Epson Boobytrapped Its Printers | Hacker News Reader

Epson Boobytrapped Its Printers

pluralistic.net

29 pointsURfejk13 comments

Anyone working on a free and open 3d printable printer? Let's just download this car already and begin ignoring these vampires.

That would be great. I could finally start printing my own banknotes. :)

Yeah, I'm ready.

How are companies operating in a competitive market able to get away with this blatantly anti-consumer behavior.

It's not like there are high barriers to entry in this market, nor there is any exclusive licensing or access hurdles -- like telecom spectrum, or fiber lines for ISPs. Nor are there any compatibility exclusions (proprietary connectors, protocols or walled gardens).

A good printer requires good components and that costs $$$

For most people, they want a printer for convenience but not enough to pay good money for good parts

So this market of shittier printers with cheap parts exist. While I hate cheap inkjet printers, they did work enough for what I needed them for and they didn’t cost a fortune… so the market continues to exist

/shrug

US government willfully asleep at the wheel and not exerting anything more than minimum regulatory pressure.

It is a dying market though.

With al these planned obsolescense gimmicks I’d think the replacement market will be there quite a while.

Consumer grade printers are a barren wasteland of planned obsolescence and anti-consumer practices. I recommend everyone that needs a printer in their home spend the extra couple of hundred dollars and buy an office grade printer. The difference between our current HP OfficeJet color laser printer/scanner/copier (cost about $450) and our previous cheapo under $100 consumer grade ink jet printer is unbelievable. Well worth the extra cash and it’s a total workhorse that feels like it’ll last for years.

I will view HP printers suspiciously if I'm ever in the market again, and I won't consider Canon unless everything else is a poor fit. Both brands just make it hard for no good reason. Canon in particular makes using their printers with anything other than Windows arbitrarily difficult.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always had good results from Brother printers (both B&W and colour laser). They seem to be no-nonsense and reliable in my experience. Even their very cheap models. And no issues working with Macs.

Can't vouch for other types eg. inkjet models though, as I try to avoid those!

I had a Brother HL5xxxN (can't recall the model exactly) a while back. Worked great for years, then get replaced with a Canon "PIXMA" frustrating piece of rubbish. The lure of color, photocopying and scanning was too great, I guess.

Never forgive, never forget is my printer motto.

> Never forgive, never forget is my printer motto.

Very wise :)

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