Ink Cartridges with Built-In Self-Destruct Dates

Linker3000 writes "The Inquirer has an article about HP ink cartridges having a built-in expiry date that can cause them to become unusable even if they aren't empty! Another twist on the 'chipped cartridge' stories--and also another kick in the teeth (and wallet) for the consumer methinks." This isn't really a new problem - here's a good piece about the problem.

Isn't this illegal

[LorneReams]

With cars, it's illegal to do this (Brady law I think). Why is any other hardware different? Car makers tried to get the monopoly on parts, and then got slapped down by laws to keep them from doing this. Can that be used as a precedent to prevent this?

Old amstrad Printer

[rf0]

Ah those old printers. I remeber I think I had a 2650 which took about 5 minute to print a page a letter quality. THe bumps of the back were a good replacement for brail

Rus

Ink Jet compaines are scared

[thogard]

There are a few companies in Taiwan and China that are working on Point of Sale ink jet printers. These printers tend to cost a bit more than a typical home printer but they must be cheap to operate or the merchants won't buy them. That's why you still see so many old 9 pin impact printers out there in cash registers. The problem is merchants want full color for receipts but they aren't going to pay much for it so it has to use cheap paper and cheap ink and still look good.

Once the POS market starts to take off again, these guys are going to ramp up their production and then its a matter of time before there is competition with larger bits of paper.

Remember Epson started out selling receipt printers and then went and undercut Centronics by a 1/3. I gives these guys about two years and the HP/Epson/Lexmark ink jet cartridge business will be dead.

Re:All these fancy ink and 'laser' printers

[gentgeen]

I agree totally. I have an old Okidata 380D that has outlasted 3 of those "fancy" printers. It always works, and does text just fine. Since I don't print pictures, it is all I really need.

I just need to remember to print my work before the babies are asleep.

Are there ink jets that don't jerk users around?

[astrashe]

We've all heard and experienced horror stories with ink jet printing.

But is there anyone selling a decent printer now that lets you refill the cartridges, a printer that's reliable, at a fair price?

I'm not talking about a printer that can compete on price with the subsized prices that the ones with the expensive cartridges go for -- just a printer that's priced fairly, and cartridges that are refillable without going broke.

Even a suggestion for old models to look for on ebay would be helpful.

Just ran into this at work

[GangstaLean]

Fished an 895cxi out of an unused room. Psych! Now I can print all my _work_ related documents in the privacy of my own room.

Grabbed a cartridge from the storage room, as the one that was in there seemed to be out.

Funny, it wasn't printing yellow. Ran some cleaning routines, still no luck.

Then grabbed another cartridge.

IT wasn't printing cyan.

Then another cartridge.

5 cartridges later, I got one that was printing all three colors correctly. Expiry date was Nov 2000.

I didn't get any error messages about expiration dates on the computer, but seriously, these printer cartridges were sealed. They shouldn't be malfunctioning right out of the box.

The Gillette Business Model.

[bdowne01]

For those of you who aren't familiar with business practices, HP is following the Gillette business model in their printer division.

This was thought up by Mr. Gillette himself (you know, the razor guy). He would sell razors at a loss, and then sell the refills at much inflated prices to make up the difference. Even today, a pack of 8 or so refills for a Gillette razor equals the price of just buying a new one.

HP is trying to pull this off in the computer world, and I don't know if it's such a wise thing to pinch your customers until they bleed dollars. Look at recent history:

1. HP inkjet carts used to be freely refillable, until HP modified the design to keep this from happenning.

2. HP printers generally stopped accepting third-party cartridge replacements.

3. Now the HP-only cartridges have a expiration date.

Now, since the first two steps haven't gotten the average printer user keeping up with ink cartridge consumption to keep the stock-holders happy; I guess just make the things stop working after a while! Perfect business plan, guys.

I really would love to see large companies use the good-ol sense of customer service to make a buck than bend-the-customer-over-because-we-can.

I know I'm not buying anymore HP stuff from now on.

Re:It's a free market.

[RoLi]

They will only follow if morons continue to buy their products. If you buy someone else's products, they lose money and stop doing it.

This doesn't work because these tactics take effect a long time after the customer made his buying decision.

What [Cheap] Printers *dont* suck?

[gabec]

That's a good question, though I'd take the more generic approach: It seems like today the major printer manufacturers are doing all they can to screw you on ink prices. Surely someone has already done the research for what printer manufacturers *don't* suck; which ones specifically design their printers to make it easy to refill their cartridges, etc... anyone wanna suggest one? ;)

Re:HP has gone downhill in the last few years

[globalar]

This is true. Even their desktops were a little nicer about 5 years ago. They used to have great printers, now they have OK printers. HP is trying to be a complete computer solution and that is stupid and old thinking. HP does not have to compete directly with Dell, but the CEO chose to do so (her gender is not the problem). Most CEO's that do not understand the technology (meaning know how it works vs other methods) cannot appreciate R&D. R&D is sort of like the lottery to many managers - money in, maybe a little cash prize or nothing. R&D is an investment. You cannot throw in some money, cut it, reorganize it, invest again, etc. Give it steady investment and leave it alone.

A positive experience.

[goldcd]

Bought myself a S900 a while back, after doing some serious research. Has fantastic print quality, well built, looks good and as mentioned previously it uses single colour carts I can pick up for about £3 ($5) a pop. The printer wasn't cheap but worth the money.

Re:It's a free market.

[BFaucet]

Beyond just the whole setting a precedent, keep in mind most people don't research the companies they buy from and get all of their technical advise from salespeople.* I highly doubt the box advertises the product has self destruct date. I also doubt most salespeople would say "Well don't buy this expensive printer that'll give me a nice, big commission because it's cartridges are horrible devices designed to rip you off."

*Before labeling these people as idiots remember that the majority of consumers simply don't have time to research every single purchase they make.

Re:Open Source Hardware

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Amen to that. The truth be told the IEEE has been working on that problem since its creation. (802.11 wireless, standardized ethernet protocols are just their latest efforts.) They are primarily there to ensure that everybody's stuff will talk to and interface with everybody elses stuff.

For pure hardware, look no further than Radio Shack. Tucked on the back you will find a series of books by Forest E. Mims. In the pages you will find hundreds of building-block circuits, that frankly, got me most of the way through engineering school. He has a BSD style license for the designs.

I've always envisioned a sort of "freshmeat for hardware." What we really need are:

• documenting standards for electrical and mechanical schematics. (Largely done)
• Freely available CAD program that handles Printed Circuit Boards, Manufacturing Engineering drawings, and 3D layout
• Some sort of systems integration package to facilite the interconnections between discrete components.
• A library of off-the-shelf components already documented in CAD and our system-integration software.
• Community involvment to continue to develop these new systems.

  Anyone care to share some ideas?

Indeed - but still bad practice

[goldcd]

HP built it's reputation on selling extremely well engineered products. They cost more, but large corporations were willing to pay for them as they knew they would be reliable and cost less in the long run than something that broke down every month. HP are cashing in on this reputation currently by selling a lower quality product than before, but still charging the 'HP' premium. This was first noticed by people who take their hardware seriously and has now entered the mainstream press. Looking at some of the above articles it seems that even the large companies are beginning to switch away from HP, which takes some doing due to the massive intertia involved. When HP loses the corporations they're going to be left with nothing. They won't have the ability to charge a premium for their name and due to their pumping out of shoddy products for the past few years they won't have the technical advantage to win the individual power user.
From Carly's point of view this isn't necessarily a bad thing, she'll have bailed from the company on a lovely retirement due to the profits accumulated during her tenure.

Inkjet is a scam anyway

[bigberk]

If you only need to print in black and white, you will likely be much better off with a laser printer anyway (i.e. better, faster, cheaper!). I did a quick calculation on my DeskJet 6xx series ink cartridge versus an HP LaserJet 1200 toner unit. The ink cartridge capacity is disappointing.

laserjet: $100 / 3000 pages = $0.03 / page
hp inkjet: $40 / 650 pages = $0.06 / page

Pretty much all laser printers result in a lower cost per page than inkjet. Do a calculation with how many pages you print a year, and you may find that the laser pays for itself very quickly.

First software, now everything

[abe ferlman]

Those of us who think occasionally were horrified at the idea that software and movies could be licensed rather than sold. You purchase the product, and should be allowed to have your own quiet enjoyment of the product, but the law doesn't allow this.

Now that computers are about to be in EVERYTHING, expect EVERYTHING you buy to be licensed rather than sold. Expect to start paying a license to drive your car, to keep your tires inflated, etc. Not yet, but it won't be long, I assure you.

Even worse, expect the same monopoly conditions that prevail in the software industry to prevail everywhere else, too.

Re:Epson

[gerald626]

I had an Epson C40ux. I used it a lot, and I really liked it, until one day....

I was printing some activities for the kids, and suddenly the printer just stops printing, and the lights just blink. After some searching, I find out that this particular model, and the C42ux as well, has a drop-dead date.

Well, not a date actually... When you clean the print heads on these models, the ink has to go somewhere. So it goes into a little reservoir (you can see it on the right hand side when you open the cover and the print heads are out of the way). The printer keeps a count of how much ink is in this reservoir. But once the printer thinks that the reservoir is full, it STOPS WORKING COMPLETELY!!!

Ok, no big deal, right? Change the reservoir. No problem... but wait! You have to re-program the EEPROM to reset the counter! And guess what? The only people who can do that are licensed Epson repair centres! (closest one to me is 3 hours away, speeding, in another province). And how much does this cost?

The cost to simply reset the counter on the EEPROM is more than the cost of the printer! The printer ended up in the garbage.

Note that I am never buying an Epson printer again.

Re:I've Had Full Cartriges Go Bad for Years

[Anonymous Coward]

That's most likely a case of the printheads drying up, which the stock packaging is supposed to prevent, at least, up until the point the tape is unpeeled from the printheads. There's a similar problem with Epson's new pigment ink 'settling' in the tanks, which is why they suggest shaking them before installation, and preemptive replacement. (At something like $9/tank, it's still expensive, but beats the norm for HP carts. In tradeoff, the printhead isn't replaceable, so if it gets clogged by a drying cartridge- oops, new printer.)

Now, I've tried to look up this particular HP, but I haven't had a lot of success. I could be totally wrong here, but it sounds like they've diverged from their usual idiotproof-but-expensive practice of "ink + printhead = cartridge" for this model? I find some references that seem to suggest the actual printheads are separate consumables, although still replaceable.

*If* this is the case, then cartridge expiration is a good idea in principle- it prevents damage to an expensive printhead by a relatively 'cheap' ink tank. It's still evil of them to make it an incapacitating issue, rather than an overridable warning, of course... but this also sounds like it's entirely driven by the Windows drivers (given the host-clock rollback fix), so a simple software update could fix the problem they've created for themselves.

So WHY do it then?

[gosand]

The article says that the expiration date is 4 1/2 years after the cartridge is put into the printer. Surely, more than 99.9% of users will run out of ink well before the expiration date.

OK, I'll buy that. So why go to the expense of including an expiration chip in it then? Think about this for a second.

This also begs this question - Have they been testing this technology since 1999? Not likely. It is most likely a programmable chip. So maybe in the next batch of cartridges, they can change the expiration date to 6 months, and make it behave like it just ran out of ink. The end user will just think they ran out, and buy another cartridge.

I used to think I was a little paranoid, but then the DMCA gets passed, and greedy f'ing companies try to pull this kind of crap, and I think maybe I wasn't paranoid enough.

What, exactly, is the problem?

[ites]

HP, Lexmark, et al. spend enormous amounts on research making what are, finally, very good printers that run on what is practically just dirty water.

One way or another, the consumer has to pay for the real cost of the printer, which includes the cost of R&D. There are two ways: upfront, or indirect. Now, you can ask consumers: would you rather pay $499 for the printer and get ink for free, or would you rather pay $99 for the printer and pay for expensive ink? The market chose the second option some years back, which is partly why HP took so much of the inkjet printer market from its competitors.

Now, having established that consumers prefer (and have chosen) to pay for the ink, HP is entitled to protect its ink sales. This just seems logical.

Look at it another way: paying for the consumables gives consumers much more freedom. If they don't like the printer, they chuck it. If you buy a more expensive laser printer that runs on cheap toner, you'll save money, but only if you run the beast for three years.

This is not a printer market problem. Do you buy regular lightbulbs or 'ecological long life' ones? Do you pay for your train and bus each time you get on, or do you buy a season ticket? Do you rent an appartment or pay a mortgage?

This really is a matter of the free market. If printer R&D costs were negligible, we would have already seen an invasion of cheap printers along with cheap ink. Look at what happened to scanners. There is no ripoff here, only people unhappy with the bargains they made.

This story keeps coming back to Slashdot, and every time it's "the poor consumer being ripped off by those bastard printer manufacturers." Does no-one actually bother to analyze the economics here?

Re:HP lasers aren't always much better...

[nolife]

I picked up a LJ4+ with a +100k page count and a used toner about 2 years ago when my previous employer had a "fire" sale ;)

I found and added some old non EDO memory from my junk drawer and it has been trucking along fine after at least 5000 sheets.

They do it with mobile phones

[johannesg]

Imagine this: you buy a prepaid card but only use your phone to receive calls. The phone company then decides you are not a good customer and disconnects you.

Impossible? No: it actually happened in the Netherlands. And there weren't all that many cries of outrage - apparently people thought it was an ok thing to do. Some data: the offending phone company was KPN (the former state monopoly); 177,000 people were disconnected in a three month period (that's 1.1% of the entire Dutch population); even though they were disconnected, the phones were still locked to KPN and could not be used with other networks. Other companies such as Ben, Dutchtone, O2, and Vodafone apparently do the same thing.

How do you call it again when you pay for something and then do not get it? Ah yes, *theft*.

Try to get the old HP printers

[vu2lid]

Try to get one of those old 600dpi HP laserprinters like the HP LaserJet 4. These are often available used for $70 or less (often with 12000 or less total pages printed in the lifespan). These printers are ultra reliable. Toner cartridges are inexpensive (Good refilled ones can be bought for $20). These printers should work with almost any OS.

This would be illegal in UK

[ajs318]

Under a proposed EU law (WEEE directive), this would be illegal -- manufacturers are specifically forbidden to comporomise the recyclability of products. Protecting the environment is more important than protecting corporate profits.

Under UK law, it's already illegal. If I have bought an ink cartridge, I own that cartridge and I have the right to use, abuse, enjoy or destroy it. If the manufacturers, or anyone for that matter, do something to it to prevent me using it, then that is criminal damage. No need even to call a solicitor, since it's a criminal act you should just be able to dial 999 .....

Changing the subject slightly now. Me and a mate fished an Apple ImageWriter out of a skip. We found a power lead, cobbled up a serial cable and got the thing to print. Bit faint, but we got a new ribbon (purple!) and wound it into the cassette (it split open easily enough and the old ribbon was unlikely to stain much). No manual, though. So I found an ImageWriter II driver for the Amiga, stuck my faithful Citizen 120D [now that really was an excellent printer!] into Hex Dump mode, and rattled off a document with various text effects in it. Even managed to suss out bit image mode, and in the end we used the printer to print forged bus tickets. We must have had the best part of £2000 worth of free travel. We had to stop doing it when the bus company changed all their ticket machines, but the printer does still print, if a bit faintly.

Perhaps we should start a new forum for Printers We Have Known and Loved?

Re:Are there ink jets that don't jerk users around

[bhtooefr]

The old Canons didn't have seperate printheads. The BJ*-2*0 series (I'm not censoring, I'm just mentioning a model line that had even had it's name changed) and essentially all of its predecessors have integrated printheads. I like that, because I also have a BJC-610, that had to have a meeting with a Q-Tip (after hours of searching on Canon's site for how to clean it if the built in cleaning doesn't work). The printer never worked right, but then again, it WAS refurbished. I had a BJ-200 that died soon after I got it (used, but not much), and a returned (due to a bad cable which didn't even come with the thing) BJC-240 (the other end of the 200 series) that took the old carts and worked for about one print - until my last old cart ran out!

Re:It's a free market.

[mikerich]

Actually they could face unlimited fines and be forced to modify their printers before they can be sold in the EU.

Which is a market larger than that of North America. The EU may well lack political clout, but its an economic superpower.

(Not to mention that there are a number of printer companies inside the EU that would love to see HP out of the market.)

Best wishes,
Mike.

The real problem is resource waste

[CraigV]

20 years from now US business and consumer practices will be condemned for the waste of natural resources. What makes profit in the short term is usually wrong for the environment and future availability of natural resources.

I had an electric fan go bad because it had bushings instead of ball bearings. I then tried to deterimine which possible replacement fans had ball bearings - few retailers know or care. All sorts of rotating products which could last 20 years will fail in a couple because of this short-sightedness.

There are many more examples: poor tires sold with new cars, poorly-engineered plastic parts (plastic per se can be very good), dc motors without replaceable bushes, equipment poorly spot-welded instead of bolted or riveted,...

Of course, the typical consumer hardly knows how to replace a light bulb. When I went to junior high school in the 50's, we all (well just the guys :( , but some of us took typing with the girls :) ) took drafting, electric shop, metal shop, wood shop, and plastic crafts. Those courses have helped me throughout the subsequent 45 years.

I worked one summer for HP, felt the pride of doing quality work, and bought their test equipment for the next 30 years as a physicist. Yet, I sadly agree with the /.ers who feel HP has abandoned its quality tradition. Bill and Dave must be screaming from their graves.

The sooner this tradition of waste ends, the better will be the future of civilization.

Cameras expiring too

[sacrilicious]

I tagged along with a friend this past weekend as he went to buy a sony video cam. On the way to the register, the salesman mentioned that the camera needed to be sent annually to the factory to get cleaning, for a $45 charge... and that this was enforced by a chip that prevented operation until this was done.

Had it been me, I would have refused to buy this cam. (total cost was $600, btw, so $45/year equals about 8%, to say nothing of the hassle of sending it in and waiting for it.)

My (non-technical) friend didn't seem to react at all. While standing in line I asked what he thought of the forced cleaning. His response was to ask whether I thought the salesman was giving correct info. I said "You bet. You'd be shocked at what companies are doing, and the reason is because enough consumers let them get away with it."

Case in point: he shrugged and bought the camera.