Please just stop buying HP and Canon printers!
What's good about this story is that it's now got traction, Brother is on the record denying the claim and with a heap of Brother printers in the field we'll soon know one way or other.
I agree, whilst HP leads the disreputable pack and second is Canon I've just had major poblems with Epson—cartridges not† being empty and the printer refusing to print, or refusing to print in B&W when a color cartridge is empty. I even had to exchange a printer and upgrade it for a more expensive one because it jammed paper—and even then the replacement had to be exchanged because of a fault (a thin black line running vertically down the page that couldn't be eliminated).
I've now a collection of partly-used and new cartridges from the first printer that I cannot use as they don't fit the replacement model. This whole system of forever changing cartridges from one model to the next is a fucking scam.
Does anyone know of say a source of firmware hacks that can override this crap?
† I now weigh cartilages and mark their weight in grams before using them, I then do the same when 'empty' which doesn't necessarily mean they're actually empty—which I determine by opening them. Doing this is also a sure way of determining the cost of the ink which where I am works out to be over $2,000/litre.