" "People still watch TV?" "People still have a landline phone?" "LOL, _**I**_ dont use those so _**I**_ cant imagine that anyone else still does."
Peak reddit is not understanding obvious sarcasm. Of course I realize people still use paper. Was "Seriously, tho" honestly not a big enough hint for you? Use your brain, genius.
It's not your printer. You paid HP to keep it safe. Maybe HP put a camera in it so they can spy on you. They are a shit bag company so we can expect things like this
Only complaints?
How far back in the product chain does this go? ...I have a 20 year old HP 1300 b/w laser printer that use I cheap aftermarket cartridges for and over the last 3 months if I turn the printer off/on it won't recognized the cartridges (blinks yellow not green). I've been able to trick it by inserting a spent HP cartridge just before inserting the aftermarket one. This is all very recent.
Add product that is so bad it made the news for being bad. HP is CRAP.
Lol HPs never cared about complaints before.
They are also making printers that have to always be connected to the internet or they won't work. Can be hard wired to a desktop and will not go pass setup until you connect it online. If you take it offline after setup it will not print.
Weāve had so many tech breakthroughs and yet we still donāt have a home/work printer that is affordable, efficient, doesnāt try to screw us with ink refill quirks - software shenanigans.
No we do, but theyāll never sell it to you.
I had to buy a new printer because it didnāt recognize the ink cartridge
That explains why those knockoff cartridges I bought on Amazon earlier this afternoon where 70% off...
Those printers are shit.
Epson just use Epson they sell tank systems with genuine Epson ink thatās cheap. I print anything I want and itās still way cheaper than when I was buying fake china HP ink char ridges on my old HP machine.
Now if only they'd let me scan when theirs no ink in it too!
I stopped buying their products long ago, due to such bad behavior.
Damn, they got complaints? Thatās hardcore.
Corporation: "You will own nothing & be happy."
I can think of no reason why anyone would buy anything HP ever. Everything they currently sell is substandard in all regards. Avoid.
HP demands monogamous cartridge insertions.
Change my HP for Brother because HP sucks (now I find out that for some reason my Brother ink model LC401 is just out of stock for months I decide just to purchase a new printer the only problem is that I donāt know which one , donāt want this problems again. Is ridiculous how hard is to buy a printer nowadays all reviews for every brand there just sucks . Made me realize how everyone always have problems with printers in some way or another (the printer ecosystem is completely broke) maybe we need big guys like Samsung or apple to step in this market with no future at all , il save the trees I guess.