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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

I was recently in the market for a label printer. Dymo is the leader on this kind of products and as I was about to buy one I read this review

https://www.amazon.com/review/R2VG8JOAJDWJ0E/ref=cm_cr_dp_ti...

as well as many like it, that explain how the printer will only accept original, overpriced Dymo labels.

I bought a Brother QL-700 instead, with ordinary labels that cost 1/5 of the price of the Dymo ones, and couldn't be happier.

Let's hope those practices hurt the businesses instead of helping their bottom line, that's the only way we will get rid of them.

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Interesting, good to know.

We've bought a handheld Dymo LabelManager 280 for our Hackerspace. We've tried third-party labels, but we'll be back to official ones. Not because the third-party ones aren't supported - they very much are! It's because they turned out to be shitty; the quality of print is quite bad. Not a showstopper, but you don't spend money on a label printer to have shitty-looking labels everywhere.

To my paranoid side that raises an interesting question. They have the ability to know when approved labels are used in the device. They could just reject them, creating all kinds of bad publicity. Or they could degrade output quality on "unapproved" mediums then say earnestly, "This lack of quality is why we recommend using only Genuine Dynamo Labels®. Buy some today!"

You know, I'd be fine with the printer detecting the use of 3rd party ink cartridges and signalling this fact to the computer, so that a warning C n be displayed, as long as the printer and driver don't use that information to deliberately degrade the output.

And I'm not necessarily against using that information to void the warranty too.

> And I'm not necessarily against using that information to void the warranty too.

In the US a manufacturer can't use a simple indicator like "you broke the seal" or "that's not an Original Manufacturer cartridge" to void a warranty. A warranty may only be voided if the specific act involved was the actual proximal cause of the failure of the product.

Anyone who tries to use "that voids the warranty" is usually just trying to invoke FUD with no legal standing.

I've never heard this, could you provide some sort of evidence of this? I was always under the impression that warranties were purely manufacturer defined and could be voided for any reason the manufacturer stated up front.

The Magnussen-Moss Warranty Act [1] lays out many requirements and terms of reference for warranties in the US. One specific requirement:

"Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.[7] This is commonly referred to as the "tie-in sales" provisions,[8] and is frequently mentioned in the context of third-party computer parts, such as memory and hard drives." [Wikipedia]

Edit: Additionally, the onus is on the manufacturer to prove that a non-OEM part or service was the proximal cause of a warrantied failure. They don't get to put it back on you without proving their case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...

Yeah, the problem with that was how quickly manufacturers used that to get out of any problem.

"Our records show that you had the oil changed at a third party, which we do not support. As a result, we are unable to repair [unrelated powertrain failure] under warranty."

I doubt it, do you know how the GNU project started?

You have to thank Xerox for it.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-summary.txt

No, Dymo is not the leader in label printers; they make consumer-grade crap.

Zebra is the leader for label printers. And you can print on any label paper you want with a Zebra. For the direct-thermal transfer labels, you can buy them cheaply on Ebay. They also have thermal-transfer printers (they use a separate roll of ink-tape rather than just heating up thermally-activated paper). Zebras aren't cheap, however. You'll commonly see them in places like UPS/FedEx stores or depots, and cost maybe $500 each for the 4x6 models. You can get good used ones on Ebay.

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