HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers
hothardware.com
hothardware.com
And when you do, resist writing 10 paragraphs about all the times HP has ever wronged you or a long story about how much you needed the printout when it refused to print.
One star, one sentence. "Expires full inks after only x months forcing you to buy new ones when you don't need them."
I know for certain these short, sweet reviews change the buying behavior of my non-techie family.
Make a difference. Write a product review today.
So HN readers and techies in general are in the ironic position of having better judgment about the products but less able to influence the manufacturers.
It's like hoping to see informed advice from doctors posting on a homeopathic website. The doctors are not buying homeopathic potions.
I don't give a shit about your moral stand against HP. Give me an honest review of a product you own or don't say anything.
Imagine test-driving two cars. On the first, a wheel falls off as you round a corner. Obviously you aren't going to buy it, but then by your logic - not having bought it - you aren't allowed to comment on it.
Also, do you really believe that someone is going to be okay with a product they buy refusing to function, just because it's a tech device? Replacing consumables, even if the consumable is high-tech, is something that even non-techies can understand. As proof, I couldn't fabricate my own tires but would be annoyed if my car wouldn't run with 3rd-party tires, despite not being a mechanic. It's rude and sociopathic, to assume others are too stupid to come to the same conclusions.
Then those people can always NOT write an one-star review. As for the others, there's nothing wrong with pushing an agenda, if you think it's an important fault of the product.
But nearly half of Amazon reviews these days are paid advertisements by the seller in my experience.
And while I think you should never write a review for a product you've never used, if you've:
1. Supported or used one at work
2. Had to make purchasing decisions at work, done research, and chosen a competing product
3. Helped a friend or family member with one
Then go right ahead.
In some cases it feels like 90%.
The real problem is people who review products on unrelated issues, like the political positions of the CEO.
It's easy to quibble with this in cases like the Samsung batteries. But exploding batteries aren't the common case: much dumber things are.
Heck, if I and others didn't do this and the printer was still at 4stars because the uninformed majority don't understand the technical aspect of this planned obsolescence, other uninformed readers may not feel the need to read the reviews at all (the average is 4! It probably has no issues! HP is a household name, I'll be using this for years!)
As I said, my review (that the printer has hard-coded planned obsolescence in place) is a fair review allowing you to make a more informed, reliable decision.
It's not worth a long debate, but you're not telling me your whole argument so I don't know how to respond.
"It never happened to me, or any HP printer I've ever dealt with, but I read online that..."
I'd put a 5 star review on my Samsung Note. Why? Because my phone didn't explode. Hell... my phone has been through the RINGER and it still works. Can I give it a 6 star?
But because of a small SMALL subset of users that have issues with Samsung Phones, all of a sudden there are a thousand 1 star reviews who say "they explode and kill puppies (because that's what the TV/Internet told me)"?
What percentage of iPhones were affected by Bendgate? How many reviews were from Android users who never would have bought an iPhone anyway?
There's a line and, personally, I think that it's crossed when you review something negatively for an issue you've not personally experienced.
Is HP shitty for doing this? Does Samsung need negative press for it? Should Apple have to face their issues? Of course.
But unless YOU PERSONALLY have been affected, you are just part of a mob out on a witch hunt.
You don't appear to have thought this all the way through...
Of your examples, only HP intended to make a crappy product. Apple and Samsung tried to make a better one (thinner, more battery life, etc) and just made some mistakes. Mistakes deserve pointing out, intentional dishonesty does deserve a witch-hunt. Every day you don't point this out to non-technical people is a day the scammers get rich from their scams.
This is very different than, hypothetically, going over all HP products in Amazon and giving 1 star because, say, HP sued someone you don't think they should have, or filed taxes in a way you think is fraudulent or clubbed baby seals. It is also different from rating HP laptops badly because of this issue with their printer, for example. It is actually a review about a major flaw in the product that I would be purchasing, and thus relevant to me as a buyer regardless of moral stands of any kind.
However, there's an exception to everything. Just this week, my printer crapped out a week after inserting 3rd party ink cartridges. I just thought that printers have a planned obsolesce period of around 2 years. It's one thing to make a device so cheap that it's only capable of lasting 2 years. Intentionally sabotaging your own products just to extract a little more coin is beyond a slap in the face, it's consumer rape. Sony did something similar with their about face on installing Linux. Although I don't agree with what they did, they could at least explain it away as trying to prevent piracy.
I am never, ever, ever buying another product by HP again, never signing up for any of their cloud services and I will tell clients, friends, colleagues, and anyone else in shouting distance to do the same. Luckily, the TinyScanner app (my fave document scanning app, sorry Office Lens) and my phone are more than enough to replace my scanner/fax/copier/printer and I hope I never have to buy one again. For some reason though, faxes are still being used in high numbers in Japan.
Either the product is totally mediocre (and people hold no strong opinions about it), or the reviewer is a crazy, raving lunatic attempting to hide that fact behind a moderate score.
Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-ENVY-Printer-Instant-Ready/dp/B0... Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/HP-F0V69A-B1H-Wireless-Printing/dp/B0...
The top review they show is also a paid ("free product") review praising it with a lot of text, nicely pushing all the 1-star ones out of view.
It was a HP printer, too.
In the OfficeJet in question I only used genuine cartridges, but every few year it would stop receiving black and white faxes because (the nearly full) color cartidge was passing its expiry date - forcing me to throw away the full color cartridge and buying a new one.
Customers are cheap and lazy. If their printer breaks, they go buy a new $40 one instead of doing research and finding a quality one for a few hundred. "What does this $300 laser do that this $40 inkjet doesn't!?" You mean besides last longer, actually work when you need it to, and not have nozzles that clog up?
People continuing to purchase cheap PoS printers and just accept that "printers break after a year; get a new one" is what allows this nonsense to keep happening.
No more HP for me. Never again.
http://www.dailytech.com/HPs+Web+Connected+Printers+May+Prin...
Fixed the problem temporarily by getting cheap chinese cartridge off ebay, but Epson is now very much on my boycott list.
It printed all the text in orange and the 2 arrows were a perfect red.
However, you don't want to use 100% registration for text as it can easily eat up your ink/toner. A good compromise if you need deeper blacks is 100% K with a bit of CMY (don't know the percentage).
I'm not discarding the idea that printer companies do it so the customer has to buy more ink; that may be somewhat true. However, even high end printers that are designed to last still do this to an extent, so it's not entirely a money grab.
seriously, will never buy a HP printer again.
Do we really know that it hasn't been extended to ink jets as well?
I think the grandparent has a legitimate observation. It would explain why you need to have working color cartridges to be able to print in black and white. (It's obvious that paper money is not going to be counterfeited in black and white, but maybe they decided to hide serial numbers on all printouts, not just color printouts.)
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160214/16294133605/after...
You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That's the price of long life print heads.
Generally, I have less problems with printers like the XP-320 than HP printers because they are just download the PPD -> good to go. No fucking with HPLIP or an entire software stack around it.
When I got mine done (a canon) they requested my old empty cartridges, as they just grab the chip out of them and trick it into thinking its always full.
We got nailed by this with our HP 8610. Were using 3rd party cartridges with much success for months. Last week my wife had a huge (for us) print job and encountered an annoying bug (prints blank sheets every other print). Updated the firmware hoping it would fix the problem. Next thing we know, cartridge error.
Spent 3-4 hours researching how to downgrade firmware with no luck.
No mentioned of new Sept 13 firmware on any HP driver website that I found.
3rd party is shipping us new cartridges for free, but it will be 2 weeks. Had to buy another printer.
Die in a fire HP.
From what I understand, most inkjets are pretty dumb devices in that they just accept raster graphics and spray the pixels onto the page. A lot of them can't even do ASCII/text-mode anymore.
Maybe they're now deliberately leaving bugs in so they can ostensibly "fix" them while also doing anti-user things like cartridge blacklisting...
I replaced my HP laser with a Brother laser a while back (just printing "stuff", not photos)
I replaced my black cart on the HP (2600n) with a 3rd party product, and got away with it. However, when I replaced the color carts (one ran out), which I was forced to, since it wouldn't print B&W at all otherwise, the printer detected the alien carts, and immediately refused to clean itself or something - I started getting black streaks on my black text, even though the black cart worked just fine for months the day before.
Bye bye, HP, you ain't what you used to be.
Forcing you to stop printing is naughty of Brother, but at least there's a setting so you can keep printing—if you're clever enough to find it.
There have been attempts at open sourcing inkjet printers:
Alternatively, reverse-engineer existing printers to be able to use them with your own firmware that doesn't care what cartridges are in it.
#1) Build your own printer.
#2) Write your own firmware.
These don't seem like good options at all unless you've got lots of time to burn on something like this.
There are other manufacturers that do the same kind of model.
Just avoid HP and (in my experience) Canon. Laser is the way to go.
A thousand pages in the UK could cost (by my estimates) about £5 to print. A cheap pack of 500 sheets is £2 and a large bottle of ink is £1.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37337989
Looks like Samsung won't be making "very nice and cheap black & white laser printers" for much longer.
[1] http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/laser-printers/phaser-3...
Perhaps people are just not so interested in printers, or the thought of getting ink and paper everywhere puts them off?
Anyone know of who you could approach that would sell this design to you?
Then you could probably get on Kickstarer and say "If we raise X dollars we will purchase the rights of this Y printer and open source all of the components"
At this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon's cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.
But a printer really is a non-trivial set of electronics and working parts, so it is more surprising that they're so cheap.
Similarly, the print heads are the precision part in a printer. Drive components in the printer itself -- motor, the belts, rollers, etc, are all pretty cheap and easy at this point; the same print engine will be used over several series of printers. The print heads on the other hand, have piezoelectric parts and/or heat elements that have to be very quick and accurate to do a good job. Both cases, while there is definitely some engineering in them, it doesn't rise to the cost levels we see them being sold at.
My dad has probably spent $100 in shaving supplies over the last 30 years. I got suckered into Gillette and could probably buy a Honda Accord for the money I've dumped into this crap.
[1] http://lh3.ggpht.com/_bJKz4lWVpfo/S9p02XqXZqI/AAAAAAAADEI/Q_...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Factory-offered-edible-ink-P...
I am assuming it is Epson parts, based on the 1440 dpi dimension
Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there's toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won't recognize it. And it's useless torefill it if you don't change some chip in each toner.
And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.
So OKI was in my banned list, now HP joins it.
Since I'm running my C301dn on 3rd party toners for awhile now.
And, what makes me sick, the quality was as good as brand new, so the "we limit the amount of printings because we care about the quality loss" yada-yada is pure #@$#*!$@
But I think some models also have timer. After 6 months or year, the printer starts to complain that the ink has "dried up". To prohibit you from saving up that unicorn blood by printing less.
By banned list is HP, Canon and I'm very cautious about Samsung.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/hp-inc-buy...
Sip is not in any way definite measurement. Sheet of paper is somewhat decent.
Better one would be this: buy a car. It will automatically stop ignition after 100 000km. Do you really have problem with that, if you know it beforehand?
Someday, your printer will kill more "printing credits" on those days that you are on a hurry.
Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/12/hp-is-buying-samsungs-prin...
Honestly, I'm so done with printers. If I really need something, I can run to the 24hr kinkos or the office center in my complex. Owning a printer in 2016 seems kind of silly.
Love my ESP8266; did you year about the ESP32 yet? I am trying to port Wasp Lisp/Wasp VM to it for networking (not pentesting) not for IOT, but creating a mesh network of sorts here in the village I have been staying in East Java - no Kinkos or Starbucks here!
I seem to recall some open hardware cell phone projects. No reason a similar effort couldn't be directed towards making an open printer, is there?
Also, it might not even require making a full open hardware printer, but just some key circuitry and maybe some drivers, right?
Opposing IP lawyers working for one of the largest media companies in the world have openly told an associate that while the thing they C&D'd her on may have had a good chance to be ruled non-infringing, she should comply with the C&D anyway since she would be financially ruined by a lawsuit, win or lose (realistically, she wouldn't be able to win because she'd run out of money WAY before the case even approached a conclusion -- one of big companies' favorite strategies is to "starve out" their legal opponents by making the case as expensive and convoluted as possible).
For example, the OKIPAGE 4w costed $300 at the time and was a compact, fast 600 dpi BW printer. http://my.okidata.com/MarkInfo.nsf/DocID/C9A90C0CF5943EBB852...
I think that laser technology of the 90s was simple enough that it could be reimplemented these days without too many problems. And I will be happy to pay €300 for a provably open laser printer that does do tricks like simulating empty toners or printing tracing dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
But there are not Open source inkject printers because it takes millions to manufacture the inkjet itself.
Overall I've started to buy B&W only laser printers and I buy a new printer when the toner runs out.
You can find Samsung entry level laser printers with a toner good for 300-500 pages on Amazon for about 30£ on sale that's cheaper than buying a toner.
1st world problems for sure but this is beyond stupid.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10677/hp-acquire-samsung-print...
Pay a couple hundred more upfront for a no-bullshit device. I hope those still exist.
How can you guarantee that paying a couple hundred more upfront would save us all from this pre meditated corporate gluttony?
Stop buying printers from companies that build in mechanisms to purposely brick them. Buying a high-end HP is just as risky in my opinion, based on this story.
Cannon is another company to avoid. They just settled a similar potential class action: http://www.therecycler.com/posts/canon-faces-class-actions-o...
On the other hand I have reasonably good experiences with OKI and Brother LED printers. These printers tend to be reasonably cheap (I've got OKI multifunction on sale for ~150 EUR), are full Postcript/PCL printers and supplies are reasonably cheap too, both original and third-party.
Unless you are running a business a couple hundred dollars is way too much to pay for printing once in a while. A consumer printer should not cost hundreds of dollars.
non-oem ink refills are far cheaper than oem ones. a large component of the cost of non-oem ink refills is getting a replacement chip that counts how many times you can print before it claims it needs refilling. you can buy more of these chips along with bulk ink refills. it's like DRM for ink or something.
I did have to swap out the black after two years maybe 2 1/2 but I ran it for six months with errors and warnings and pleading.
If you need something quick, most CVS and RiteAid stores let you Sunil photos online and pickup in 1-3 hours.
I hope HP faces some major lawsuits over this.
Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
Nope. My 55€ Canon inkjet is larger then laser printer from Samsung for 70€.
> Cheap inkjets are cheaper than cheap lasers.
Nope. Cheap lasers are in the same ballpark as cheap inkjets (50€$). The major difference is in toner/cartridge consumption and exchange interval. A laser toner can last significantly longer then inkjet cartridge and isn't prone to damages of no regular usage.
> Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
Absolutely correct and this also brings an answer why people choose those inkjets : "ah, I rarely print anything, so I'll have a device to print everything".
But it differs if you calculate the cost of inkjet cartridge drying out/printing problems with non regular usage. Technology on laser toners doesn't have such limitations.
We used to own the stuff we paid for! Now it's like you pay to be the product. I think this problem is worse in software.
Checkout fsf.org
Epson gets used a lot as a base in the third party space - for things like T-shirt printers and other textile based printing. The print heads are reliable and accurate.
"Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable"
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers
Had this one printed out (oh that irony) and taped it to our office wall when we had to deal with crappy printers on a daily basis working for a big DAX company.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/202/summer.reconstructed.pd...
What do you think is the best way to enforce the rules on HP and make this action illegal? Contact the Member State authorities? Feel this should be enforced by the EU instead of national... gah, directives.
I've had some issues with the printer recognizing the cartridges, but after fiddling around enough it eventually does. It's definitely worth the effort.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/XUANCAI-Continuous-cartridge-Printer-...
I have an ink jet for photos (admittedly rarely needed these days) and a black&white laser for everything else.
Also, part of the problem is that lot of people don't realize how expensive it is to run an ink jet and how massively cheaper a laser is in the long run. The average person needing a printing goes to the store and sees a laser for around $200 and an ink jet for $49, and buys the ink jet, thinking it's a better deal.
One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace with new cartridges
I was using non-hp ink cartridges.
I've been HP customer for 20 years, and I'm done with HP for their dishonesty.
The box for the cartridge actually says that it will:
1) Only dispense a certain amount of toner before the printer will stop printing and that there will still be some toner left in the cartridge when this happens.
2) Update the firmware on the printer so that it won't accept 3rd-party cartridges.
3) Stuff about me agreeing to return the used cartridge to Lexmark for recycling since I bought a "return program" cartridge. Lexmark sold the cartridge for a reduced price, returning it for recycling is my end of the bargain.
They didn't use these exact words, but it was very clearly written and seemed like it would be pretty understandable to a regular person.
On one hand, I have to give Lexmark props for full disclosure that doesn't hide behind a click-through license or any weasel-words/legalese. On the other hand, changing the printer after purchase to lock the owner into Lexmark cartridges seems kind of low.
I'm really not sure how I feel about this though. I don't mind buying the manufacturer's cartridges or packing up the old one to be returned. But at the same time I'm worried that, in another 12 years, Lexmark might no longer be making cartridges for this printer and I'll have to throw the printer away.
Edit: I am specifically thinking about HPSM, and HPNA here.
There's something funny with some Linux kernel versions, which shows up as kacpid hogging up a lot of CPU time, but you can disable it by echoing disable to the /proc filesystem. You may find such issues with very many laptops. But the physical and ergonomic things are very OK, considering the price, with these laptops.
Still use my HP 12C too!
They turned out to be much more reliable and easier to use than the modern USB pod things also provided which plugged into a Windows box to display the analysis traces.
As for their consumer-grade laptops over that same period - having had to repair so many, replace year-old batteries and AC adapters I wouldn't go near them with a barge pole.
For the record, a company with which I consulted was very happy with the HP 1000/2100 series computers, and especially the exquisite keyboards that now-terminated HP employees once made, with tender loving care, for those computers. I suspect that one of these computers is stored safely in an underground cave somewhere awaiting it's rediscovery, alongside a somewhat-notorious VW beetle:
I really don't have any clue what I'm talking about, just wondering if there's any alternative cause whatsoever.
Even if this instance is due to HP making a mistake, such as forgetting a certificate renewal, the intent is there right from the beginning, by using the DRM in the first place.
I never liked HP but now, no way I will consider to buy HP products at all.
- BRScript3 (their clone of PostScript)
- ethernet port
- a "D" on the end means it can print on both sides, duplexing. It's slower but oh so much more convenient.
Printers with all these features start around $100.
Disclaimer: I probably print about five pages a month, so it hardly sees extensive use. I also don't print photo quality stuff, mostly role playing maps and characters for gaming sessions. But under those constraints, it's been great.
@mods That is the original source
HP also made a statement about this: http://www.myce.com/news/hp-officially-responds-pre-programm...
As a side note, HP sells a (vintage) 256 MB DDR2 RAM module for $600 (USD) for it's new printers.
All your legislative bases are belong to us, or some such rot.
Wht should Tesla be able to prevent me from replacing a bad Tesla part with a better/safer third-party part?
As for safety, it depends on the specific parts. An automated car is a complete integrated system. Once people start swapping parts, the test-matrix to ensure safety explodes. People modifying the driving software in their own cars, for example, is definitely a no-go. (And modifying any software at all should be prohibited unless the driving and entertainment computers are completely air-gapped.)
The big three made the same dumb arguments a hundred years ago... third party parts have never been a problem. People fought hard for the right to get replacement parts, and it's a shame we need to re-fight this battle because of the lemmings among us.
Last time I needed this was yesterday, the local football association (yes soccer) requires the player list to be signed and given to referee before match. I make the list and usually print three copies: one for the referee, one for the opponent team and one for our own coach to check against players.
I don't own a printer though, I just use the own at work. I'm there five days a week anyway. I also do all my mailing from work, which is more convenient than trying to do it from home on the weekend.
I'll also print interesting graphs or graphics, to share/discuss with them. It's much harder to discuss in front of a screen.
I wonder how long it'll be until someone hacks it and releases a firmware that has the checks patched out. I vaguely remember this being done for a few other chipped-cartridge printers many years ago, although that was more intended for CIS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system ) where it makes no sense for the printer to keep thinking it's using small cartridges.
Create 1 or 2 good, serviceable network printer and experiment with different business models like subscriptions or pay-as-you-print, where the printer manufacturer _owns_ the printer an office or home just rents it.
In such a model, the companies incentives would align with the users values:
- Cheaper printing per page
- Less overhead on distribution
- No artificial costs and limitations
- Generally better printer:
- More serviceable
- Better software
- Long term support
Most people I know doesn't own a printer and just use the office printer anyway, so why not make the office printer just-work?
Edit: formatting
I had not bought any HP products for 10+ years.
I buy a new ink cartridge and put it in my old printer and it doesn't work. Why should I assume the problem is the new ink cartridge and not the old printer?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B0076O2A4C/RUHTFX2XOZQFY
True, it was cheap, but the way in which it malfunctioned was so much over the top that I'll never buy HP printers again.
HP could learn from Apple...
I want to believe...
I think this is evil and smart, - people would by printers - some unofficial ink cartridge market will add good reviews etc (low printing cost) - increased cartridge sales for HP after set date
Sounds more like, unofficial iPhone cables not charging, but smarter (possibly illegal though)
edit: some google search reveals[1] more like firmware update at September 13 (auto update), then pre-set date. Pretty much like Apple and third party cable update.
edit2: More I read, I start to see 3rd party cartidge vendors didn't implement the chipset on cartridge fully compatible, instead they went easy way around.
Third party ink vendor says: "We do not yet have an updated chipset that will work with this new firmware version. . Customers can expect cartridge replacements with updated chipsets to be available in two to three weeks, possibly longer."
[1] http://www.therecycler.com/posts/hp-inc-firmware-update-lock...